On Saturday, we reached the eastern-most point of this expedition, just a few 10s of miles off the western coast of Scotland. We could almost hear the bagpipes ! Our Scottish colleagues, led by OSNAP principal investigator Stuart Cunningham,  deployed the last of the moorings–a trawl-resistant frame with an acoustic Doppler current profiler, or ADCP, inside. This frame is like a protected cave for the ADCP. the top face has sloping sides so that when a fishing trawl runs into it, the trawl should just roll up and over the frame. The instrument stays in place and the fishers get their nets back intact. Everyone is happy. The ADCP meanwhile sends acoustic pings upward every three minutes, and from the Doppler (frequency) shift of the return echos, the speed and direction of the currents at all depths from the sea bottom (at 400 meters) up to the sea surface can be determined.  The data are stored inside the instrument for a year, after which Stuart and his team will retrieve it and replace it with a new instrument that will monitor the currents for the second year.

This talk about data storage reminds me that what we are doing on this cruise is making an investment for a better understanding of the long-term climate of our one and only planet, Earth. Read More→

Before the instruments are put on the moorings and deployed, their accuracy is checked by deploying them (attached to red straps) at the same time as the CTD and rosette. This gives three different measurements of the same water, and enables mooring instrument calibration. The water collected in the Niskin bottles attached to the rosette are the ‘gold standard’, to which all other instruments are corrected.

We are slowly getting closer to the Scottish coast, the eastern end of our “line”. We have just 2 or 3 more moorings to deploy before we turn back west and re-trace our steps, or maybe more accurately, our wake. The air and water temperatures are warmer here – almost 60F! A heat wave! It will be sort of sad when we turn around and head back toward the colder waters to the west. As we move westward, we will be lowering the CTD package down to the sea floor at about 60 locations between Scotland and Greenland. With this instrument, which is sort of a “package” of several sensors, we will measure the temperature, salinity and other water properties from sea surface to sea bottom. We use the water properties to help us understand better where the water is coming from and (perhaps) how climate changes are affecting the ocean.

Fly by of Nick Hancock on Rockall (Hasselwood Rock), located on Rockall Plateau, 200 miles from land. He sleeps in the small yellow pod tied to the rock near the top; food stores are in the blue containers above that. He has just broken the record of longest solo stay on the rock, and 42 days.

Early this morning, we had our “fly by” of Nick Hancock, the fellow who has set up camp on Rockall, a rock that sticks up by itself about 200 miles from the Scottish coast. He is trying to set a new record for the longest stay on this rock (yes, as amazing as it sounds, others have done it too!) to raise money for war veterans in the UK.  Read More→

I took the weekend off from blogging, but that doesn’t mean that science stopped on Saturday or Sunday. Our work continues almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Research vessels like the R/V Knorr are so expensive to operate that once we are at our work site, we need to keep moving along constantly. To accomplish this, we work in shifts. Most of the ship’s crew work for 4 hours, and then get 8 hours off, then work 4 hours again, etc. The scientists keep a different schedule–each shift spends 8 hours working and then has 16 hours off. That means someone is always sleeping, so it’s “library quiet” down below around the cabins.

So where are we anyway? Read More→

For the past several days, we have been making our way over an underwater mountain chain called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, or MAR for short. This ridge, which snakes its way southward from Iceland through the North and South Atlantic, results from the spreading of two tectonic plates and the bubbling up of molten rock to form new sea floor. Of course this is happening at a snail’s pace—the two plates are separating at a rate of only 2.5 centimeters per year on average. Read More→

I’m well aware that there is tremendous variation in the civil rights of people with disabilities from country to country. But I was very surprised to learn yesterday that there is a restriction in the U.K. that would probably prevent me from participating in an oceanographic research cruise on some U.K. research vessels. Read More→

This is our fifth day at sea. The weather is still cool and foggy, but the winds have dropped to almost nothing. Because high winds lead to high seas, we are often most interested in the wind forecast and not so much in the temperature or rain forecasts. Tomorrow we might be near the edge of a low pressure system that will pass from Greenland to Iceland, but conditions are not expected to be too rough.

Mooring deployments are proceeding on schedule. Right now we are at the site we call IC3, where our Dutch colleagues are putting in a current meter and microcat mooring. Like most of the moorings being deployed on this cruise, the instruments attached to IC3 will measure temperature, salinity and the speed and direction of currents from near the sea surface to the sea floor.

Life on board the R/V Knorr is pretty comfortable. The galley department is putting out some fantastic meals like grilled halibut, scallops, beef brisket and roasted duck, with plenty of vegetables and salads for sides. And then there are the scrumptious desserts, like homemade brownies and vanilla ice cream for lunch today. Meals are served three times a day cafeteria-style. Hot dishes are served up on a plate at the galley window. Then one fetches silverware, a napkin and a drink and finds a seat at one of the several tables. There are rotating seats at each table that are fixed to the floor (called a deck on a ship) so they can’t slide around. When it is at all rough, the galley crew put down sticky mats on the tables so plates don’t go a-sliding onto the floor. The table has a small lip around the edge to help prevent the same thing.

While the food is fantabulous, the eating experience is something I sort of dread. Read More→

Pete Liarakos, bosun, guides the sound source over the aft deck as part of the mooring deployment. The mooring is deployed top to bottom, anchor last. This means that the sound source appears upside-down in this picture, but will be oriented 180 degrees from this in the water once the anchor is deployed. This source is located on the western flank of the Reykjanes Ridge, and will insonify the Irminger Basin at a frequency that the floats are programmed to receive.

This morning we woke up early to get ready for the first sound source mooring deployment on this cruise leg. As described in earlier posts, the sound sources will be used to track subsurface floats drifting with the deepest currents in the North Atlantic. Each sound source will transmit an 80-second long acoustic tone once every day. the floats are programmed to listen for those signals and record when it hears them. Knowing when the signal was transmitted, when the float heard it and the speed of sound in water, we can estimate the distance from each sound source to the float. With at least two sound sources, we are able to determine the position of the float every day. Read More→

Today I was recalling a topic that I discussed years ago with a professional personal coach. At the time, I was preparing to go on another research cruise, this time on an unfamiliar research vessel (from Greece) and with many students and scientists I had not met previously. I was quite anxious about the trip. My vision had deteriorated since the last time I had gone to sea. Through discussions with the coach, I discovered that I was not nervous about performing the responsibilities of the chief scientist—I had enough experience and confidence to be pretty sure I was alright on that front. Read More→