ITP 113 Deployment
ITP-V 113 was deployed during the first ice station of the USCGC Healy cruise HLY1902. The Healy had arrived the evening before at a flow of roughly a couple hundred meter diameter and an estimated thickness of just under a meter. A large 24'' diameter hole was drilled through the 1.2 m icefloe to accommodate the current meter sting of this ITP. After lowering the conducting cable, an ITP crawl stopper followed by two SeaBird microcats were installed just underneath the thick rubber hose below the surface buoy. After the buoy holding the ITP surface unit was placed over the hole, communications with the profiler, the microcats, and the Iridium modem completed the installation in the early afternoon. Together with the ITP, various crews installed an AOFB, a WHOI acoustic modem buoy, a WIMBO, a DOT buoy, as well as a small SVP drifter. While returning tools and empty boxes to the ship, a mournful cry from the partially frozen ship's whistle called all on-ice personnel back to the ship: a polar bear had been spotted a mile off and was closing in. The bear was soon chased off, however, by an overly enthusiastic drone operator, and fortunately did not "play" with any of the scientific instruments.
