Underway

The view leaving Nuuk.  Bye Nuuk!

We are finally underway.  The internet connection is very slow so I hope that the few photos that I took this morning will load.  We had a safety and security meeting yesterday and this morning proceeded with the fire and evacuation drills.  The seas are definitely choppy, but the ship is comfortable and pretty quiet.  

This morning I modified the display settings for the CTD acquisition software.  For those of you that are unfamiliar with a CTD (Conductivity, Temperature and Depth), it is really just a bank of sensors that collect environmental data.  The sensors are placed onto a frame that allows for a full profile of the water column and allows us to collect water samples on a "rosette" at pre-determined depths.  For more information concerning CTD's and how they work, visit http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/ctd.html.  

We have a science meeting at 1 pm this afternoon, but I expect us to get sciency (not a real word) very quickly. 

Pre-cruise ship familiarization meeting.

Gumby has a friend.

Bye Nuuk (sniff, sniff)

Gumby and Pokey say farewell to Seaman's Home in Nuuk Greenland.

Well, it's time to say goodbye to the Seaman's Home.  We board the Atlantis today to begin our 20 day journey across Davis Strait and Baffin Basin.  There is still more to do before we leave, like packing away boxes and making sure our equipment is properly secured.  It'll get pretty rough out there so equipment needs to be tied down.

I explored a little of Old Nuuk this morning on my jog and it was picturesque.  The view of the fjord is fantastic and definitely worth a visit if you are in town.

It will be nice to get the science started tomorrow and start sharing that with all of you.  The internet on the ship is slow and may or may not allow me to provide posts at the intervals I would like.  Stay tuned!

Come on rain! Seriously?

On this very rainy and cold day, Steve, Marc and Lorenza worked like busy beavers to complete the lab set up and get multi-net ready.  We had a lab meeting to discuss mooring, CTD and biological sampling operations and introduce ourselves.  Tommorrow we will finish getting ready, go through boat familiarizations and drills and great the few remaing staff that are still to arrive.

I spent most of my day glued to a computer putting our planned cordinates into a GIS, revising station names, getting nominal station locations and extracting depths for each location.

It looks like the inclement weather will continue and will force a change in plans that will see us launch into 24 hr/day CTD operations before we begin mooring operations that require calmer seas.

We check out of the hotel tommorrow and spend our first night on the ship.  Almost ready to go!!!

Seriously, it's raining!

Marc's filtration system set up for Chlorophyl, HPLC, etc...

The Winkler Oxygen Titration System

Greenland, finally!

Oh great, a Dash 8 - Yeah!!!

Well, a Dash 8 is never really a welcome sight, but when you are preparing to fly over freezing cold Arctic water and then 1000's of square km of glacier, it's especially unsettling.  The plane flew like a champ in a head wind that caused us to have to land to fuel up at a small community just a 10 minute flight from Nuuk.  The view from the plane window was breath taking.  The dominant force shaping this land are the glaciers, and the evidence of their slow but violent influence is everywhere you look.  Deep fjords carve the coastline and large moraines are clearly visible from the air.  It is a rugged but majestic coastline.  I took some pictures but I'm afraid I could just not do it justice.

A view of a glacier just prior to landing in Greenland.

We are at the hotel now and will be busy setting up the gear on the ship tomorrow.  Could be quite late in the day before I make another post.

Phew!

Keflavik water front.

The day was a very long one!  After our very early arrival, we took a quick walking tour of the Keflavik water front, followed very urgently by breakfast. By this point we've all been up for 24 hours, so blahhhh! We decided to work off breakfast by walking to the Viking Museum.

The museum tells the story of the Icelandic Sagas that recount Leif Erikson's discovery of Vinland, which is broadly believed to be the Norse settlement discovered at L'Anse AuxMeadows, N.L.  This is all very interesting and even more so because you can touch and stand in a Norse style replica ship, that sailed across the Atlantic in 2000 to celebrate 1000 years since the original landing.

The Icelander.

Iceland

Thank goodness the sign is translated.

Our group of bleary eyed scientists have landed in Iceland and we've each migrated to our electronic toy of choice.  The flight was uneventful but after a long day in a chair followed by a long flight, my legs need to get moving for a while.

I might rent a bike and  go explore the local viking museum.  It's pretty cool, there is a replica of a norse ship hanging from the ceiling and you can explore it from every angle.

Baby It's Cold Up There!

Okay, so last week I was at my cottage just outside of Pugwash, Nova Scotia and the air temperature was hovering around 30 °C.  It was hot, my blood was boiling and I was silly enough to wish for cooler weather.  Wish granted I suppose.  

Tonight I fly to Nuuk, Greenland via Keflavik, Iceland. The annual daily mean air temperature at the Nuuk Weather Station in West Greenland was -0.6°C in 2014.  As Canadians say almost perpetually during winter time: "Cold enough for you"? Well yes, it is, thank you!

According to Wikipedia (so it must be true), the average daily mean temperature for September in Nuuk is around 3.7°C.  So, I won't freeze to death but I expect the thermal underwear to come in pretty handy during the night shift on board the Atlantis.

Interestingly, despite how cold it gets in Nuuk, the temperature has been slowly on the rise since the late 1800's, with 2012 being the warmest year on record by far.  In June of each year, scientists from Germany and Greenland/Denmark produce reports summarizing the atmospheric and hydrographic conditions off Western Greenland for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) Standing Committee on Fisheries Environment (STACFEN).  These reports review environmental conditions of the current year in relation to longer term averages and attempt to highlight trends in the data that my be indicative of variability due to natural oscillations or human induced climate change (amongst other things). If you get a chance, go to the NAFO publications page and search through the SC Research Documents for SCR 15/002.  Dr. Boris Cisewski of the Thunen Institute of Sea Fisheries in Hamburg, Germany has written a thorough summary of conditions in 2014 and it's worth a scan to give you a snap shot of current climactic conditions.  The figure on the left comes from this report.

So, while your reading this paper and sipping margaritas in your shorts on the deck over looking the water, think of us as we investigate innovative ways to regain feeling in our finger tips after sampling sub-zero arctic water from a CTD rosette.

I'll provide updates over the next few days.  We fly out tonight at 10 pm, and arrive in Iceland early tomorrow morning.  Stay tuned!