EQUIPMENT ARRIVES!

After some repairs, testing, shipping, and then waiting, the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) that I will be using here in Longyearbyen arrived.  There were 8 boxes in total for all the auxiliary equipment (computers, power boxes, underwater acoustic navigation system etc.).  Jason happened to be here delivering my lunch, a luxury that he seems happy to afford, so he was recruited to help me lift them up to the office.  In following posts, I will get into the operations etc. but for now the next steps are to put in the specialized battery packs, power up the vehicle, do a bench test and then program the first mission.  That will all happen next week and I am excited to being close to starting.

The REMUS Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) arrives in Lonyearbyen!

In discussions with the faculty at UNIS, we have focused our interests a bit and are interested in examining the transition into the polar night and finding out the activity during the polar night.  UNIS will be establishing a new mooring (chain of instruments that are vertically distributed in the water column) station about 2 kilometers offshore of the airport.  They want me to repeatedly deploy the AUV around this area to describe the spatial variability in the oceanography and biological activity while the mooring provides the high resolution time series of the same variables.  That is the big picture plan for now.

Other activity this week included an invitation to a meeting in Oslo with the Ministry of Research and Higher Education and a meeting in Stavanger on current capabilities with AUVs for application in Norway. Unfortunately they are at the same time at the beginning of September, so I will be joining some colleagues and students from NTNU in Trondheim for the AUV meeting.  Another Fulbright grantee, Cara Magnaboasco, arrived this week.  She will be a student at UNIS for the following year, so I hope to interact with her and facilitate her projects if possible.

The temperature in Lonyearbyen was the highest in the past few years, with 4 days of blue skies!!

The highlight this week was the weather with 4 days of clear blues skies and temperatures between 10 and near 17 degrees C.  It was the warmest day in at least two years, and most of the town took advantage to get outside.  Three relatively long hikes included one with a colleague from NTNU, Geir Johnsen, up to Sukkertoppen (Sugar Mountain), which provided a great view of Longyearbyen.  On the hike we also located the dinosaur bone that I had found 4 years earlier.  It was too big to carry out then, but I packed it out this time.  We have contacted the governor’s office to see if they are interested in the find. 

Lichen threads over lichen covered rocks.

Blooming flowers on the plateau above Longyearbyen.

One of the many species of mushroom in Svalbard. For scale, this is 1 cm in diameter.

Fossil clam found in the canyon right outside of Longyearbyen.

Remnants of a coal mining conveyer system in Lonyearbyen.

Reflections off the drinking supply lake in Adventdalen.

Arctic tern chick recently fledged.  This bird will mature in the next month and fly all the way to Antarctica!

Longyearbyen in the midnight sun (runner up picture of the week).

UNIS from on top of Sukkertoppen.

The second hike at Deltaneset was further east in Isfjorden and accessed by boat.  It is the location where the giant Predator X dinosaurs have been found.  The family spent the day examining the site and looking for the best marine fossils (ammonites, mussels, clams, squid pens etc.) which were everywhere!  It was good to get out onto the water as well to see the area from a different perspective.  We also saw a number of  bird species, with Anders’ and Jason’s favorite being the puffins, which were struggling to get off the water after gorging themselves with juvenile polar cod and crustaceans (i.e. krill).

Anders, Nicole and Jason arrive at Deltaneset.

Anders and Jason on the way to the fossil field.

Marine fossils revealed after spliting open a rock.

On the way back to Longyearbyen.

Nicole loving the adventure.

The third hike was another trip to the Longyearbreen (Longyear glacier) with the entire family and Geir. It was amazing weather and we all had a great time picking fossils (this time terrestrial plants), enjoying the scenery, and drinking newly released 2,000 year old water from the center of the glacier.  On the way back, we also saw our first polar fox!

Family hike on Longyearbreen (Longyear glacier) with Longyearbyen in the background.

Jason getting some recently melted 2,000 year old water out of the glacier melt stream. Check out Geir Johnsen and Anders (left) in T-shirts!

We also took in a movie last week and this week enjoyed the final installment of Harry Potter in 3D. Other happenings this week included a trip to the kids’ school to meet their teachers. We had a very nice experience and the boys are looking forward to starting school on Monday. We also found out that they have a bike trip planned for next Wednesday, so we went to the sports store and bought a couple of bikes for the boys. They have spent the last two days getting used to the frames and gears and are ready to use them as regular transportation to and from school. The town population has swelled this past week with all the families returning to start school, and the lines in the super market are a bit longer. I will follow up on the first week of school next week.

Picture of the week: Longyearbreen (Longyear glacier).