ITP 100 Deployment
Deployment operations
ITP 100 was the third and final ITP deployed during JOIS 2017. Due to weather and ice conditions, the helicopter was not used for ice floe reconnaissance, but instead a floe was selected visually from the bridge. Unfortunately, the ice was so thin that it began breaking up before the thickness survey could be conducted, so that ITP was deployed over the side of the ship in open water using the ship's bow A-frame.
More information and photos on the deployment operations are also available at: https://archives.whoi.edu/beaufortgyre/www.whoi.edu/page.do@pid=160056.html
Recovery operations
On September 10, 2018 and attempt was made to locate and recover ITP 100, but the last location from the system was 10 hours old and although the ship headed to the last longitude the buoy was not spotted despite searching with the helicopter in clear sunny weather. Later positions indicate that the system had probably drifted west.
The cruise track took the ship back to the vicinity of ITP 100 on September 29, 2018 where the surface package and portion of the tether were recovered in an early morning operation in ice covered waters. The surface package location reporting was remotely updated to provide locations every 5 minutes and transmitted every 15 minutes so that the buoy could be spotted directly ahead with the ship’s search light. The unit was sitting at a slight angle on ~0.25 m thick floe and was subsequently broken free of the ice by the ship and a manbasket was lowered with a crew member to snag the package. It was clear from the tension on the wire that the mooring anchor and profiler were missing, so only the surface package and some of the tether were retrieved.
More information and photos on the recovery operations are also available at: https://archives.whoi.edu/beaufortgyre/www.whoi.edu/page.do@pid=163336.html
