Arctic expedition summer 2021

The third ice station (station C) ended on late afternoon on Friday the 20th (with beam net acoustics and helicopter flight, and ice trap retrievals during the day). During the transit to our next stop, we held a lindy hop dance class (Level 2) in the evening and arrived late in the night at the next stop for doing CTDs the whole night and early morning. In the photo below you can see the CTD dragged out of the container to be put in the water (the tubes on the CTD collects water samples from different ocean depths). It is important to take care of the safety when working on deck - yellow helmets and warm bright-coloured dresses to keep warm and visible. The CTD stop was just a short stop, planned to last until Saturday afternoon, whereafter we were supposed to head towards our fourth longer ice station - station D.  In the early morning on Saturday 21st, I woke up again to launch the weather balloon. There were many people awake already at 5am working on their water samples, filte...

As usual, the past four days has been adventurous - and history has been made (dancing on the Norhpole to live music)! For today’s blog, I want to tell you about our two last super ice stations (station B right before the North Pole and station C, which is ongoing right now), and the big North Pole celebration. In between the ice stations we had some calm days - transit to the next stop on Tuesday, as well as transit and a few CTDs on Wednesday. The ice conditions were variable - at the North Pole we had some thicker ice and some of the planned stops on the way were cancelled due to the ice conditions, which took us also longer to transit than expected. However, at yesterdays ice station, the ice was thinner again, but with a heavy crystallised snow cover on top. The weather was variable - from cloudy to partly sunny and then back to cloudy and foggy. We also had some light snowfall the last days! Let me start with the Ice station B on the day we also reached the North Pole. We were lo...

For the last few days we have been really lucky with the weather - the sun has been shining and occasionally we got some light snowfall from the thin clouds. For each day we have had a helicopter flight - Saturday morning our group went out (without me) for flux measurements and yesterday a deep-sea camera and longlines were setup and now (Monday morning) they are out again with the helicopter to retrieve the instruments.  Yesterday during the day most of us had a relaxed day - except for the fishing people and those working with the Bean net. As we are reaching the North Pole later today (Monday), there are several small things planned for the celebration - and thus yesterday everyone were sitting in the bar, painting on small cups which was sent to 4 km depth last night - as a small souvenir from the North Pole. These cups shrank to the size of shot glasses as being influenced by the pressure in the ocean depth. We also had time for dance practise yesterday - and decided to do th...

For the last couple of foggy and cloudy days, we have been steaming northwards during the nights and staying stationary during the day - with both ice stations and helicopter stations. Right now we are steaming over the night, currently at 89.2 degrees N to reach our last stop before our second big 24-h stop (B) at the North Pole - planned arrival would be Sunday 15th early morning.  On the photo above you can see the whole plan of the cruise (pink dashed line) with the red dots as the 24-h stations. Three days ago we were located at the flower (green track shows our actual track) and right now we are even closer to the North Pole (second red dot).  The days have been pretty similar for the last three days: On Wednesday the 11th, despite the fog, there was a helicopter station for testing fishing longlines and the beam net was active for 16 hours, and some were out on the ice doing water sampling. Due to the beam net, there were no CTDs planned until late in the evening, meani...

Hello again - I am sitting in the bar at 1.15am in the night waiting for the final data from the 00 UTC weather balloon to be received. When looking out of the window one would easily think it is daytime - and it gets brighter and brighter for every day! We are currently heading north - now at 88.12 degrees and the plan is to reach the North Pole on Saturday eve! The North Pole will be our second 24-h station and we will be there the whole Sunday - I really hope we get good weather for all our CTD measurements as planned, as well as ice work, helicopter stations and that we are able to dance the North Pole Lindy Hop dance. I hope we get to practise dancing enough the coming days - I have created a short 1.5 min choreography, including some basic Lindy Hop moves and some solo jazz in the end. We are also soo lucky to have LIVE saxophone accompanied to the dance performance! I cant wait! Right now we are steaming northwards to reach our next destination for tomorrow, where we will test o...

Friday started as usual - getting up at 5 to launch the morning weather balloon. I was disappointed by the weather conditions I was facing that morning - fog! Not only did the fog prevent us from the helicopter flight, but also the fact that we were a bit behind our schedule and had to reach our first ice station at 86 N by Saturday. Therefore, unfortunately our planned helicopter flight was cancelled and we were mostly steaming the whole day. For many of us, as all CTDs were cancelled too, it ment a more relaxed day: playing cards, doings sports, resting, watch movies, sleeping... For others, it ment intensive planning and preparation for the first ice station. In our project work, we were doing water sampling from the water 8m below the ship, measuring the CO2 concentration in the water. We aim to do several water samples per day during the expedition. It was nice to have one more relaxed day - time to breath and charge yourself - The work on a research ship can be really heavy - som...