Edge of the Arctic Shelf

Behind the Scenes
A hint of blue in the sky this morning was a welcome relief from the past two days of heavy overcast. It was a sign of a change in the weather. We all breathed a collective sigh of relief that the wind had died down considerably. While still a chill blast at 20-30 knots, it's nothing compared to the 47 knots I saw on the anemometer before I went to bed last night. By mid-afternoon, the seas had abated to the point where safe CTD operations could resume.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Grant Massey, Val Schmidt, and Ethan Gold, who have been working long hours to keep our communications flowing and our data secure. Their behind the scenes work may not be glamorous, but we all appreciate their efforts immensely. Thanks guys!

To get an idea of what kind of responsibilities they have onboard, I asked them to answer a few questions.

How much data have we collected so far on this cruise? What kind of things are you archiving?
Val: So far we have over 35 gigabytes of data--that's enough to fit on 6 DVDs or 50 CD-ROMs. Most of the data is sonar data. We record the bottom depth continuously using mapping sonars. That data alone takes up about 2/3 of the total data volume to date. The other large data set we call the "underway data." This is everything from air temperature, wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, various records from as many as 5 GPS receivers (position, speed, time etc.), sea water temperature and salinity, bottom depth, etc. Most of these are recorded once a second. With 86,400 seconds in the day, it adds up."

Grant Massey is a systems engineer who works with the Healy's Information Technology petty officers to keep our communications flowing with the outside world. We currently are enjoying two one-hour periods of internet use. You may be asking--how on earth can we get an internet connection in the Arctic Ocean?

Grant: "Our Internet connection is not like connecting from home. We need to connect via satellites. Since the satellites are so far south of our location our dish points south just above the surface of the ocean until it reaches the satellite somewhere over the Pacific. It then is sent to an earth station in New Zealand. From there it goes back up to another satellite and is sent to San Diego, California where it travels via a land line to our home port in Seattle where it is finally connected to the rest of the internet. The whole ship is serviced with a 64 KB connection, which is less than the dial-up rate that most homes use today. We actually get a lot lower bandwidth due to lost packets and retransmissions of the missing packets. All this is done so we can receive E-Mail and occasionally view our favorite web sites."

I have just received a new batch of questions from Mrs. Lyons' fifth grade class at Mount Alvernia Academy in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Thanks for your questions--I will be answering them in these last four dispatches.

Vanessa: How close to the North Pole are you?
Answer: We are currently at a latitude of 70.5°N. The North Pole is about 1300 miles away. That's comparable to the distance from Boston to Cuba. At our farthest north point, 77° 8.4'N, we were still nearly 900 miles from the North Pole.

Devin: What causes the Northern Lights, and why is it that we can't see them in Massachusetts?
Answer: Hi Devin. For a detailed discussion of what causes the Northern Lights, check out this earlier Dispatch. To see photos of a beautiful aurora event from earlier in the cruise, click here. Regarding your second question--you can see them in Massachusetts, just not that frequently. The last time Massachusetts had a major aurora display was Halloween night, 2003. It was the result of a large solar flare. The auroral oval is centered around the geomagnetic poles. Thus, the strongest and most brilliant northern lights are seen along this band, which circles the northern arctic tundra. When the sun releases an abnormally large wave of particles, however, the aurora borealis can be seen as far south as Mexico.

Dimitri: How cold is it and what time does the sun set there?
Answer: The temperature has been fairly constant out here at right around freezing (32°F). The coldest it got was 17°F, when we were at our farthest north position in the icepack. Sunset today was at 8:35PM Alaska time, and it's getting earlier by about six minutes every day.

As I finish this dispatch, we are progressing along our central channel CTD section. First item on the agenda tomorrow morning is the last mooring recovery. After that we'll be completing a few more CTDs and then heading for Nome.