Dispatch 8: Mooring D Deployed
Jennifer Kosty (Yale University)
September 26, 2025
16:00 local, 73.58◦N, 139.44◦W
Conditions:
- Cloudy, flurries
- 0% sea ice cover
- -2.5◦C
- Sunrise: 26-Sept-2025 09:18
- Sunset: 26-Sept-2025 20:58
- Day length: 11 hours, 40 minutes
The night watch wrapped up a nearly 3700 m CTD rosette cast at CB-19 around 2 am this morning. We then steamed back to Mooring D’s drop location and began the deployment process at first light (around 8 am). 6 hours later, Mooring D was successfully deployed!
We started by assembling the base, which includes a 2500 lb anchor, a bottom pressure recorder, and two acoustic releases, which will be used to recover Mooring D next year. The base pieces were connected to approximately 1500 m of wire and lowered into the ocean by winchman Daryl Tobin and the rest of the deck crew. We then attached another 2000 m of wire along with two McClane Moored Profilers, which will climb up and down the wire all year collecting profiles of temperature, salinity, and horizontal velocity. Finally, we attached a suite of instruments to the top sphere which will sit around 30 m deep, collecting measurements of ice thickness, ice speed, ocean currents, and more! The top sphere was then attached to the mooring wire and lowered over the side of the deck.
We waited for Captain Briggs and second officer Dominique Rennie to give the final confirmation that we were in position before Jeff O’Brien officially released Mooring D from the ship. Overall, the recovery and redeployment of Mooring D was a huge success, and we are excited to repeat this process in a couple of weeks with Moorings B and A!
After a couple of days in open water, tonight we will return to the sea ice which is remaining in relatively high concentration on the eastern side of the Canada Basin. We anticipate reaching our next science stations (CB-50 and CB-51), in the early morning and afternoon tomorrow, respectively. Tonight, we celebrate a successful first week of science aboard the Louis with a ship-wide happy hour, complete with non-alcoholic beers, mocktails, and live music!






