WINTER MOORING IS IN

The sun setting against the snow dusted mountains.

Two adult and three juvenile Barnacle Geese (Branta leucopsis) forage for their final meals before migrating south this week.

The week started like most weeks now, with Norwegian class.  Anders had the flu, so Nicole stayed home.  I went to UNIS to follow up on a few things and also found out the ship was coming back Wednesday and not Tuesday.  Schedules are always fluid here so having alternative plans is always a good thing.  It had been foggy all day on Sunday, so I used the afternoon to take a tour with my parents around the area.  They really enjoyed it and we saw a number of birds species and some Svalbard reindeer.  I was surprised to see any given that there has been an outbreak of rabies in the immediate area.  We also saw the pink-footed goose and barnacle geese.  The goose species were in the lowest part of the valley feeding on the remaining vegetation.  Later on this week (Thursday and Friday) there was an exodus of these species south, with the characteristic “V” shaped pattern and significant chatter in the air.  The day wrapped up with my parents treating us to dinner at Kroa.  We had not been out to dinner since arriving, so this was a treat for all of us. 

A Svalbard Reindeer calf sporting newly emergent and bloody antlers.

Tuesday morning Nicole and I had a great breakfast with my parents at the Radisson Hotel overlooking the fjord. I think I went up to the trough 3 times! It was off to UNIS for a few hours to get ready for the ship the following day and then took the opportunity of good weather in the afternoon to hike up the glacier with my dad. He did pretty well and enjoyed the fossil hunting he had read about on the blog posts before his arrival. We also finally saw some Svalbard rock ptarmigans on the trip. The adults were already sporting their winter plumage. We had my parents over for dinner that night and played a few rounds of the word game Bananas.

My dad foraging on the glacial morane .

Rocks here are like works of art.

 

Svalbard Rock Ptarmigans (Lagopus muta; adult above).

Picture of the week: Sunrise

Coast guard vessle and Helmar Hanssen

I stood up early (that is the way it is said here) on Wednesday and after catching a great sunrise, walked down to UNIS grabbed a survival suit and the items requested from the research ship Helmar Hanssen, newly named after the ice pilot of Amundsen’s polar voyages.  I waited at the docks until a zodiac was launched.  It was low tide, so the zodiac’s propeller hit the bottom about 300m offshore.  I waded to the boat with the survival suit on, jumped in and motored to the ship.  The crane hoisted us up in the boat onto the deck.  After greeting a few people, I went to the electronics room to get the equipment ready for the mooring.  After moving to the location chosen because of the data from the REMUS, we deployed the mooring.

Getting the sediment trap ready to add to the mooring line already in the water on the left.

The floats are the final part of the mooring and will sit at 25 meters until retrieved.

 

Depiction of mooring in Aventfjorden.
CTD measures temperature, salinity,
while the sediment trap measures the
amount and type of particles raining out
of the water column. The ADCP is an
acoustic device used to measure
zooplankton.  The acoustic release at
the bottom is triggered at the end of the
experiment, sending the entire mooring
to the surface for retrieval.

The mooring, as described in earlier posts, is comprised of a weighted line with a set of instruments on it.  This mooring will measure variables (temperature, salinity, zooplankton, chlorophyll, and sedimentation) over the winter season.  For the electronic sensors, they will take measurements every 20 minutes and for the sediment trap once a week.  As the mooring is fixed in one position it will collect a data at the particular depths to see the changes over time.  We are examining the influence of North Atlantic Water (NAW) in the fjord system.  The strength of the NAW (a remnant of the Gulf Stream) modulates the timing and amount of ice in the local area.  It also brings a number of unique species into the Arctic.  This system is being closely monitored as it is a large scale feature that is an integrated climate signal of the Atlantic.  Colleagues at UNIS have been deploying these moorings around Svalbard for the past 6 years and are beginning to see trends beyond the seasonal signals.  The influence of the NAW brings significant amounts of heat to the system and is a major reason that the local fjords have not frozen over in recent years.  The specific purpose of the mooring we put out in Adventfjorden is to establish whether it is representative of conditions in the center of Isfjorden.    The other reason is that we needed a station easy to get to from Longyearbyen in the winter as we are going to be sampling that position for water samples and with the REMUS. 
The deployment went well and after we cut the line sending it to the bottom, we headed for the docks.  There were about 40 people on board and a number of them woke up after I had arrived, so they were wondering who this new person on the ship was.  I was able to get off the ship at the fuel docks and walk back to UNIS.  I met my parents for lunch in the UNIS cantina before they headed for the airport.  It was great to have them here for the 5 days.  In the afternoon, I worked with the PR person at UNIS on the helicopter story, which was released on Friday (click here forthe link). 

Side scan sonar image of the Bell 212 helicopter at 70 meters depth in Adventfjorden.  The portion on the left is the main section. On impact the tail broke off.  You can see in the upper right inset a picture from the crash report the tail section laying on the sea ice to the right of the hole that the helicopter sunk.  In the sonar image the placement is exactly the same. The rotor blade also came off and stuck into the sediment like a knife.  This is clear in the sonar image as it casts a long shadow on the seafloor (the REMUS was imaging from the right). 

Thursday was another solid work day (papers, emails, data).  I received the bioluminescence instrument and started to find the power source, cables, and software to run the instrument.  Bioluminescence is a chemical reaction that occurs in a number of marine organisms.  Previous work that we did here last year, showed that bioluminescence was present in the polar night.  I have also been able to show that you can separate the signal and distinguish different groups of animals using the intensity of their flashes.  We are going to be deploying the instrument off the docks until the middle of winter to show the transition from light to dark. Usually, there is a biological clock that turns bioluminescence on in the absence of light, but no one has documented this over this time in Polar Regions.  We are also going to use it to look at difference groups of plankton around the mooring.  I wrapped Thursday up with a couple hours of basketball.  The team is not only getting better, it is getting bigger.  We now have 17 players when we started with 11. 

Sunset behind the power plant.

Norwegian lessons started Friday and the rest of the day was at UNIS finishing the final edits on two papers we hope to submit, contributing to a proposal and continued work on the bioluminescence instrument.  The day was significantly colder with light flurries… it has started!  Next week,  I have visitors from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s Applied Underwater Robotics Laboratory in Trondheim to discuss charting Norway’s course in robotic applications in the Arctic.  I spent part of the day working on the logistics to get conference rooms, coffee, etc. organized.  Walked up the hill after the busy week and was pretty happy with the accomplishments. After pizza and the new Transformers movie (set it up so we can view movies on the computer through the TV), we all slept well.

A snow flurry constrasts the rugged geometry of a mountain on the other side of Isfjorden.

The ray of the setting sun lights up the fresh snow.

Today was a day to sleep in a bit and recharge the batteries.  Anders went to a secret agent birthday party next door and we cleaned the house, did laundry, I did the bills, and later went grocery shopping.  Nicole is feeling a bit under the weather, so it was good nothing was planned.  Jason is spending the night at a friend’s house blissful with their addiction to a newly found computer game, Minecraft.  Anders, Nicole and I played a game of Settlers of Catan (Anders won) and it has been nice just interacting with him tonight.  Today and tonight is our first major snowstorm of the season and we are warm and cozy in our apartment.