Day 3: Sea Ice and Work Begins (NABOS 2009)

[*Part of an ongoing series documenting the 2009 NABOS Arctic Expedition, approximately 1 year ago*]

Monday, August 17, 2009

1:15 PM I walk around in my cabin and a glimmering white flash out my porthole window catches my eye. I make a mad dash for the window and climb up on my seating area to get a better look out the window. On the far horizon I see WHITE!! That can only mean one thing.... SEA ICE! Horray! Now this is becoming real!

View of first sea ice out my porthole window

As I continue to stare out my porthole... I begin to spot itty bitty pieces of ice floating by. 15 minutes pass and we're into a sea of floating ice cubes! By this point it's becoming quite chilly in my cabin so I sprint across the room to add on a sweater, hat, and mittens.

Enjoying the sea ice out on deck

Later in the afternoon we have a tour of the entire icebreaker so we're familiar with our surroundings. The 8th and 9th deck showcased some of the most Spectacular views! The wheelhouse... a room surrounded on three sides by paned glass windows making you feel like you're a sea bird floating along a few stories above the ocean below!

Enjoying the view from the wheelhouse

We were able to check out all of the navigation equipment including the radar and nautical maps.

Ship's Radar

Later in the evening dinner conversations turned to the arrival of the icebreaker at our first mooring station to attempt a recovery of the instrument from the sea floor. The research team is filled with anticipation and eager to start working later tonight! On board the ship we all will try to follow a schedule, but from what I'm learning from my new mooring technician friends you never have a real schedule up here in the Arctic. Everything is dependent upon so many variables... wind speeds, sea ice thickness, research equipment working properly... and as a result you should always be prepared to work :)

A little chilly out on the 8th deck in the evening... but breathtaking views!

After team meetings in the evening I headed off to bed, no longer being rocked to sleep by rolling waves, but now feeling like a child being pulled across the snow while riding in a sled...

In the early morning hours while I was asleep the mooring team was called out on deck for work to attempt to recover the first mooring in an area of heavy sea ice... I'll update you on the results tomorrow...

~ Polar_Gal ~

Day 2: Safety Drill and Jetlag (NABOS 2009)

[*Part of an ongoing series documenting the 2009 NABOS Arctic Expedition, approximately 1 year ago today*]

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Today: Jetlag... but NO Sea Sickness... Wahooo!!! It has been easier than expected to adjust to the rocking of the ship in the waves of the Barents Sea. As a matter of fact the rocking of the ship almost rocks you to sleep at night. It should be interesting to see how the ship moves in ice.

Most of the day was spent setting up workstations in the hanger on the back deck of the ship and organizing equipment for deployments. It's a travel day as we head north with our first destination just east of Svalbard where we will be completing our first transect.


In the late afternoon our survival suits (similar to those seen on the TV show "Deadliest Catch") and life vests were distributed. Our safety meeting was held followed by a lifeboat drill. During the drill the alarm sounded (VERY loud, which is great because no one could possibly sleep through that), then we all grabbed our life vests and survival suits and went to our assigned lifeboats. They aren't what I was expecting at all because they're actually completely enclosed, like a giant medicine pill or capsule. Each of the seats in the lifeboat has straps to secure you into a seat and cables above would lower it down to the water in the case of an emergency. Quite the upgrade if you ask me... I was picturing something out of the movie Titanic... haha... on the other hand the life vests did look similar to that era... I guess you can't go wrong with the classic design there!

~Polar_Gal~

NABOS 2009: The Plan

2009 marked the 8th year of the NABOS Arctic Research Expedition. NABOS stands for the Nansen and Amundsen Basins Observational System, which are two ocean basins located in the Arctic Ocean north of Russia and Europe.

During these research expeditions lots of neat science takes place! Scientists and technicians from world come together in Kirkines, Norway to depart on an icebreaker ship, destination: the Arctic Ocean.

The main goal of the project is to collect observations ocean water properties, chemical composition, as well as biological samples of local ecosystems and atmospheric measurements in our rapidly changing Arctic. Scientists can use these observations and compare them with previous years to study how the water masses circulate, transform, and mechanisms that could be causing these changes.