Yesterday, we were “on station” (aka, stopped in one location) to deploy a mooring. If you don’t remember, or for new readers, a mooring is an AMAZING operation in which they use this huge red apparatus (in the photo below) with a system of pulleys and gears to lower instruments into the ocean. And when I say lower, I mean LOWER. All the way to the bottom. In this case, we were in a mid-range depth, at about 1,300meters. By the end of the mooring deployment, which takes a few hours, there is an anchor on the seafloor, and a vertical cable that reaches up to about 50meters of the surface. Along the cable are instruments that will measure salinity (salt content), temperature, and current, until the mooring is retrieved on the next expedition. In the photo you can see a technician sitting to the right (for scale), and a yellow buoyancy sphere that will end up being near the top of the cable to help keep it vertical in the water. You can also see in the photo that the cable is stretched far to the right. It was so windy and the water was sooooo rocky – which you can feel even more when the ship is stopped. I felt a little “off,” but I’m just thankful that I didn’t get officially seasick. But no one walked in a straight line all day – if polar bears are a danger when you’re off-board, doors and walls are a danger onboard! At one point I walked into a room, everyone was quietly working, and I proceeded to walk right into a chair which then loudly scooted across the floor. Only me.
Hey my name is Vilanea Mccoy and I’m from law enforcement officers memorial high school. I would like to know how important communication is when dealing with this type of heavy machinery. Thank you
Hi Vilanea, you hit the nail on the head with what your question suggests. Communication is so important. Everyone needs to know how to operate the machinery, what the procedures are, and what to do if something goes wrong. If someone is not on the same page with everyone else, heavy machinery with lots of cables and parts, especially when you’re in the middle of the ocean, can be super dangerous.
Hello Lindsay, my name is Luis Hurtado and I’m a student from Law Enforcement Officers’ Memorial. You mentioned that you almost got seasick, is there specific nutrition that you have to intake in order to counter this?
Dear Luis, yes, those huge 12 foot waves made me feel a little off. I technically didn’t get seasick thank goodness, but I did take some medicine for motion sickness, just in case. What really helps actually when you get seasick is to keep moving. Your instinct might be to sit still, but if you keep moving, it helps.
Hi Lindsay my name is Anthony and I wanted to see what was lowest temperature that it ever got to while you have been there.
Hi Anthony, the lowest temperature is not as low as you might think, because it’s summer here now. On the other hand, if you’ve never felt really cold temperatures, I can tell you that it’s still really cold! The coldest was about -7°C (19°F). But that doesn’t account for wind, which makes it feel lots colder. In winter, it can get to -50°C (at the extreme)!
I see that when a mooring is occurring you have to be safe because danger is everywhere ! Out of curiosity, the the mooring morning didn’t take place how complicated would it be to gather all the information that the mororing already covers ?
Hi Jeyny, you mean how could we get the same data if we couldn’t do the mooring for some reason? Sometimes we can’t get to the location where we intend to do a mooring (if the ice is too thick for us to get through, for example), and in that case, we just have to move on to the next location, or try to figure out an alternative route. We have other instruments, like buoys, that continually give us information about the ocean through instruments on cables that go down into the water, but they don’t go anywhere near the bottom of the ocean. And we have an instrument called a CTD rosette that also gives us data nearly to the bottom of the ocean, but we don’t leave it in the water to continually take measurements. The moorings are what go all the way to the bottom, and that stay in place for a long time (maybe years), so they are really important!
Hello Lindsay, my name is Danyl Hernandez and I’m a student from Law Enforcement Officers’ Memorial. i wanted to know what was the deepest depth that the mooring system has gone?
Hi Danyl, our deepest mooring has gone almost all the way to the bottom of the deepest parts of the ocean. It was 3800meters, almost 2.5 miles down!
Hi this is NIcolas Perez from Law Enforcement Officers’ Memorial. Does the ice ever affect any of the instrument that you guys use??
Hi Nicolas, actually, the ice affects the biggest and most important instrument we have, which is the ship! Sometimes if the ice is too thick, the ship can’t continue through it. (But the ship can make it through ice 6feet thick!) That affects our route, which then affects where we can deploy some of our other instruments into the water (which is planned in advance). So we’re here to study the ice, but the ice affects how we study it!