Nearing the End

Hello Everyone,

We will be back in Nuuk on the morning of September 25th.  That means, just a little over 30 hours and we'll be back on land.  We are pushing our way Northeast along the Northern Labrador Sea East Line and we are currently completing our last operation at NLSE_05, just 100 nm away from the Greenland Coast.

Almost done!  Just one more night.

 For our oceanographers, this is the section plot for the NLSW line:

Section plot for the NLSW line.

1001 Page Views!!

Hi Everyone,

We've had 1001 page views on this blog (and they are not all mine).  Thanks for tuning in!  We are back at the CTD stuff today after a very exciting night of harrowing rescues at sea. I'm going to bed now, but I'll try to make another post before the end of the day.

Andrew

All Safe

Hello Everyone,

We've been called off the rescue. All crew of the Atlantic Charger are now safe and on board a vessel in the area (not sure which one yet).  I will provide an update when more information is filtered down directly from the Captain or Chief Scientist at a later date.

Andrew

Rescue at Sea.

Hello Everyone,

The Atlantis was notified at ~ 1630 UTC that there was a fishing crew in distress to our southwest (The Atlantic Charger) and we were diverting our course to rendezvous with their location as soon as possible.  We had confirmation from the Atlantis Captain that all 9 men are safe and unharmed. We've been informed that there are other ships in the area but it is quite possible that the Atlantis could be the first ship on the scene to extract the crew from their life raft. Our estimates put us less than 1.5 hours away.  We are readying warm clothing, qualified personelle and a contingency plan has been created by the crew for extraction.

We'll keep you posted on developments as they become available.

Atlantic Charger (File photo courtesy of CBC).

Halfway to Nowhere!

Time: 07:38 UTC
Latitude: 63° 6.035' N
Longitude: 60° 15.437' W
Conditions: Yeeee Haaaa (2-3 m waves, 30 kts)

Hi Everyone,

We just finished up a night on the Northern Labrador Sea Line.  I put on my Go Pro helmet cam tonight so I'm hoping I got some good imagery of the CTD deployment/recovery and water sampling. I'll post it when I can but large videos could take a while.

Anyway, we are nearing station NLSW_11 and we should be there in ~50 minutes.  Hopefully by then I'll be snug as a bug in my cabin.  Well, off to a breakfast for champions.

Cruise track as of ~0738 UTC on September 21, 2015

Northern Lights

Hello Everyone,

We had an amazing light show tonight.  It is notoriously difficult to get good photos of the Northern Lights because they are relatively faint and because the high exposure required often makes for blurry picture.  I tried a 30 second exposure in "nigh mode" tonight with the AZMP GoPro Silver 4 and it did a pretty good job of it. I did not get good shots at the height of the light show, but the ones I did get turned out considering the ship is a moving platform.  I've posted some below:

All images captured on the night of September 20th, ~60-70 nautical miles east of Baffin Island.

Time: 2337 UTC
Latitude: 65° 39.393' N
Longitude: 58° 27.426' W
Conditions: Rock'n and Roll'n (2-3 m seas and 21 kt winds)

At the moment we are on a southeast heading steaming at a steady 11 kts.  We hope to arrive on the western most portion of  the Northern Labrador Sea Line by ~11 am on the 20th of September.  Four days of intense 24 hour CTD operations will see us arrive in Nuuk on the 25th of September.  I'm looking forward to a few more days of deck operations. I've learned a great deal from the crew and scientists aboard the ship. I'd like to take an early opportunity to extend my thanks to everyone for making me feel so at home on the Atlantis.

That little red triangle is us and we are heading towards the western end of the Northern Labrador Sea Line.  We are on the home stretch!

Gumby and Pokey enjoy a ride on the Gas Chromatograh (happy Dave?).