This picture is for my boss, who wanted me to bring home some Arctic ice! 🙂 This is a piece of ice from yesterday when we went off the ship and onto the frozen Arctic Ocean, to do observations of the ice. (I still can’t believe we all got to do that.) Look at the layers! Talking with our resident ice researcher Alice Orlich, the clear layer would actually be the lower layer (I’m holding it upside down), and it is clear because it’s more dense with few air bubbles. The white layer is called snow-ice, and it is made of snow that has melted or been flooded, and then drained of water and refrozen. It is less dense than the clear layer, and all of those interlocking air pockets in the ice structure make it opaque. It was so beautiful, I had to take about 1000 pictures of it from every angle. It’ll come back to Miami with me, but probably in a different form…
Hi Lindsey, From reading your blog I can tell you have been in the Arctic for quite a while. Have you been able to adjust to the dramatic weather change from Miami to the Arctic?
Hi Rachel, I’ve been here on the ship for about two and a half weeks now (I’ve only been on the ship once in that time – was so cool to be able to stand on the ocean), and have about that time yet to go. Such an amazing experience. Actually I have always been more comfortable in colder weather than hotter weather, so as much as I love Miami, I am actually happy to be able to be in the cold for a while!
Where is the ‘like’ button? How cool is it to be able to say that you walked in the Arctic Circle and even got to cut out a piece as a souvenir? It IS beautiful! I am enjoying every single blog post even if I don’t always understand them all.
Hi Judy! Your comment made me smile again. Thanks so much for the comment, I really love to hear that you are enjoying it! I feel SOOOO lucky to be here and to be able to do such a rare thing as walking on a frozen ocean. If you are following on Twitter or Instagram, you can “like” stuff there for sure, but also, have you gotten your digital badge? (You have already earned both of the available badges by the way.) On the main page of the blog, on the right-hand side, you can click on the “digital badge” link, put in your name and email, and get a little digital badge that you can post on your Facebook page etc, so that other people can link back to the blog and enjoy it too!
Very cool! How do you plan to keep the ice in that condition?
Hi Marangelie, it broke my heart a little bit that I couldn’t keep it the way it was! But I took TONS of pictures of it, and am bringing it back to Miami in liquid form in a bottle. 🙂
Hi Lindsay, was that piece of ice part of an iceberg or was it just floating around? How did you obtain it?
Hi Shannon, that piece of ice was from the ice that I was walking on in the ocean! It was so cool. The ice was so thick (maybe 5 feet thick) that it felt like solid ground. So it came from an ice sheet in the middle of the frozen ocean. I am so excited that I can bring it home, even if it is water at this point. 🙂
Hi Lindsey, in terms of the ice, how close are you all able to get to an iceberg?
Hi Stephanie, we try to steer clear of icebergs, since they are chucks of ice with so much of the ice being under the surface. But we get VERY close to sea ice, which can be small or huge sheets (called floes) of ice. The ship can actually crack through sea ice up to 6 feet thick, but we keep icebergs at a pretty far distance. It’s hard to measure exactly when there are no landmarks to estimate the distance – although I know there are some “tricks of the trade” to do that, that I’m learning.
That’s very cool how you’re bringing the ice back to Miami. Good luck!
Thanks Helene, even though it will be in water form, it’s still a great souvenir of the Arctic!
Hello Lindsay,
What Other Souvenirs Do You Plan On Bringing Back to Miami?
Hi Nicki, I am going to bring back one of the coolest (literally and figuratively) souvenirs that I have ever brought back from anywhere I think. Water from the Arctic! But not just water. I have some water that came from a broken piece of ice that I took on the day when I got to go off the ship and walk on the icy ocean! I wish I could have brought it home as ice, but water is the next best thing. AND I also have a water bottle filled with water that was taken with the CTD instrument at 1000meters below the surface of the ocean. Pretty cool, right?
Hey Lindsay I wanted to ask you if you were considering to compare the water from the arctic to the water here in Miami. The question just came in my mind so I was wondering if you thought about it too . Thank you for answering to
Hi Helene, good question, I won’t be comparing it directly, because I don’t have access to the same tools and instruments as scientists have on the ship here. However, scientists who are studying the water here are actually learning about water all around the globe – in particular the Atlantic. As the test conditions in the water, like temperature, salinity (salt content), dissolved oxygen, currents, etc, they can actually see that some currents travel between the Atlantic and the Arctic!