Lindsay in the Arctic

Yesterday we finally began our path away from land. After breakfast, we saw the crew unwrap the massive ropes from the dock and pull them through openings in the ship’s hull, we began to feel the ship move, and we saw the ship inch away from the row of huge tires lining the dock as a buffer. Some people stood looking at the land, as it backed away from us and some walked to the front to see what was ahead of us. Some were just looking at the ship or out at the horizon, and some were taking photos of each other. There are many people onboard, including many of the students and some of the scientists, who have never been on a cruise like this before (so I’m not the only one), and it was fun to see everyone be so in awe of the ship and where it’s taking us.

I have been looking at pictures of this ship for a couple of months now, and now I’m actually on it. It actually took several hours (as you saw from the last post) to lift all the equipment and cargo onboard by crane. As they were moving the cargo onboard, I walked around with some of the scientists (being careful not to be under the crane at any point), and started to learn about some of the equipment (not to mention acronyms) that I have been hearing about.

Here is a rosette with CTD and ADCP. What does that mean? CTD stands for Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth, and ADCP stands for Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler. And what does that mean? This collection of instruments is for sampling water. By dropping this into the water, or “casting,” scientists can take samples of water at several different depths. The vertical grey tubes around the rosette (the white caging) are pressurized such they each will take in water at a given pressure (which corresponds to depth). The CTD measures the conductivity (i.e. related to the salt conduct, or salinity, of the water), temperature, and depth (i.e. the pressure) at that point. The ADCP device puts out a “sounding” and uses acoustics to measure the current of the water at that point. On this rosette, there are multiple ADCPs, in order to measure the current in different directions. This instrument allows scientists to analyze an entire “column” of water, down to extreme depths – I don’t know yet how deep this one can go, but some instruments of this kind can go miles (or more) down!

But here’s something to remember – if you’re the person collecting these samples on the surface, your fingers are going to hurt afterward, from handling the incredibly cold knobs and canisters, not to mention the water pouring out. (P.S. It’s unseasonably warm here so far, but it’s going to get a lot colder real quick!)

Slight delay in plans, as of tonight. The plan was to board the ship this morning, get it loaded with cargo throughout the day, and set off to the north in the evening. Now the plan is to set out tomorrow morning first thing. There is an unbelievable amount of equipment to get on this ship, and once it’s done, we’ll be on our way. To give you a sense of a heavy-lifting involved…

Our first breakfast “meeting” today: lots of people met for the first time, and lots of advice traded hands between the experienced and the novice. Some advice:

Don’t brush your teeth or rinse your mouth on the ship with tap water from the ship. It is desalinated water through old pipes, so it will make you not only thirsty, but sick. If we want to do a science experiment onboard, that might not be the ideal first one.

Don’t help the crew load the cargo on the boat. They don’t want help. They want to make sure they know where everything is. But get your own stuff on the boat.

Learn Russian (that’s a general directive). “Hello” is ironically one of the hardest words. It is: здравствуйте, which, if you want to phonetically pronounce it phonetically, is zdravstvutye. For all non-native Russian speakers, I dare you to try it.

The last directive of the morning – as we load the ship today, we can get on and off the ship to get snacks or extra water, but BE ON THE SHIP BEFORE IT LEAVES (AND DON’T STAND BELOW THE CRANE).

From the outside, I can tell you that our ship is huge, and has a helipad! I can’t tell you too much so far about the inside of the boat, but we are officially boarding today! It’ll be a long process, getting ourselves, our luggage, and perhaps most important, all the scientific cargo onboard! But here are some things I learned about the ship so far:

Since it’s a Russian vessel, we will be on “Moscow time” regardless of what time zone we are actually in at the time (which will be changing on a minute to minute basis practically).

The “gym” onboard has books and a ping pong table. We’ll see how effective that is!

And my online communication with you is going to depend a lot on help from the “radio guy” onboard (who only speaks Russian). So my first job once settled on the ship? Become good friends with the radio guy! (This is where knowing some Russian phrases will come in very handy…)

After 2 days of traveling, I finally made it to Kirkenes! It is like a postcard, colorful houses and hills of rocky grey outcrops and bogs, leading down steep slopes into the sea. I met some of the other scientists and students on the plane ride here (some of us recognized each other from having seen the “Who’s Who” page on this blog), and we started comparing notes on what whether we brought steel-toed boots, should we bring extra water onboard, and whether we thought we were going to get seasick. Like most times when you meet people when you’re traveling, or when you’re on some kind of mutual experience, it becomes kind of like an “instant friend” situation. So a few of us decided to take a walk, and from the water’s edge where our ship was due to arrive in the next few hours, we compared notes on our backgrounds and fields of research (we had physical oceanography, atmospheric science, and ocean technician in our little group – not to mention me, the astronomer-turned-museum-curator).

As we continued our walk uphill, around this landscape that looks like it came out of a fairy tale, we came to a break in the trees, and one of looked toward the water. “Is that our ship?” And then the rest of us: “That’s our ship!” The pure excitement reminded me of kids on Christmas morning. The ship was quite literally arriving before our eyes.

As the ship slowly moved behind the trees, we rushed up the hill to get a better view from the top, and we see…

Made it across the Atlantic! This is just the first leg of the journey to reach the ship, but as the plane accelerated toward lift-off, I felt my shoulders go down and I realized I had a big smile on my face. There has been so much planning, preparation, and anticipation, that I think I just stopped for a second to relax and think more about how super cool it is to be going on a research vessel with people trying to understand the Earth. I remember those adventure movies where you follow the adventurer along a red line on a map towards the X-marks-the-spot, and I think I spent a third of the overnight flight watching the little plane on the screen on the back of the seat in front of me make its way around the world. (The other two-thirds of the flight were sleeping, trying to learn camera equipment, and watching Ghostbusters.)

Then I got to customs in Oslo, and I actually made the customs guy smile telling him what I was here to do! (I’ve traveled a lot, and they never seem to smile or say more than necessary.) Here’s how the conversation went:

What are your plans in Norway?
Going to Kirkenes on business.
What are you doing there?
Going on a ship on a climate research expedition.
Where are you headed from there?
Just the Arctic ocean.
So, no other stops?
No, just the ocean.
Oh, ok. That’s so cool, wow, good luck!

Tomorrow I’m on my way to Kirkenes (the tippy-top of Norway, almost to Russia), to meet up with everyone, and get ready to get on the boat!

Departure day! I’m not sure all this has hit me yet, but the excitement and adrenaline are really going now!

Before I go I have to write some thank you notes – to the International Arctic Research Center for inviting me and the Museum to participate in this awesome expedition, to my colleagues at the Museum for being excited about it right along with me, my family and friends for helping in general, and my roommate for taking care of my kitties while I’m gone! This is a team operation!

So my plans today? Head off on a plane across the ocean, to get on a boat across another ocean in a couple days. Wish us well, and I’ll see you soon on the other side of the Atlantic! (But still this side of the Arctic.)

I have talked about the equipment and operations that will be taking place onboard, but haven’t been able to show what that equipment is yet. But I just received some photos earlier today from Rob Rember, a scientist on the expedition from the International Arctic Research Center, of some of the equipment being organized for the expedition. I can’t explain the details of all of it yet, but we’ll see these things in action shortly!

It’s a little deceiving, a little word like climate can have such BIG meaning. You can break it down a little more, and talk about oceanography, atmospheric science, meteorology, geology, physics, biology, technology… Then you can combine those things and get more detailed – hydrometeorology, biotechnology, geophysics… With this research expedition and summer school, scientists onboard will aim to look in even more detail in all these areas – with the goal of adding puzzle pieces to the BIG picture of climate.

What are these puzzle pieces? Based on operations and activities from this expedition, they want to:

• Quantify the structure and variability of the circulation in the upper, intermediate, and lower layers of the Eurasian and Canadian Basins

• Evaluate mechanisms by which the Atlantic Water is transformed on its pathway along the slope of the Eurasian and Canadian Basins

• Evaluate the impact of heat transport from the Atlantic Water on ice

• Investigate the strength and variability of the Fram Strait and the Barents Sea branches of the Atlantic Water

• Estimate the rate of exchange between the arctic shelves and the interior in order to clarify mechanisms of the arctic halocline formation

• Evaluate the storage and variability of heat and fresh water, particularly within the halocline of the Canada Basin

• Quantify Pacific water transport, variability, and water-mass transformation mechanisms from the Chukchi Sea shelf toward the Eurasian Basin

These are certainly some impressive puzzle pieces, and scientists will be working together after the expedition as well, to put those pieces together AND fit them into the BIG picture.