14 August 2013 When one adventure ends, a new one begins!

Join the Polar research team as we use technology to join Dr. Carin Ashjian this summer as she continues her research in the Arctic! I will be posting Dr. Ashjians journal details of this summer's research expeditions. We first catch up with her onboard the icebreaker U.S.C.G.C. Healy and then will follow her onboard the R/V Anika Marie where she and her team members will continue their Barrow-based research studying the oceanographic conditions of the bowhead whale habitat.

It’s the night before we leave. The last two days have been a frenzy of activity. Most people stopped collecting samples and data yesterday morning. Once they had processed the samples from their last station, they began the tedious process of washing equipment and packing everything back up into crates, moving the crates to the hold, and cleaning the labs.

The zooplankton and hydrography groups (my group and Tom Weingartner from UAF and his student) had another long day of sampling planned. We were going to run a transect to the NE off of the Bank to survey the seafloor for a colleague who is going to deploy moorings here later this summer. A perfect opportunity to do a high resolution oceanographic survey! So off we went, doing stations every 3 nautical miles along the ~40 mile run. The zooplankton group was looking for the elusive krill that we had seen only in Barrow Canyon during this trip. We were hoping to find them in the deeper water off of the northern end of the shelf. The pace was rapid. No sooner had we processed the net samples than it was almost time to go out and deploy the nets again. At this spacing, we were doing a net tow each hour, between the transit time and the time for the CTDA research tool that is submerged in the water to measure conductivity (salinity), temperature, and depth. cast and the time for our net tow. As we went further offshore, the net tows took longer because we were sampling to greater depths. Because we were the only group using the wire off of the stern, we were able to leave our nets attached between stations, saving time and also the effort of lugging the weights around the deck. But still, it was a very long day. And we did find some krill, off of the shelf break in water of ~200-300 m depth.

Our day yesterday started in thick fog but as we moved offshore, the sun broke through and we had a lovely day. In the evening, the fog kept rolling in and lifting, like a curtain. Great waves of roiling gray came streaming across the horizon. Surprisingly, there was still ice out there and it provided a stark contrast to the steel gray fog

Cleaning and packing started right after the stations were finished. By the time I got up this morning, Phil, Heather, and Stephen had gotten a good start on our stuff. We all worked through the day and now, the crates are packed, the cruise report is written and submitted, and the data are backed up. Groups of people are playing cards, others are getting an early start to sleep because of our early start. We are anchored in Barrow, just off of NARL (the old, no longer Naval Arctic Research Lab) where tomorrow my next project will begin. I can see the buildings of NARL, Browerville, and Barrow. The barge that will take us to shore is beached at NARL, so close. Tomorrow this adventure ends and a new one will begin.

*PolarTREC Journal written by research scientist Dr. Carin Ashjian. Journal and photos posted by Springs School PolarTREC Educator Lisa Seff.