Dispatch 17: Furthest West     Print

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Zoe Sandwith

August 18, 2013

After recovering the first TUMSAT mooring yesterday, we continued to steam west to the Chukchi Abyssal Plain to pick up the second today. These moorings were deployed last year in collaboration with the WHOI group, and it will be interesting to see how they complement those in the Canada Basin.

This is the furthest west we will travel - 77N 170W. The ice was generally thin and quite open all the way along, which meant that we arrived 4 hours ahead of schedule. The mooring recovery proceeded smoothly and we were on our way by lunchtime.

Since this was the westernmost station, we released another batch of drift bottles as we were leaving. Now we’ve got over 200 miles of transit time to our next stations in the northern region of the Canada Basin. The ice will cover will be heavier than on our way out, so it will take us about a day of steaming to get back - time for catching up on data and analysis, and for some a little bit of sleep. We will also continue to deploy XCTDs as we transit.