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Packed for the Ice Pack

February 24, 2017

Twin Otter planes are packed full of buoys, cables, and other equipment for flights from Banks Island north of Canada onto the Arctic Ocean ice pack. The planes carry 2,000 pounds, and the pilot, co-pilot, mechanic, and WHOI engineers John Kemp and Peter Koski accounted for half of that. They carried out a WHOI engineering team’s experiment led by Lee Freitag to develop a new acoustic communications system for use under sea ice. The system takes advantage of a naturally occurring sound channel within the Arctic Ocean that allows autonomous vehicles to use sound signals to communicate and navigate over long distances under the ice. (Photo courtesy of Peter Koski, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)