Ahoy from the far North!
Ten members of the MOD team are just wrapping up our first week aboard the Italian research vessel Alliance on the second NORSE (Northern Ocean Rapid Surface Evolution) cruise.
After isolating in Tromsø for almost two weeks we finally got to head to the dock and start setting up our gear, and we have a lot of it… Together with the other researchers onboard representing Applied Research Laboratories at University of Texas, Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Applied Physics Lab (APL) at University of Washington, Center for Marine Research and Exploration (CMRE), Italy, and the University of Bergen, Norway, we have enough oceanographic toys to sample pretty much anything one could imagine to sample in the ocean.
Though being isolation wasn’t that fun, there are definitely worse places to be stuck in than Northern Norway.
During last year’s pilot cruise (read the posts from that here) we spent a lot of time around the island of Jan Mayen. Partly because we were hiding from bad weather, but also to scout out the area, because this year we’re back with not one, not two, not three, but four(!) moorings to be deployed around here. Of particular interest is the acoustical properties of this region as an example of a place where different water masses with very different properties mix and mingle.
Just like last year we have various types of gliders with us, some that will be recovered and some that will be left out for months and piloted remotely. We also have a lot of lagrangian drifters onboard (lagrangian meaning that they flow with the water and trace out the currents plus sample wherever they go) that can sample everything from temperature, winds, and both acoustical and biological properties in the surface layer of the ocean.
MOD team working on one of our winches.
In addition to the gliders, moorings and drifters we have some MOD in-house gear staples like Wirewalker buoys and also our powerful winches with one fast-CTD profiler and one microstructure profiler. These are very cool pieces of engineering craft that allows us to drop our instruments down hundreds of meters and reel them back up again while the ship is driving. This way we can get very high resolution measurements, both in time and space, of things salt, temperature, turbulence and more. We’re also trying out a few new pieces of tech that are under development, more on that some other time.
Prepping the winch.
Our fast-CTD profiler backlit and a wonky horizon just to show you how much things are rocking over here.
The North Atlantic can be a harsh place, especially in October, and unfortunately we’ve already had some delays due to weather that made us to leave Tromsø a few days late. But we’re determined to make the most of this cruise regardless and are keeping the spirits onboard high with everything from karaoke to silly jokes (“What stops the ocean from leaking out?” - the seals).
We’re also updating our Instagram stories every now and again, come give us a follow at @mod_at_scripps.
Signing off with a pretty Jan Mayen picture.
Text and photos by Kerstin Bergentz