Dispatch 29: Last Push for Science     Print

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Zoe Sandwith

August 30, 2013

It’s over! The science days are finished! We wrapped up our sampling with a high intensity transect from the basin up onto the Mackenzie Shelf. The bathymetry shallows quickly in the area, so we have stations spaced closely together. This means that we arrive at the next station before we’re finished sampling the last one, and have to put the rosette straight back in the water as soon as the sampling is wrapped up. Days like these pass very quickly, but it felt very good at the end of the day to bring the rosette back on deck for the last time this year. Smiles all around.

Here’s a little summary of what we’ve put in the bag:

• 55 rosette casts for general chemistry totaling ~1170 Niskins fired and sampled
• 16 rosette casts for gas exchange tracers
• 20 rosette casts sampling for DNA
• 90 net tows for zooplankton
• 44 weather balloons launched
• 121 XCTDs
• 4 ITP deployments
• 5 mooring recoveries and 3 deployments
• 1 O-buoy recovery and deployment
• 16 ice cores
• 4 EM ice thickness surveys
• 1 melt pond and snow albedo study

We also travelled 4750 km, spanning from 70^o to 79^o N, and 113^o to 170^o W, burning more than 1 million litres of fuel in the process.

Now that we’ve finished the science operations it’s packing time!