Edge of the Arctic Shelf

Thank You
What a wild ride this Arctic adventure has been. I can remember like it was yesterday when Bob Pickart called me up and asked if I would chronicle a three-year expedition to the Arctic. That was in May of 2002. Now, three and a half years and over 30,000 shutter clicks later, I am finishing this last dispatch. I am happy to report that the scientific objectives have been achieved beyond our wildest hopes. The moorings have been deployed and recovered twice, returning an incredible amount of data. In addition to the moored instruments, we have sampled the waters of the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas using an array of oceanographic instruments. The Shelf-Basin Interactions principal investigators now hold in their hands a very special dataset--a record of how Pacific Ocean waters move from the shallow Arctic shelves to the deep basins.

Over the course of our three month-long expeditions, we have seen many things that make the Western Arctic such a surreal, otherworldly place: the midnight sun, swimming polar bears, aurora borealis, herds of walrus, and the ever-changing Arctic icepack. Every day brought something new. In addition to the breathtaking scenery, I have been privileged to work alongside some really great people.

These final questions are from fifth and sixth grade students at Mount Alvernia Academy in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Many thanks to you and all of the other students that submitted questions this year. Your questions have been very insightful--I don't remember asking such intelligent questions when I was your age!

Anna (Fifth Grade): What it is like being on a research expedition?
For some of the science party, like Aaron Silverman, this was their first experience at sea on a research expedition. I asked him to share his thoughts.

Aaron: Being out here seeing the ocean stretch forever into the horizon makes one realize how big the world is. Going from day to day, I have a tendency to get lost in work, school, friends, and everything else in a normal life. Usually, I can only see as far as the next building or clump of trees, so the world I live in seems quite small and the larger "outside" world seems more like a news story than real life. This trip has reopened my eyes, and I look forward to more traveling in order to experience more of this vast world we live in.

Frances (Fifth Grade): What influenced you to do what you do?
Answer: When I was your age, I wrote an essay for school about wanting to be an oceanographer when I grew up. Since I was living in Wisconsin, I had never even seen the ocean! ...but I do recall being fascinated by The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau on television. This famous ocean pioneer showed his audience a strange and beautiful world--the last frontier on our planet. We know more about the moon than we do about our own oceans. It's this feeling of adventure and new discovery that propelled me into a career in oceanography.

Camilla (Sixth Grade): Have you learned anything new, and if so what?
Chief Scientist Bob Pickart has been on all three of the SBI mooring cruises, and provided this great answer.

Bob: Even though we went out at the same time of year as we did in 2003, many things were different. For one, the ice cover was much farther offshore this year, and at the same time there was a lot of warm near-surface water in the Chukchi Sea (these two things are probably related!). Most interesting to me, however, was the fact that below the surface (about 150m deep) there was more COLD water than last year. Does this mean that there was more cold water formed last winter on the shelf, or did it just take longer for that water to "escape" into the adjacent deep basin? Also, what are the consequences of having cold water in the basin so late in the summer? These are some of the many questions that we'll be investigating in the years to come with the exciting data we've collected over the last three years.

Muchas gracias to my Spanish friends David, Andrea, Celia, and Mifaya. They provided the excellent translations of the dispatches in addition to their watchstanding duties. I hope Spanish-speakers from across the globe have appreciated their hard work as much as I enjoyed working with them.

Thanks to the many volunteers who sacrificed their time and effort. Thanks to our sponsors at the Office of Naval Research and National Science Foundation for providing funding for this field project. Thanks to Bob Pickart for once again inviting me to come along as a field correspondent. Thanks to WHOI Media Relations and Development for their support. Thanks to Dina Pandya and Danielle Fino for their work on the initial website design. Thanks to my family and friends for your encouraging emails. Thanks to Gratia Montgomery for her love and support of oceanography. Thanks especially to Captain Oliver and the crew of the Healy for their tireless efforts to support our science and keep us safe. Thanks to Dennis Conlon, program manager at the Office of Naval Research, who funded the moorings.

Even though this is my last dispatch, the story isn't quite over. The data we have collected represents more of a beginning than an ending. For years to come, scientists will be analyzing the measurements we made. We have a huge jumble of puzzle pieces - now it's time to put them together. Someday maybe Anna, Frances, or Camilla will be comparing their own measurements to these, and laughing about that Arctic Edge website that inspired them to become Arctic scientists...

Thank you again to everyone who made this journey possible.