Dispatch 17: Shrinky cups and BL Line prep
Ashley Arroyo (Yale University)
September 15, 2024
19:54 UTC, 74.7°N 146.72°W
Conditions:
- Foggy
- 0% sea ice cover
- 0.3°C
- Winds 24.4 knots easterly
- Sunrise: 15-Sep-2024 08:47:20 -06
- Sunset: 15-Sep-2024 22:39:16 -06
- Day length: 13h 51mn 55s
To follow a long-standing tradition on the Louis, everyone decorated styrofoam cups that would be sent to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean and shrunk to the size of a sewing thimble. The cups shrink when they are under immense pressure - in this case, the weight of the overlying 3800-meters of ocean water! Among the most popular cups included drawings of polar bears/sea ice, loved one’s names, and people’s favorite team logos. At station CB-5, the night-watch attached the bag of personalized cups to the rosette and sent them on their way to shrink!
The Louis is steaming south toward the Alaskan coast. There were rough seas for most of the day, with ~2.5-meter-high waves and winds up to 30 knots. We arrived at station CB-6 just after lunchtime today, where we completed a CTD rosette cast. The high wind speeds prevented us from completing bongo nets. Due to the rough conditions, watch-leader Paige Hagel was extremely cautious when deploying and recovering the rosette by lining up the timing considering the waves, to ensure its safety. Paige did a great job, and the rosette was winched on deck safely and secured.
After leaving station CB-6, we continued to steam south down the 150°W longitude line towards a line of coastal CTD/bongo stations known as the “BL Line”, named for its proximity to Utqiagvik (formerly known as Barrow), Alaska. We plan to arrive at the first BL Line station, BL-8 around lunchtime tomorrow. These stations are clustered close to one another - they range from 3-11 nautical miles apart, compared to the stations in the central Canada Basin which are typically ~60 nautical miles apart! For this reason, we have much less time than normal in between stations for water sampling and filtering. To prepare for the busy BL line, today consisted of training various science members on tasks outside of their normal duties- including water sampling/filtering, labeling, and analyzing geochemical samples- all hands on deck!
