Arctic Swimmers

Hi all,
I'm including some more visual aids to go along with yesterday's entry about the bears and the science...

Mama bear and her cubs

photo: Kelly Young
And papa bear in the water

photo: Kelly Young

And here I am in my shipping container with my pumps

photo: Rick Krishfield

This may be the last post for a bit. Our internet satellite is setting in the southern sky.

DRG

Polar Bears

Just caught sight of 2 adult and 2 cub polar bears as we steamed by an ice flow in the Beaufort Sea. Their seal-meat-yellow color is easy to spot against the whites, blues, and greys of the last week as we've steamed through patchy ice and open water, sun and fog. Polar bear count at 11.

The science on board goes well. We've just finished a crazy couple of days at Mooring Station A, eh?... We collected water and pumped for particles 10,000 feet below the surface and recovered and redeployed a "bottom-tethered mooring" with 3 sediment traps (6ft bright yellow ice cream cones) and an instrument that will move 6000 ft meters up and down the mooring wire collecting information on currents and chemistry throughout the coming year. We're interested in how nutrient cycles, currents, and ocean layers would change with less ice cover.

After Mooring Station "A" we made popcorn and watched "A Life Aquatic," because that's what oceanographers do.

Hope all are well.

DRG

A blog without the "log" is lame

A good friend recently emailed me to say that my blog was lame.
Well, that may be, but be careful what you say; I'm making lots of new friends up here:


After my grooming, the ship's helicopter picked us up and brought us to our new home...


I lucked into a sweet room overlooking the bow.


After plowing through 3ft of "fast" ice in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, we steamed through some "burgie bits" and floating sea ice...


...and now we are in open water near Barrow, Alaska collecting samples from the mother ship and the zodiac:


From here we break north towards our goal of 84 degrees N.

More to come.

Hope this finds everyone doing well.

DRG

July 11, 2008

I ship out for the arctic ocean on July 16.

Come on back for pictures and updates, or, as my good friend Innes might say, "up-DA-tehs."

For a more professional and objective take on our journey, check out www.whoi.edu/beaufortgyre/

DRG