Dispatch 13: ITP Deployment
Jane Eert
September 19, 2020
Twice during the mission, we deployed Ice Tethered Profiler buoys. These buoys, designed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, are installed on an ice floe and drift with it over several years, collecting oceanographic data. Each buoy may have different instruments attached but the common backbone is a profiling CTD that is suspended on an 800m long cable which hangs from a large yellow foam float. Along with the profiler, to one of our deployments we added instruments from the University of Montana to measure near ice temperature, salinity and dissolved carbon dioxide, and at both ice stations we installed a Seasonal Ice Mass Balance Buoy which measures snow and ice thickness and temperatures at several heights, from in the air to down below the ice.
An ice station day starts well before that day, with Sarah, the ice observers and the captain looking at satellite ice imagery to see where we might be able to find a good floe for the station. A good floe is one that has survived the summer intact, has some flat areas for the buoys, and is protected from forces that might try to break it up. For our first station, we found a good floe with the ship, but we also sent Mike and Edmand out in the helicopter to look in a wider area in case there was nothing nearby.