In some ways, today is the real first day of the upcoming oceanographic research cruise on the R/V Armstrong. This is the day that all the equipment for the cruise is being loaded into a shipping container that will be trucked to Portland, Maine and loaded onto a container vessel headed for Iceland. The Armstrong […]
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It has been four years since my last oceanographic research cruise. It was July 2014 when I joined fellow scientists and graduate students in Iceland to board the Research Vessel Knorr to kick off an international expedition to put in place a huge coast-to-coast array of instruments across the North Atlantic Ocean. This array of […]
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The ever-growing demand for oil and gas to fuel our cars, heat and air-condition our homes, transport ourselves overseas and power our iPhones has motivated oil companies to search for these fossil fuels almost everywhere on Earth, even under the ocean floor. This includes the Gulf of Mexico, where rich reserves have been pumped from […]
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A couple of weeks ago, I was invited on an “ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) tour” of a brand new oceanographic research vessel, the R/V Sikuliaq. Commissioned by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the Sikuliaq will be operated by the University of Alaska. It’s ice-strengthened hull will allow it to work in the Arctic […]
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Sorry for the delay in blog posts. Ever since we started heading for the Bight Fracture Zone, I’ve been busy with the onboard work, and it’s been quasi rough. That is all behind us now, as we are safely tied up to the dock in Reykjavik, Iceland. Cruise kn221-02 is officially over, and my colleagues […]
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Well, it finally happened. The unusually fine weather we had for nearly three weeks came to an end last night as a moderately strong low pressure system swept by us. The winds picked up, as did the seas, and the shampoo bottle — my highly sophisticated barometer -tumbled over as the Knorr pitched and rolled […]
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Not the greatest day today. I had been hoping to deploy another of my sound source moorings, but at the last minute it didn’t work out. Since we added this side trip toward Greenland, I had an opportunity to re-position a sound source mooring that was actually scheduled to be set during the next OSNAP […]
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Late last night, we finished our second transect along our part of the OSNAP line. At the cruise outset, we transited from west to east (from off the coast of Greenland to Scotland) laying down about 20 deep-sea moorings. Then we turned right around and re-traced our steps, this time using the CTD package to […]
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I finally climbed into my bunk this morning at 5 AM, after 20 hours without sleep. There was a break in the RAFOS float deployments—a chance to get a little rest. I dozed off right away, inspite of being rather jazzed up by all the stress of choosing the right float release positions. But just […]
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We’ve just started the busiest portion of this cruise for the RAFOS float program. Today we have released the first 2 of the 10 deep floats that will sink to near the sea floor and drift with the currents there for the next two years. It is very tricky to find the best positions for […]
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About Amy Bower
Amy Bower is a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She has been chasing ocean currents in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans for over 25 years, primarily by releasing acoustically tracked floats far below the sea surface. Legally blind since her mid-20s, Amy uses adaptive technology to continue her research. Her latest project, Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic, kicks off this summer with a series of research cruises to Iceland.