NORSE 2023 - That's a wrap!

For the third year in a row, a group of MOD scientists, engineers and students ventured into the far north, braving the fickle beast that is the North Atlantic ocean in November. Equipped with various MOD in-house developed toys, and joined by fabulous colleagues from multiple different institutions, the science party was on a mission to investigate what happens to the upper ocean under strong forcing from wind and waves.

With the 2023 cruise just being done, that wraps up three years of fieldwork for the Office of Naval Research funded project NORSE – Northern Ocean Rapid Surface Evolution. Read on to hear about some highlights from this cruise. More on NORSE can be found here, there are also blogposts from the previous years’ cruises in 2021 and 2022 on the MOD blog, as well as a story for the Scripps Explorations dispatch series, all written by our graduate student Kerstin. Our fieldwork this year was also picked up by the San Diego Union Tribune that featured a story on our chief scientist Jen MacKinnon.

The NORSE 2023 science party

The NORSE 2023 science party was the largest yet, 30 scientists, engineers, and students, including two STEMSeas students. We all met up in a cold and snowy Tromso and boarded the Norwegian ice-breaker R/V Kronprins Haakon. After loading all the gear onboard, we quietly slipped out of the shelter of the archipelago and fjords one early arctic morning and set course towards the Lofoten Basin Eddy.

Thanks to the splitting of a northward current, the Lofoten Basin is enclosed by the Norwegian Atlantic Frontal Current and the Norwegian Atlantic Slope Current. The shedding of vortices by the slope current help make the Lofoten Basin a hotspot for temperature and vorticity in the Nordic Seas and help contribute to the local climate. Previous NORSE cruises have focused on a particular vortex in the basin, the Lofoten Basin Eddy, a well studied semi-permanent anticyclonic feature in which we’ve deployed multiple sets of surface drifters. These drifters are non-recovered, current tracking instruments that send back their data via gps and help us investigate energy transfer from the wind to the ocean when there is background vorticity present.

Drifter deployment

Glider recovery

Glider back on board

Then we headed further west towards our favorite volcano, Mt Beerenberg on the island of Jan Mayen, where most of the focus was during this year’s cruise. Jan Mayen sits on the intersection of multiple basins and is a meeting point of several currents and water masses which makes it a perfect place to study what happens to water of different temperature and salinity when they meet and the atmosphere exerts its forces on the ocean. In the waters around this isolated Norwegian Island we performed various acoustic experiments with hydrophones and sound sources, we deployed the MOD in-house autonomous profiler system the Wirewalker and did a lot of ship-based profiling with our turbulence sensor package the epsilometer as well as the CTD/oxygen/chlorophyll package.

DBASIS buoy

Wirewalker in the water

Wirewalker prep

Deployment

Other groups on the cruise had multiple instruments that went in and out of the water too, such as SWIFTs (drifting instruments that can measure waves and wind among other things) and gliders (autonomous underwater vessels that can be piloted to glide around and measure things like temperature, salinity and turbulence)

Small boat ops

SWIFT deployment

SWIFT deployment

We spent also two full days recovering the four moorings that we put out last year. They came back covered in basket stars.

1 of 4 moorings back on board

Basket stars

The North Atlantic was cooperative giving us almost flat seas for much of the first two weeks. However, the light was running out. At latitude 70°N we saw the sun set behind the horizon for the last time on November 20th, not to be seen again until late January. But just as things were seeming to be a little too picturesque and we started to wonder if we’d actually get to see some of that forcing from wind and waves that NORSE is about, things picked up and we spent most of Thanksgiving holed up on the most leeward side of Jan Mayen while the wind was howling a steady 70 mph outside and a thin layer of ice slowly built up on the Kronprins Haakon. We decorated the lab with paper turkeys and held a ship wide ping pong tournament in the helicopter hangar. The final was a real nail biter between Italy and Norway. And yes, the ship has a helicopter hangar with a ping pong table.

The running joke amongst seagoing oceanographers is that when you say you’re going on a “cruise” people immediately think you’re going on vacation, and you have to explain that it’s a “research cruise”. Well, with heated bathroom floors, a 9th floor observation deck with reclining chairs, a sauna, and a massage chair in the library, the Kronprins Haakon was one of those ships where three weeks of working long days on a research cruise could, at least sometimes, feel a little like a vacation. The abundance of pretty views didn’t hurt either.

Last sunrise

Last sunset

Jan Mayen post storm

Aurora Borealis

Once the skies cleared up and Jan Mayen was once again visible in the faint glow of daylight (coming from the sun below the horizon, but we take what we can get) we did some last minute profiling and then picked up our last assets from the water before we pointed the bow towards Tromso again. Once in port the science party managed to both prove themselves on the karaoke stage and jump into 5°C/40F water by the downtown sauna before heading home. A worthy ending to a successful cruise.

And that concludes three years of fieldwork for the NORSE project.
Now begins the work of turning all the terabytes of data collected over the past years into research papers that will help the scientific community better understand the upper ocean’s response to strong forcing and how that impacts thermohaline patters, currents, acoustics, and energy transfer from the atmosphere to the ocean, as well as how that might play out in a changing climate. Coming to an oceanographic conference/symposium/journal near you soon…

With that we sign off for the last time: NORSE over and out.

Jan Mayen

(Really, you think we’d leave you without a silly joke or two?)

- Why did the pirate put tape on the squid?
He was afraid it was kraken!

- What do you call a Viking that doesn’t eat fish?
A Norvegan.

All photos and text by Kerstin Bergentz

NORSE 2022 - over and out

Hei! (Norwegian for “Hi”)

The NORSE 2022 cruise is just about done and we’re packing up our containers and are getting ready to head home.

It’s been a couple of eventful weeks in the North Atlantic.

Deployment of a Seaexplorer glider. Photo by San Nguyen.

We started off with the deployment of a few gliders. They are perhaps best described as tiny submarines carrying all sorts of instruments (temperature, salinity, turbulence and even acoustic sensors) that are piloted remotely. They can be programmed to drive in almost any pattern and surface to send their data every couple of days.

Then we moved on to the moorings. A total of 4 of them were deployed at various locations near the island of Jan Mayen, both surface and subsurface ones. One of the primary objectives of this project is to investigate acoustic phenomena so most of the moorings have either sound transmitters or receivers.

Mooring deployment. Photo by Kerstin Bergentz.

Then it was time for the various drifting assets. There were two DBASIS buoys, a collaboration between researchers at SIO and WHOI, with a profiling Wirewalker below a meteorological buoy. It’s the complete package equipped with almost anything you could think of to measure, and drouged at 100s of meters it will travel with the mean current in that part of the ocean.

Preparing the DBASIS buoy with a Wirewalker. Photo by San Nguyen

Last but not least there’s also been many surface drifters. They’re drouged at 15m and will thus flow with the surface currents. Most were the “standard” ones from the Lagrangian Drifter Lab at Scripps (www.ucsd.ldl.edu) that are not recovered but will stay our here measuring currents for many months. Some drifters were part of various R&D programs trying to design new instruments and they were recovered and brought back to land for evaluation and more tests.

Drifter deployment. Photo by San Nguyen.

T-pads ready to go in the water. Photo by San Nguyen.

At least from the perspective of the MOD group the real star of the cruise was our new instrument: the T-pads, our towed phased array. It’s a nifty piece of engineering magic: a very carefully designed series of acoustic sensors placed on a profiler that is lowered off the side of the ship on one of our winches. This instrument can be used to acoustically map flows in the ocean with unmatched temporal and spatial resolution. This was the first time the T-pads got some real action on a cruise and we’re all very excited by the results, this is not the last you’ll hear of them. 

The North Atlantic is an unforgiving place and we’ve had to deal with everything from weather to the loss of some instruments. But that’s part of the job and the only thing to do is to learn some lessons and do better next time.

For now we’re all excited to be headed back to slightly warmer temperatures in San Diego and get some good rest and family time during Thanksgiving.

Northern lights. There are worse office views to be had. Photo by San Nguyen.

The return to Tromsø. Photo by San Nguyen.

North Atlantic waves. Photo by Kerstin Bergentz.

Thank you for following along on our journey as we try to solve the vexing problems in ocean physics and biology.

Until next time!

Land never looks as gorgeous as when you return from sea. Photo by San Nguyen.

(Thought we’d sign off without a silly ocean joke? Really?
- Guess what I put in a box and threw in the ocean?
- Never mind, it’s a sea-crate… )

Written by Kerstin Bergentz

NORSE - 2022 edition

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

NORSE pilot signing off

Hello there,

Greetings from the party aboard the Armstrong. The NORSE pilot has entered its last week and we’ve wrapped up the last few deep CTD casts, deployed some more surface drifters, recovered the SWIFTs and are in the process of picking up all the different gliders we deployed earlier.

Recovering a sea glider.

Last week a bit of nasty weather (30ft waves and 50 knot winds…) had us holed up behind Jan Mayen for a few days. But the spirits remained high onboard. We caught up on sleep, watched some movies and had a few dance sessions in the lab. We also celebrated two birthdays (MOD’s own Ale among them) with plenty of delicious cake, colorful balloons and origami dinosaurs, because that’s the proper way to do it on a ship. When things cleared up we were greeted by both sunrises and rainbows.

This week involved more uCTD-ing and bow-chaining, more than one big wave that made the ship roll enough to have things flying around the lab, and a few slightly panicky moments for some of us as the internet access went down just when we tried to submit abstracts to Ocean Sciences (thankfully the satellites decided to come back in time). More than one instrument has also started acting up a little after almost five weeks at sea, but thanks to a wonderful, resourceful and talented science party and Armstrong crew things have been surprisingly smooth (everything but the waves that is) and full of laughter, and we will be coming home with some really cool data. It will be put to good use in shaping the NORSE project's next few steps and to develop the sampling plan for next year’s cruise that is scheduled to take place in the same region in the fall of 2022.

uCTDing in nice weather is not too bad… (Don’t worry, we’ve done plenty of sessions in the dark with cold rain and big waves washing over the back deck too.)

A massive thank you goes out to the fenomenal crew aboard the Armstrong who’s skill and good humor in putting up with our ever changing plans and ideas (like going back up and down the same 6nm transect at 2 knots three times in a row while uCTDing to investigate a peculiar wiggle we spotted at the base of the mixed layer) has been crucial to the success of this cruise. Another massive thank you to all the collaborators and colleagues back on land supporting us with everything from packing and loading, setting up and trouble shooting instruments, context data and moral support.

We have another day or so of work out here and then it’s a-boat time to head back to Reykjavik and sail-abrate a successful five weeks at sea. We’ve done a lot of great science, seas-ed many a day, and have many a good story to tell (fear not, they all have ferry-tail endings).

The NORSE pilot science crew in front of Jan Mayen, left to right: Dave Morton, Kerstin Bergentz, Allison Ho, Alejandra Sanchez-Rios, Laura Crews, Justin Burnett, Luc Rainville, Laur Ferris, Anna Savage, Raymond Young, Sam Brenner, Angel Ruiz-Angulo - a true dream team!

Signing off for this time with a final picture of the science party of the NORSE pilot 2021.
Over and out!

Text and photos by Kerstin Bergentz

Glider galore and glaciers - NORSE

Ahoy, ahoy, greetings from the Armstrong!
We’re having a knot too shabby of a time up here in the sea-nic north.
(“You’ve yacht to be kidding, you’re anchor-rigible. These terrible puns are keeling me…”)

Last week was an exciting one. We’ve been going back and forth around and across the Atlantic Front Current doing repeat sections with the bow chain and underway CTD, as well as plenty of deep CTD casts. The cruise track so far can be found here (don’t worry, there is a method to the madness of our seemingly random crisscrossing).

Credit: Luc Rainville, APL

In particular we deployed a bunch of different types of gliders that have been collecting data on temperature and salinity as well as the microstructure and acoustical properties of the water. The majority of the gliders are subsurface, but we also have one Wave Glider that travels on the surface and can measure atmospheric and surface wave parameters too. However, they all require some form of piloting. Basically, we have to tell the glider where we want it to go but at the same time be careful so as not to exhaust the limited power and memory. Some of the piloting is done by the scientists onboard the Armstrong and some by other colleagues and collaborators across North America and Europe.

Sea Glider deployment.

Besides very serious science we did some other fun stuff last week.
First there was a quite realistic fire drill involving a smoke machine on full power and a ‘missing’ member of the science party, and then we got to try on the suits (boots, pants, jacket, gloves, face mask and air tank) used in case there is a fire onboard that needs to be put out. Definitely harder and heavier than you’d think!

Dr. Savage donning a fire suit.

Soon-to-be Dr. Ferris in a fire suit.

Then there was an emergency recovery mission. One of the SWIFT drifters we deployed earlier ended up getting a little bit too close to Jan Mayen for us to be able to recover it from the ship. Hence we launched the small boat and sent three people in red suits (Anna had to quickly change out of the fire proof one) to go pick it up from where it was hanging out near one of Jan Mayen’s glaciers.

The rescue team.

Small boat, big glacier.

R/V Neil Armstrong as seen from the water.

A SWIFT in front of Jan Mayen.

We’re happy to report that everybody survived the fake fire and that everyone made it back onboard the Armstrong safely, including the runaway drifter.

We’re keeping a close eye on the forecasts (obsessively updating windy.com, anyone?) and it seems like there is some more rough weather coming for us, this is the North Atlantic in September after all, thus there will be some more hiding behind Jan Mayen in the upcoming days. In addition to that, we also have not one, but two(!) birthdays in the science party to celebrate this week. Exciting times ahead!

Signing off with a picture of the clouds enveloping a snow-covered Mt Beerenberg on Jan Mayen and a final bad pun, promise (for today at least):

Q: What is a sailor’s favorite breakfast?
A: Boatmeal!

Text and photos by Kerstin Bergentz

NORSE party dancing and Jan Mayen

Hello there, nice to sea you!
(Apologies in advance for all the terrible puns that will be coming your way, this is what happens when you’re out at sea for too long…)

All is well aboard the Armstrong. Last week we watched a bunch of sunrises, successfully deployed a bunch of drifters, a float and some gliders. Everything went smoothly and we’re seeing some interesting data coming back. We’ll let some of the instruments go off and do their thing and then pick them back out of the water a little later in the cruise.

Glider deployment

Drifter deployment

Right before the weekend we also did some more bow chain and underway CTD sampling on the edge of the Lofoten Basin. The sun was shining and we brought out the speaker, because, let’s be fair, the only way to get through 10h of continuous CTD-ing and manning the winch is with some good, dance friendly tunes. Our funky moves were also captured on the R/V Neil Armstrong twitter feed (check it out here ). We even saw whales and we all agreed it was a pretty good day for doing science. 

It’s a deck dance party!

But as soon as the instruments were out of the water we set the course northwest, full speed ahead, to try and get out of the way of some nasty weather. We've spent the weekend hiding behind the island of Jan Mayen who graciously shaded us from the worst of the wind and waves.

Jan Mayen is a small Norwegian volcanic island that hosts a research station, a few glaciers and reportedly pretty good hiking trails. The last time Beerenberg (the world’s northernmost volcano above sea level) erupted was in 1985, but yes, the irony of trying to avoid a bad storm by cozying up next to an active volcano was not lost on us. 

It’s still been windy here though, 30+ knots (the bridge reported it was upwards of 50 knots at times) and the SWIFT drifters we deployed as we raced here Saturday later recorded wave heights of around 5 meters, but we got only about half of that. 

We woke up yesterday morning to see Jan Mayen covered in snow and the sun shining. The wind and waves still being strong we stayed put for most of the day, admiring the views and getting caught up on emails, exercise, laundry and the like.

The island of Jan Mayen. Mt Beerenberg at 2277m gave us good shelter.

We’ll hang around in this region for a bit, sampling the Atlantic Front Current as it flows along Mohn’s Ridge on its way up toward Svalbard. In this region the Atlantic Water it carries gets modified by waters from the Icelandic Basin and Greenland Sea with lots of interesting large contrasts in surface properties as a result. We’ll also do plenty of deep CTD casts and repeated upper ocean sections to better understand the waters here around Jan Mayen, which is a possible future location for a moored acoustic array that would be part of NORSE. Science!

We’ll sign off with a pretty picture of a rainbow spotted as we were deploying SWIFTs and the sailor pun of the day:

Q: How did viking sailors communicate?
A: Through NORSE code!

Text and photos by Kerstin Bergentz

Arctic circle fun - NORSE pilot update

Greetings from the north!
We’ve crossed into the Arctic Circle (north of 66°33′48.7″ N), as well as to the other side of the Prime Meridian (longitude 0°), and have spent the last few days roaming around the Lofoten Basin sampling as much as we can. We’ve launched a few gliders and a float, done a few deep CTD casts down to 3200m and deployed an array of drifters.

Bringing the CTD rosette back onboard after a deep cast.

The weather has been pretty fair for the North Atlantic, not too windy and only a little bit of rain, we’ve even had a good sunset/sunrise or two and have seen whales (photographic evidence below). There has been a decent amount of waves though, and we’re all working on perfecting that “walking down a hallway on a rolling ship”-dance, swaying from side to side without losing your balance. Great fun.

The MOD crew’s instrument of choice for this cruise, the bow chain, went in the water a few days back under much excitement. The setup is, in essence, a 30 m long wire to which we’ve carefully taped 25 temperature sensors and 4 salinity/temperature/depth sensors. One end is attached to a rig placed at the bow of the ship, and then the whole chain is lowered over the side into the water with a heavy weight in the other end pulling it down. Then we politely ask the bridge to go straight ahead at about 4 knots for a few hours until it’s time to recover the sensors. Deployment and recovery requires quite a few people, the more hands that can help carefully lower/pull up sensors over the railing the better, but it has been pretty smooth so far. 

The bow commander

Yes, the weight is yellow and fish-shaped!

Sorting out the chain before deployment.

At first glance the data looks pretty exciting, especially combined with data from the underway CTD (u-CTD, salinity/temperature/depth sensors repeatedly dropped and pulled back from the stern of the ship while underway) which was running continually at the same time as the bow chain was in the water. The u-CTD gives relatively high spatial and temporal resolution of temperature and salinity down to about 150m, and the bow chain gives even higher resolution (a sensor every 1m or less, and sampling at 6Hz) in the uppermost 20 or so meters. Going in to the Lofoten Eddy, our sensors were able to capture some interesting temperature and salinity patterns in a cross section of the eddy. 

Anna and Ale getting excited about some bow chain action.

We’re looking to do another bow chain/u-CTD section in the upcoming days depending on how the atmospheric conditions develop, there seems to be a little bit of nasty weather on the horizon and we might be heading towards the Atlantic Front Current and the region around Jan Mayen to try and avoid the worst of it…

Until next time, here’s the pirate joke of the day:
Q: Why does it take pirates so long to learn the alphabet?
A: Because they can spend years at C…

Text and photos by Kerstin Bergentz

NORSE pilot cruise - we're off!

Ahoy from the North Atlantic!
The NORSE (Northern Ocean Rapid Surface Evolution) pilot cruise team have just set out on a five week journey around the North Sea. We have all sorts of exciting toys with us, from different gliders and floats to a selection of drifters, a bow chain and a few acoustic instruments.

Half of the science party. Left to right: Kerstin Bergentz, Alejandra Sanschez-Rios, Laura Crews, Anna Savage, Allison Ho and Laur Ferris.

The last few days have been spent unpacking and strapping things down, making sure that the R/V Neil Armstrong is ready to tackle whatever conditions the weather gods decide to throw at us, and this morning, with the clouds hanging low (mixed in with some volcanic smoke!) and the ocean being relatively flat, we left Reykjavik and headed down, coming round south of Iceland trying to minimize the risk of having to deal with ice (compared to heading north).

We’ll have about a 3 day transit time to get close to the Lofoten eddy where we’ll start putting instruments in the water. The time until then will be spent setting up and preparing equipment and getting our sea legs on.

The MOD members onboard (Anna, Ale and Kerstin) have high hopes for the bow chain which we’ve spent a good deal of time triple taping about 25 Solo temperature probes and 4 Concerto ctd probes on (yes, that is a loooot of tape…)

We’ll be back with updates on our scientific endeavors and hopefully some fun stories from higher latitudes.

In the meanwhile, here’s the nautical joke of the day:

Q: Why do seagulls fly over the sea?
A: Because if they flew over the bay, they’d be bagels!

Text and photos by Kerstin Bergentz