I'm writing this a day early because tomorrow will be pretty crazy and shipboard email connections shut down tonight. We're taking a slightly round about way to Nome via the Siberian coast. Kate (mammals) and Declan (birds) missed their opportunity to survey here because we were close to the coast over night the last time. Once we picked up a few hours, they were very happy to hear that we'd be headed back this way on our way "home" to Nome. We'll be arriving in Nome on the 16th in the early morning and will be at the dock by noon. Jackie and I have already started packing, labeling and inventorying equipment, gear, and samples, and we've been rinsing everything in fresh water. Once they turn on the fresh water hose on deck, we'll rinse 2.5 weeks of mud off our mustang suits. They'...
With a busy day ahead of us today, I wrote this journal last night just before our last station.
Dr. Stanislav Denisenko, Vladimir Skvortsov, Mikhail Zhukov and Aleksey Merkulyev are all from the Zoological Institute, St. Petersburg, and Stanislav and Vladimir also work with the State Polar Academy in St. Petersburg where Mikhail is a student. Together they make up the Russian benthic team. Even though they usually take their own sediment samples at different stations, they are always there to help when Jackie, Monika and I are doing grabs and cores. When they do their own sampling, they take three grabs at each station and sieve the mud to get the benthic invertebrates. Although we do the same, their methods are a bit different. While we sieve through a one-millimeter screen, their...
We'll reach the last station that Jackie will do early tomorrow morning, and then we'll really start packing. Today we inventoried and sealed up the buckets with all of the samples from the van Veen grabs. That's a small start compared to all we'll have to do once the boxes come out of the hold and everyone gets to work packing, sorting, and cleaning up. Today's journal covers those on board who are not only working with a team but who are also collecting samples and data for their own individual projects the adding to their already packed workloads.
Monika was really excited when she found this large Sipunculid
Monika Kedra works with me on Jackie's team, and she gets very excited each time we find a sipunculid worm in one of our grabs. Monika takes all of the organisms from our...
We've now made it back to the stations we missed due to the weather and, starting yesterday around 3 PM, we did an afternoon station, another at 2:30 this morning, and one more right after breakfast. We'll have another right after dinner, and then three more to wrap things up. There may be a few other short stations in between. The original cruise plan called for these stations to be done right after we started, but the storm changed all of that.
Most of the time when we go on deck to work, the Russian team of geologists is there as well. Their team is actually made up of four smaller teams. I've already told you about the work of Alexander Savvichev in the journal from 9 September. The others are Alexander Bosin and Alexander Kolesnik from the Pacific Oceanological Institute (...
With the exception of short stops for geology and benthic grabs for the Russian teams, we've been transiting for two days. While some on board have had a break there are two scientists who are rarely seen when the ship is moving during daylight hours. That's because they spend the majority of that time on the bridge watching for birds (Declan Troy) and marine mammals (Kate Stafford).
Declan is originally from Toronto, but he now lives in Anchorage where he does his own research and goes out on research cruises when he finds one heading for an interesting area. He had heard of the RUSALCA program and wanted to join the cruise but was told it was full. When someone had to drop out, Declan jumped at the opportunity because he was particularly interested in observing birds along the...
It was easy to tell when we got out of the ice during the night. While in the ice, it's often tough to tell if the ship is even moving, and now that we're back in open water, we're rolling once again. As we head back to some of the stations that were cancelled at the beginning of the cruise, we'll only make a few short stops for grabs for the Russian benthic team and possibly the geology team. Jackie and others are anxious to go back to the earlier stations because they're areas of high productivity – "hot spots."
There are a few people on board who collect water from the CTD every time it comes on deck. One of those is Becky Garley, originally from Somerset, England, and now a research specialist at the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Sciences. She is a one-person team onboard,...
When we woke this morning, we were heading north to reach the 1500 meter depth needed to put in a mooring and to do an otter trawl in the deeper water. Unfortunately, the ship can't travel as fast when surrounded by ice floes, and they also had to change direction at times to move around the heavier ice. When the decision was made to go north, we were 210 mile away, and 24 hours later, we were 220 miles away. As a result, chief scientist Terry Whitledge made the decision to turn around. We left our area of calm water, blue skies and polar bears to head south.
Terry Whitledge, chief scientist for both legs of the '04 and `09 cruises and our current Leg 2 of the 2012 RUSALCA cruise, is a chemical/biological oceanographer currently working as the Director of the Institute for Marine...
Catherine (Kitty) Mecklenburg is a research associate with the Department of Ichthyology, California Academy of Sciences. She was on both previous RUSALCA cruises ('04 and '09) and has returned to continue her work on the identification and distribution of fishes that live on (benthic) or near the bottom (demersal). With her on this cruise is Arve Lynghammer, a Ph.D. student at the University of Tromsø, Norway. When the RUSALCA program started, few fishery or ichthyological research investigations had been carried out in this region of dramatic climate change and the composition of the fish fauna in the region was largely unknown. This was particularly true for the Russian waters of the study area. The RUSALCA mission has been to generate and disseminate essential information on the...
Last night's station was tough as we found mostly rocks in our grabs, and it took a very long time to sieve the mud and then sort the rocks to see if there was anything on them to preserve. "Empty" rocks were tossed overboard. We had another station this morning and found lots of mud but, once again, not much living on the bottom. One more station after lunch brought almost everyone on deck, both those who were working and those taking pictures. We're surrounded by glassy blue water dotted with ice flows, and the sun is shining. And, best of all, we spotted a polar bear, and everyone rushed to the bow to check it out. What a change from the conditions of the first week!
Someone who is always on deck just before we are is Alexander Savvichev, a scientist/teacher from the Institute of...
As we were wrapping up our station last night it began to snow, and as we moved NW toward Wrangel Island during the night, we were once again rocking and rolling; some found sleep difficult. However, when we woke up for our station at 7 AM, we found that the wind and waves had died down. What a treat to be able to walk without hanging on and, for me, to be able to sit in a chair with my computer on my lap and work. For the past week, it's been nearly impossible with the ship's movement pushing my chair, my computer, and me across the room.
To make an already good day better, Jackie got her first cores of the cruise and the sun came out! Not only did Jackie get her cores, but the fish teams were able to trawl and the entire biology station "worked." Of course, that didn't last long...
I first went out with Dr. Jackie Grebmeier in 2002 and this makes my 8th time on a research cruise with her. When I first traveled with Jackie she was at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, but she is now at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory (CBL), University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES). The web page where you can read about all of Jackie´s work and the work of her husband, Dr. Lee Cooper, is http://arctic.cbl.umces.edu. Jackie´s work involves benthic organisms (those that live on the bottom), and she´s been doing work in the Arctic every year since 1984. RUSALCA is a unique program because of its long-term nature (2004-2012), but this isn´t the first time Jackie has been part of a joint US/Russian research cruise. She first started her international...
Soon after leaving Nome, we encountered rough weather. Even when the skies cleared a bit, the wind and waves were often high enough to cancel stations. As we moved out of the Bering Strait and into the Chukchi Sea, we hit the northern edge of a large low pressure area that caused the weather to deteriorate even more. Throughout the day yesterday everyone pretty much stayed put, after tying down all gear and equipment, as the ship moved north in an effort to reach calmer seas and more northern stations. It's always a rule on board – keep one hand for yourself and one for the ship, but it's easy to forget when the seas are calm and often impossible when on deck working. Yesterday, no one was on deck and everyone held on inside when moving about. Even sleeping was tough; those with...
Once again, with everyone suited up and ready to go at 4:30 AM, we had to cancel our work at the biology station. The CTD went in successfully over the stern, but it was obvious when the the zooplankton nets were launched over the side, that the roll of the ship, coupled with the dark nighttime conditions, was too much for any additional work. So – back to sleep!
The zooplankton team on board, Dr. Russ Hopcroft, UAF, and Dr. Ksenia Kosobokova, from the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, and graduate students Elizaveta Ershova and Imme Rutzen work in the lab adjacent to ours. Russ and Ksenia are interested in zooplankton, animals that drift in the water. Although many think of zooplankton as small, even microscopic, they can be as large as a jellyfish...
I'm going to start with a quick update from yesterday. After cancelling the previous station due to weather, the ship moved to the next station with the hope that the waves and winds would die down. The quiet day gave people a chance to catch up on sleep, and everyone was ready for the station that began around 9 PM. Once again, the weather seemed to pick up as the CTD came on board and the zooplankton nets went into the water. As Jackie tried to move her heavy van Veen grab into place, with the assistance of two others, all three plus the grab went sliding across the deck. At that point, everyone tied down gear, and we abandoned the station. It's important to occupy as many stations as possible while out, but no one wants to compromise safety.
While waiting for this morning's...
After completing the lengthy first full station, everyone was ready for the next full station, scheduled to begin around noon yesterday. This one began with a productivity cast with the CTD. Primary productivity refers to the primary production of phytoplankton, the algae that photosynthesize and thus are the main producers in a food chain. During the "prod cast," Mike Kong, University of Alaska, and Jung-Woo Park and Jang Han Lee, from Korea, will collect water from the six different depths representing 100 % to 1 % light penetration. They´ll then add stable isotope tracers and incubate their samples on deck in bottles with screens that filter light to simulate various light depths. After an incubation period of three-five hours, they´ll filter the water, freeze the samples, and...
It's safe to say that the weather conditions weren't ideal for our first full biological station. A cold rain/sleet prevailed for the entire 9 hours that people were on deck. In addition, it was in the dark, and it was the first station, the one where all the kinks get worked out. Fortunately, Arctic scientists are accustomed not only to tough weather but also to working in tight conditions with lots of other people. A full biological station incudes a CTD cast, zooplankton collection, benthic work (mud grabs and cores) as well as trawls for bottom dwelling organisms) and fish trawls. We completed our on deck work around 2:45 AM and Monica and I turned in. Jackie was, of course, still up. On my way to our lab this morning at 9AM I saw the members of the fish team who were still...
When research ships are at sea, it’s never easy to pinpoint exact times such as port arrival and departure, times when the ship will arrive at a station, or how long it will stay at a station. A station is a specific location where the ship stops so the science teams on board can do their sampling. Although the Khromov was scheduled to arrive at the dock at 4 PM on Monday the 27th, we could see it there by noon. After several hours of waiting for the ship to clear customs, most of the science team moved on board and some even loaded equipment. On Tuesday, Jackie, Monica Kedra, Jackie’s postdoctoral student, and I moved several boxes of equipment and gear on board the ship and waited to hear what time we would leave the dock. With the possibility of bad weather, departure times ranged from...
Dr. Jackie Grebmeier, the scientist with whom I'll be working, and I arrived at approximately the same time in Anchorage last night, and as we headed to our hotel Jackie told me stories of her science cruise on the US Coast Guard Cutter Healy. She and her gear had been flown by helicopter off of the Healy in Barrow, just in time to catch her flight to Anchorage where we met. Compared to Jackie's schedule of the past few days, mine looks like a walk in the park. We checked into our room, and she was asleep in less than10 minutes. Even as we traveled to Nome today, she was working to wrap up from the Healy cruise and, once the Khromov arrives tomorrow, she'll start again.
Nome, Alaska, latitude 640 :30'N, longitude 1660:35'W, is an interesting city on the tip of the Seward Peninsula,...
Traveling from Burlington, VT to Nome, Alaska isn't exactly coast-to-coast, but it's close. The actual distance is 3,577.5 miles as the crow flies. However, Burlington is a small airport, and most trips out of Burlington are via an indirect route. After starting at 9:45 this morning, I arrived in Newark, NJ at 11:00. It's now 2 PM and I'm at the gate where my next flight leaves for Seattle, WA at 3:45. That flight will take nearly 6 hours; I'll have 2.5-hour layover in Seattle, and then I'll board a flight to Anchorage, Alaska, arriving at midnight. If I add in the extra check in time at the Burlington airport and the time change (Anchorage is on Alaska Daylight Time, four hours behind VT), I will have been awake and traveling for 22 hours. Tomorrow morning I'll fly to Nome,...
Although his will be my eighth trip to the Arctic on board a science research cruise, it still takes time to get organized and to pack. Because we'll be sailing into Russian waters, the first order of business for this cruise was to obtain a Russian visa, a multi step process, involving an application for an invitation to apply, the receipt of the official invitation, an application for the visa, mailing my passport, and three trips to the Russian consulate in Washington, DC. Fortunately, Dr. Jackie Grebmeier, the researcher with whom I'll be traveling, is at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Maryland, and she and Monika Kedra, the woman who will be working with us on the cruise, were able to travel to DC and complete the process. As of two days ago, we all have our visas and our...
