Final weeks of science on Oden - Ice station F (28-29.8)

As I am writing this posting for my blog (Sunday 5/9), it is only 6 days left for research and 9 days for transit from the ice edge to Helsingborg - this sounds so little in comparison to a total of 57 days of the expedition. Actually, expeditions like this usually last for a month (and not two as in our case), so having still 15 days left on the ship is half a month! But we can feel the end of the expedition coming closer to us - only two larger ice stations left (H, I) and a few CTD stations on the way until we are heading back to Sweden. We have had a total of 50 stations/stops, including a few hour CTD stops, 24-48h lasting ice stations and shorter SAS ice coring stations, and in the best case at the end of the expedition we will have had 60 stations. This all depends on the ice conditions - whether we can travel fast enough or if we have too much ice ridging or thicker ice that slows us down - and if the work on the ship goes as planned and of course the weather conditions for ice work. 

In this posting, I will give an overview of the work and activities that have happened in the end of August. The last week has been quite stressful with three 24-h ice stations and one SAS ice coring station, which kept everyone super busy - night and day - The blog update is therefore a bit delayed (trying to take advantage of the transit days for blog writing and data analysis and relaxing - RELAX WHEN YOU CAN - a phrase highly valued on this trip). 

Ice station F (28-29/8)

We arrived at the 24-h Station F early Saturday morning as mentioned in the last posting. The station started with the beam net - no fishes coughed by nets or longlines, unfortunately. However, until now we have caught three polar cods with surface traps! The weather was absolutely beautiful - but we were not allowed to go on ice as long as the beam was operating. The highlight of today was the carrot game - people were running around for the whole day and lot of us got killed - carroted - during the day. For most of us, a beam day means a relaxed day - except for those flying out with the helicopter to deploy longlines and traps or those operating the beam net. 

I stayed alive for the whole day and tried to carrot my victim. Unfortunately, while I was standing at the weather balloon filling station (outdoors), my murderer also knew my schedule of launching the midnight balloon and I got coldly killed while working! The only forbidden places to kill with the carrot was cabins, containers and the Bridge - in my opinion all work spaces should be forbidden! Today (Sunday one week after the begin of the game) we finally got a winner! The first photos (find the balloon flying in the upper right corner in the sky) are taken from the balloon launch from the helideck back of the ship, showing how sunny weather we had on Saturday 28/8!

The F-station continued - after the beam net, CTDs started and the ice work was scheduled for 6-12am on Sunday 29/8. For me this meant an early morning - going to bed around 3 am after the midnight balloon and then getting up for breakfast at 7.30 am to prepare for ice work. The weather changed again - the morning was snowy and foggy, which gave rise to challenges for working on ice. Followed by a weather change, the lead (open ocean) that we were interested in and spotted yesterday was now frozen and thus, this was our first project work ice station without a lead. Instead, we did ice surface flux measurements and took water samples in a frozen melt pond. The third polar cod was also captured with the surface traps in the morning. The two next photos show the foggy weather in the early morning during ice work, as well as the caught small polar cod. 

As soon as we departed from the station after lunch the sun came through the clouds and the weather turned out really nice in the afternoon. The transit period to our evening CTD was rather relaxed for most of us - if we did not have to sample, filter or measure to prepare for the next station that will be reached on Monday eve. As we arrived at the CTD station, me and John decided to do overside sampling - finally open water around the ship where we could measure the gas exchange and complement for the loss during the ice station. Furthermore, a dance class was scheduled for the evening, but many were busy planning for the next ice station, doing filtering of ice cores, sampling and measuring CTD water samples or just exhausted and in a need of rest this evening. The class was cancelled but me and Frank decided to play a bit pingpong and dance a bit - nice to have a more relaxed evening. After the CTD around 10pm, the transit to our next big ice station G started. I ended my evening with the last midnight weather balloon, as John was going to take over the midnight one from tomorrow.