This short diary is to share a couple of videos taken on the icebreaker CCGS Amundsen during our recent operations in the Labrador Sea and Arctic Ocean. You may recall that we were delayed when the ship was diverted for commercial icebreaking concerns in Hudson Bay. We were released from these duties and finally allowed to return to science operations after 11 days. I and the other lead scientists onboard calculated that a single additional days delay would have for all intents and purposes scuttled our expedition. While we did not get all the information we planned on and had wanted we did sample sufficiently to meet our objectives and get what we needed (maybe there is a song in there somewhere?). Follow below the fold for some more information and the videos.
In the end we were at sea from the time we departed Quebec City on July 10 until August 20th when the science and ship crew were helicoptered to shore in Kugluktuk. Kugluktuk is the westernmost settlement in Nunavut. The ship covered ~11,000 km during this period of time. Our cruise track (including the diversion to Hudson Bay) is shown below.
Much of the work in my lab relates to understanding the distribution and availability to organisms of trace elements (mostly metals). These metals, like iron and zinc, can be essential nutrients that marine microbes need to grow (much like we must sometimes take supplements to improve our health) or they can be potentially toxic like mercury and lead. These metals have very low concentrations in seawater and samples are easily contaminated during sampling given common use in manufacturing and industry. To minimize the probability of contaminating our samples we use special gear to collect seawater from up to 5,000 meters deep in the ocean. We also use this equipment to collect samples for Fukushima monitoring in the Arctic Ocean. The video below shows my group from the University of Victoria and scientists from the University of British Columbia preparing this equipment to go over the side of the icebreaker. We are moving our sampling bottles from our filtered air, clean sampling container (10ft blue shipping container) onto the rosette for deployment. Our group uses a GoPro Hero 4 to document our activities on such expeditions.
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We use a frame called a rosette (for obvious reasons when viewed from above) that holds 12 x 12 liter polyvinyl chloride sampling bottles and an instrument package that measures dissolved oxygen in seawater as well as the temperature, pressure and conductivity which allows us to calculate the depth of the instrument package and the salinity of seawater. The use of metal on the rosette is kept to a minimum and the PVC bottles are teflon coated inside to help avoid metal contamination. The cable that is used to lower and raise the rosette is non-metallic to avoid contaminating the water above and around the rosette as it moves through the water. The outside black sheath is polyurethane and underneath that one finds a Vectran strength sleeve. Inside one finds 4 insulated conducting wires that bring power down to the instruments and allow commands and data to travel up and down the cable.
Have you ever wondered what instruments "see" when they go over the side of the ship?
It looks something like this:
Here you see the deck crew and scientists working together to pick up the rosette using a crane and the winch and lower it carefully over the side of the ship in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. In the water the camera documents some pteropods (butterflies of the sea) which are thought to be some of the most susceptible marine organisms to ongoing ocean acidification. The make a calcium carbonate shell (aragonite) that is difficult to maintain as ocean pH drops. We normally go much deeper and close more bottles but because the GoPro housing is only rated to 30 meters we closed a single bottle and returned to the deck to remove the camera. The rosette also decided to pan around to catch the Arctic sunrise.
The final days of the research cruise were chronicled on the following blog maintained by my colleagues at UBC if you are interested in reading more about life on the ship.