Update

Well I am at the Oslo airport now.  I am early for my flight, of course, being me, and not having much else to do this morning. I thought I would use the time to update you on some of the interesting things I feel I have forgotten to mention over the trip (there is only a couple).

 

One that you may have guessed right at the beginning of my trip was the importane of guns on Svalbard.  If you go out and about, whether alone or with friends outside of town or go camping, you must take a gun.  People are attacked by bears each year.  In Svalbard, there is no hunting of polar bears but if it is necessary to save lives, a bear will be killed.  However, it is expected that the persons will do everything reasonable to prevent this from happening, such as leaving the area, and waiting until there is no other option.  Earlier this year a camper was dragged from his tent by a bear, his friend shot and killed the bear saving his life.  This was investigated and they were found to have done the right thing.  However, just recently a researcher shot a bear from a bit of a distance.  He claims it was a warning shot and did not even know he had hit the bear.  However, he did not report it, but later a dead polar bear was found in the region where he was working.  He came forward but was fined, both for shooting it and for not reporting it.  Perhaps if he had reported it, he may not have been shot. Anyways, long story short, guns on Svalbard are part of everyday life.  When we operated in the field, there was at least one gun on the ice with ice, loaded and ready to use.  However we always tried using flare guns and when possible left the ice for the safety of the zodiacs and/or the ship. 

Oh and Norwegian for polar bear is isbjorn (ice bear).  We saw a couple this trip (Fram Strait) and lots on the first cruise.  We also saw some seal remains and the amount of blood is amazing, you could see the drag marks across several floes and then the unfortunate corpse.

 

Other things, such as the fact that Svalbard has a whooping 56km of roads was neat, yes I went on pretty much all of them.  There are different rules regarding backcountry use for people who live on Svalbard, and everyone else, like me or even people from Norway.  These limits include where you can go, stay, and if you can use snowmobiles (called scooters) offroad.

 

Otherwise the thing about Norway that I cannot get past is the cost, cost of living is quite high (but then so are wages).

 

Hmm, I thought I had more to write about but guess not.  I am just excited to get home, excited to see Nicole and Jax and to talk to you all again.

 

Cheers and talk soon

 

 

26, day 1

Well, It is Sunday, Sept 19th.

Last night we had a cruise dinner on the ship with everyone and then went into town.  We had unloaded the boat in the afternoon and so we went into Longyear and went to the pub, then another pub, and finally to bed.  It was a lot of fun, and special in the sense that it isn't every year I have a birthday with people I have only met 5 weeks ago.That said, I did miss Nicole and Jax alot, and my family too.  Hopefully I'll get to see most of you soon, and then see many of my friends as well.

Today I am in sitting in a cafe in Longyearbyen, having breakfast (well lunch) and using the wireless internet to catch up on emails.  Looks like I have some work to do tonight, maybe, but that is okay too.

On the whole I am really happy with the whole cruise experience.  I hope that I have collected some useful data, and that it helps my recognition/publications record which is lacking right now.
I also have met some great scientists, both early career and well established. I have learned a lot and am motivated to finish my master's thesis and I think start a PhD. While not every day of the cruise seemed great while on the cruise, looking back it was very good.

Well the rest of the plan for the next few days is to do some work, but also to relax before going back to the real world.  Longyear is a beautiful place with a stunning view.  I leave here on Tuesday afternoon and end up in Oslo Tuesday night.  On Wednesday I fly back to Edmonton and to my beautiful, loving, wonderful wife.

In Longyearbyen

Hello All,

 

Well today is September 18, yes my birthday, and today we are in Longyearbyen getting off the boat (a pretty good present)

Cruise dinner tonight on the boat and then maybe a few drinks at the pub.

 

More soon updates sooon, still unloading Lance

 

Cheers

 

Justin

Land Ho!

Hello All,

Well the water is calm, very calm actually considering we are in open water.
Last night I needed to get some work done, and until 8pm the water was rough
enough for me that I could only work in 10 minutes spurts followed by 30
minutes of looking outside at the horizon. However, by 8pm the water calmed
down and I could work. The water has stayed calm since then so I had a
fantastic nights sleep.

We are currently at about 78o 55' N and 7o 30' East. We can see the western
coast of Svalbard already. We still have some time until we are there
though, as the oceanographers are doing CTD measurements every 30'
longitude.

Today my plan is go get some work done and organize things a bit. We could
be going to shore on Saturday night or on Sunday night (is still unclear),
so things need to be ready.

Well that is it for now

Cheers

Justin

Update

Hey All, sorry for the lack of posts lately, been busy.

Well we are finished with sea ice work as of yesterday morning. We had a
final station that went really fast and then spent time cleaning and packing
most things up, including the EM bird. That evening we were completely out
of the ice and in to a bit of storm with rough seas. Needless to say I took
some sea sickness pills. It was interesting trying to fall asleep. The
front of the boat moves up and down enough that you gravity changes (ie you
feel heavy with the boat is lifting and very light when the boat drops down
the wave). Kinda cool but also makes me sick.

Today I have spent the majority of the day sleeping and trying not to be
sick. The oceanographers are hard at work doing CTD measurements every
degree and soon every half degree. Yesterday I found a styrofoam (or
polystyrol) cup (THANKS SEBASTIAN!!!) and had decorated it and had the
oceanographers send it down for me. It went to 2490m depth, pretty freaking
cool.

Well other than that just trying to finish up some figures regarding the
Cryosat flights we've made.

I hope you are all doing well. I return to Longyearbyen either Saturday or
Sunday night (is a bit unclear right now), but then I should have some
regular email access.

Cheers

Justin

Fog, Fog, Fog

Well it is now September 13th,

We were at 2o W and 79o 55' N yesterday and we are back to 5o W, 79o 50' N
today. We went east to do CTD measurements (Conductivity, Temperature,
Pressure (from which you can calculate salinity which is that saltiness of
the water)), and to buy time for the mooring technician to get the mooring
ready for deployment today.

We have had a lot of fog this trip, which is limiting both our flying and
when we can fly, how far we can go from the boat. The fog moves in very
quickly here and the pilots, justifiably do not want to get caught in the
fog.

Yesterday during the CTD, one of the oceanographers sent down a styrofoam
cup with the CTD system to 2400m depth. Because there is air in the
structure of the styrofoam, and because of the high pressure at 2400m, the
stryfoam cups come back out shrunk. One was given to the pilot and a few
more are for a charity she is working with, kinda cool. If I'd have thought
of this, I would have brouth styrofoam cups along.

We will be in the ice for a couple more days at least and hopefully we can
get some more flights in. It is quite beautiful when the sun does come out
for a little bit. There is new ice forming now as it is cool during the
nights and not that warm during the days. There are so many different types
of ice in the water that they form some nice patterns. For example, sea ice
sometimes forms in finger ice, which looks like interlocked fingers, there
is also nilas, which is very thin sheets of ice which only form when the
water is very still.

Otherwise, I miss Nicole and Jax, but the trip is almost over. I haven't
been taking many pictures because, well, I'm not sure. My camera isn't
great, time for a DSLR.

I hope you are all doing well

Justin

Update

Hey All,

Well I can't remember when I wrote last so I may repeat some information and
may not. Since the Cryosat flight on the 8th we went north to 79degrees and
did some work there (CTDs for the oceanographers and a two flights with the
bird and some ice stations). Today we did another underflight of the
Cryosat satellite track. This time we had better flying conditions and I
was quite happy with the result. However as soon as we finished our second
path along the flight track we had snow come in quickly and we had to stop
measuring and go back to the ship.

I'm hoping for good flying and ice conditions tomorrow so that we can do a
couple flights and get some overview. The problem is sometimes we have only
so/so flying conditions which limits the distance we can go away from the
ship and other days we have very little ice which also limits how far we can
go from the ship. The pilots justifiably do not like flying over large
stretches of open water at 100 feet (which means the EM bird is at 45 feet),
or when the weather is poor.

Other than that I have just spent the evening catching up on data management
and some processing.
We had an issue with the EM bird yesterday, two separate connectors broke
resulting in some trouble shooting but all is good now.

Well that is it for now more info soon.

Cheers

Justin

Update on Flight

Well we had a flight yesterday. The weather was looking fine in the morning
and then got a bit worse as it started to snow. However we had an opening
and after a test flight the pilot and mechanic determined we could fly the
bird so we did. We flew the Cryosat line (not exactly on it but very
close). We also had an ice station yesterday in the region. All in all I
feel like we have a pretty good validation set for that particular Cryosat
track.

Today we hope to do more flights and another ice station. The hope is also
that we can fill the hot tub today but we will have to see. The goal now
for the oceanographers is to deploy moorings and they need open water for
that. Today there is very little open water where we are (8W).

Otherwise I am tired, i think from working, and from the noise this ship
always makes (it is a straight diesel set up, not diesel electric) and is
quite loud. Oh well.

Well I hope everyone is doing well. I miss you Nicole and I'll see you in
13 days.

Justin

Big Day at 7W, 78.55N

Well as I said last time, we have flown over the fast ice, and near
Greenland yesterday.
Later today we will attempt to fly along a line that a satellite called
Cryosat-2 is flying over.
Cryosat is a satellite radar altimeter, which means that it measures it's
height above earths surface using radar. It is a new generation of
satellites with higher spatial resolution than old radar altimeters.
Cryosat should be cable of producing sea ice thickness, glacial thickness,
and ice sheet thickness estimates from the relative height these objects
stick up above water (or land in some cases). Since ice floats, some of it
is usually (and in theory always) above water, called its freeboard.

Cryosat needs validation data to make sure that the data it produces is
accurate. That is why we will fly along its measurement line and as close
to the same time as we can.This is a bit of tricky operation in the sense
that we need to fly a good transect (ie right along the line), and we need
to be there nearly the same time so that the measurements are of the same
ice (as the ice moves with the water and wind).

Otherwise things are alright, had a bit of a relaxing day yesterday which
was good for me I think.
Still enjoying the cruise despite missing Nicole and Jax immensely.

Well I will update when we have finished our flight.

Justin

Update

Well I can't remember when I wrote last but thought I would write a quick
note. This is now the fourth day of the cruise. In the previous 3 days we
have done 3 helicopter flights and 3 ice stations. Now we are somewhat on
standby. Can still do helicopter flights but the priority is the
oceanographers CTD measurements/mooring redeployment.

Yesterday we had a long flight over the fast ice near Greenland. The fast
ice is ice that is frozen to the coast, and here it extends for many
kilometers. Howevever, the fast ice does break up every now and again and
this year is one of those years. It was interesting to fly over as there
were several ice types and lots of big tabular ice bergs.

Well I should go, might be flying again in a few minutes

Cheers

Justin

Fram Strait

Well it is 2:23am on Sept 5. I am still up because I had to process some
data from today and do a 3am ice observation for someone.

Today we encountered a lot of ice, much more than we expected. Most of the
ice is in small floes (10-100m) with small water gaps between. We are
seeing a mixture of first year ice, which is ice that has not yet survived a
summer and multi year ice (which has survived at least one summer). Multi
year ice is thicker (usually) because it has had two or more winters to
grow.

Today was a busy day for the science team. We got in place for the mooring,
recovered the mooring, had an ice station from 1930 to 2330 and did a
helicopter flight from 2200 to 2250, oh and two CTD measurements.

A mooring is a host of oceanographic instruments (current direction/speed,
conductivity, pressure, temperature (and thus salinity) and other sensors
that are attached to a cable and some floatation devices and are anchored to
the bottom of the ocean using weights. The one we recovered today was
sitting in 2000m of water.

On ice stations we perform a variety of measurements including drilling for
ice thickness, taking snow depth, density, and other snow properties. We
use an EM31 which is a ground version of the EM bird we fly under the
helicopter (same exact principle of measurement), and we take ice cores.
We also have a couple people on this trip interested in borehole jack
studies and ridge dynamics. A borehole jack is a device that tests the
horizontal strength of the ice by using a hydraulic jack to push out on the
walls of a borehole made in the ice.
The ridge dynamics guys will be looking to take cores/drill through ice
ridges, which is a difficult and of painful task (painful in terms of sore
muscles and you often lose/wreck equipment).

Well that is all for me for today. I will do my ice observation in 30
minutes and then go to sleep until 0730. Need to fix a few things before
flying tomorrow and help the ice station team prepare in case they can go
out on the ice.

Justin

FramStrait 2010

Well the next cruise leg has begun. We left Longyearbyen on Sept 3rd at
about noon. Had a safety orientation again and some cruise meetings.

We are at 78.75N and 2.75W and sailing towards Greenland. We have already
encountered ice, which is good news for us. Unfortunately it is cool and
foggy so I don't know if we'll be flying.

Otherwise the passage over to here was, for me, rough, I felt pretty ill
most of the evening and night but my new room is much quieter than my old
one (and I'm not sharing with anyone). Luckily I still have lots of motion
sickness pills and patches and so I can just medicate myself and try to
operate like that when sick (though usually I just sleep). Still haven't
thrown up though.

Otherwise, hoping for more bird flights this trip as well. But also for
some time to work on other things.

Well I miss Nicole and Jax alot, but am also really glad for this
opportunity. I am getting to know many more sea ice scientists, practice my
skills and get more experience with the HEM bird.
I hope the pictures I posted have given you a taste of the beauty of the
ice.

There will be more pictures when I return again.

Justin

Pics

Okay,

I am in Longyearbyen for the next few hours, and the cafe has free internet....so here come pictures.
Otherwise things are good.  Hoping for lots of flight on the next cruise and for calm seas (we'll see i guess).  New crew, new people, could be good, could be bad. 
Now off to the store for some junk food and some beverages.

Cheers,

Justin

The EM BIRD (for Cory....no its more like a torpedo we hang below the helicopter). Laser scanner pod up front (EM coils, L1/L2 GPS, computer inside and Laser altimeter just behind the tail.

Ny-Alesund

Well the ICE2010 cruise is almost over. We are currently in Ny-Alesund, a
small research town on Svalbard. It used to be a mining town but is now a
research town, home to over 18 research institutions.

Last night we had a formal dinner and a little party with a photo contest
and some extra pictures.
We arrive in Longyearbyen tomorrow morning before breakfast for unloading
and reloading. I have to pack up my stuff tonight and be read to move into
a different cabin tomorrow.

Otherwise not alot of news. It doesn't look like there is much ice in Fram
Strait but we will see.
I miss Nicole and Jax alot.

Group photo right away

Justin