Dispatch 2: Embarked     Print

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David Jones and Andrey Proshutinsky

September 6-7, 2017

Weather: Cloudy, Breezy

Location: Admudsen Sound

Yesterday was mostly a day of travel. First was a two-hour flight from Yellowknife to the small village of Cambridge Bay. The flight was mostly folks on the JOIS cruise. From there we were air-lifted by helicopter from the small airport to the ship. Then it was all about the common experience of retrieving bags, finding your berth, unpacking, orientation, dinner (ribs yum!), more unpacking, and for the newbies, getting familiar with the labyrinth of decks, stairwells and hallways. My task was to wander around aimlessly for a while and then try to find my way back to my berth. “Kinda worked, kinda didn't.”

We steamed towards Kugluktuk overnight expecting a delivery of fresh produce. Turns out the fog was too thick to prevent that delivery from happening and given that the ship costs about $90K a day, waiting an extra day for a possible delivery would quickly put the science research behind the eight ball.

The next morning we aad a morning meet-and-greet session with the ship’s Captain and then “got after it,” whatever "it" was. Next we began unpacking instruments (or bits of instruments in some cases), setting up sampling equipment, reviewing sampling protocols, interfacing computers, making lists, and checking off items one at a time.

Geographically, we are not yet in the cold waters of the Canada Basin of the Arctic Ocean and in fact, the current water temperature is around 9 Celsius (48F). We were moving toward it all night and at this time are very close to the northern town of Kugluktuk, Canada. You can read about Kugluktuk in many of the previous years’ dispatches and you can compare photos taken in 2003 and in more recent years to understand how things change at decadal time scale here.

Today we introduce our “ARMD Triple-J” team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. ARMD stands for Andrey Proshutinsky, Rick Krishfield, Marshall Swartz and Dan Torres. Triple-J stands for Josh Mitchel, Jeff O’Brien, and Jim Rider. All have work for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for many years and have been frequent visitors to the Arctic participating in numerous marine and airborne expeditions. In this team, Andrey Proshutinsky is the project Principal Investigator (PI) together with Rick Krishfield, Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI), who is the Beaufort Gyre cruises veteran and has participated on all of the expeditions to this region beginning in 2003 (you read all about previous dispatches at the WHOI website if you are interested to understand how the program has developed and improved both scientifically and logistically). Marshall Swartz and Dan Torres are responsible for the observations of ocean turbulence using different instruments which will be discussed in more detail when we start our work in the Beaufort Gyre region. Josh, Jeff and Jim will work with recovery and deployments of mooring ice-tethered profilers and other instruments. All team members are very busy now with preparations for these operations.