 |
 |
Click on
image to enlarge. |
|
|
Mooring
“C”. The anchor and buoyant floats
are the first to be lowered into
the ocean. |
 |
 |
| Left: McLane
Moored Profiler attached to the mooring wire
and ready to measure ocean currents and seawater
temperature and salinity from 50 to 2000 meters
depth with a resolution of approximately 1
meter. Right: The final operations of the
mooring deployment. Seconds later the top
flotation sphere was released and submerged.
With the mooring anchor at the bottom, the
sphere is at 46-meter depth, keeping the mooring
wire taut and allowing the profiler to travel
up and down along the wire while collecting
oceanic data. |
 |
 |
| Barren snow-covered
icefloe (left) and caravan for buoy deployment
(right). |
 |
 |
| Drilling
a 10” hole through the 240 cm thick icefloe
using an ice auger can be a laborious and
time consuming activity. |
 |
 |
| Being hoisted
back to the ship (left). Landed on an ice
floe to check its thickness during the last
sea ice reconnaissance flight (left to right:
Scott Payment, Kiyoshi Hatakeyama, and Adrian
Godin) (right). |
 |
 |
| Seascape
changes rapidly from wide areas of open water
to 100% ice concentration conditions. |
Cruise - 2003 Dispatches
Calendar
Dispatch 10 - August 24-27,
2003
By Andrey Proshutinsky
Beaufort Gyre Freshwater Observing System is
in place
The Beaufort Gyre Freshwater Observing System has
been successfully established.
On August 24th, we prepared two surface buoys and
the third mooring for deployment. Our second buoy
was deployed in the afternoon of August 25th. Later
that evening, we found an appropriate ice floe for
the third buoy installation, but could not begin
the deployment due to fog and low visibility.
The following day, August 26th, was the busiest
of our expedition. At 6:00 a.m. we installed our
second buoy. From 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. we completed
a sea ice reconnaissance flight on the helicopter
to search for multiyear thick ice and prepared another
buoy. From 3 to 7 p.m. we deployed our third mooring
system, and from 8 to 10 PM we installed the fourth
(and last) surface buoy.
The three moorings and four buoys will acquire data
in the Beaufort Gyre for one year, and the moorings
will be recovered or re-deployed in summer/fall
of 2004.
All WHOI deployments are completed, but our expedition
is not finished. Our colleagues from IOS and JAMSTEC
will continue to measure water properties along
several sections of the Beaufort Gyre. This information
will allow us to assess the fresh water content
in the Beaufort Sea in August 2003 and compare it
with climatological data.
 Previous
Dispatch Next
Dispatch 
Back
to Calendar
|
|
|
|
