Ice Tethered Profiler
Yesterday was different. We parked the boat in some fast ice (ice locked to land) and had an ice party. We put out the gangplank and were allowed off the boat. Penguins came over to inspect us.
The reason for this was we needed 12 hours to deploy an Ice Tethered Profiler (ITP), and Ice Mass Balance (IMB) system, and take an ice core. The ITP sits on multi-year ice that will hopefully last another year or two in the current location. Hanging off the ice/buoy is a 750 m tether and a small robot that once a day climbs up and down the tether collecting oceanographic data. Each day it communicates via an inductive modem to the surface base which sends it home via Iridium modem. You should be able to see the buoy we deployed here: http://www.whoi.edu/itp
The ship crane lowered several hundred pounds of equipment onto the ice including a snowmobile. A route was scouted almost three miles away from the boat, and we towed all the gear out there. The ITP deployment design allows two people with just a wrench and a screwdriver to deploy a ~ 400 pound anchor and ~750 m cable (also weighing hundreds of pounds). Photos will come later.
While we set up the ITP another team installed an Ice Mass Balance system. The IMB is a sensor suite that measures approximately the top meter of water, the ice and snow from water to air, and then the top meter of air. It gives a complete picture of the ice-ocean-atmosphere interface. Couple that with the ~800m data from the ITP and it is quite an impressive data set.
It was nice to get off the boat for 10 hours and to do some hard physical labor. And while we worked we watched the nose and gigantic soft black eyes of a seal that used our ice holes as a breathing hole.
