slow going

The past three days have been very busy. On Monday, my boat deployed two sediment traps and lost both of them. Each sediment trap is set to the water column depth at that location, which is determined by taking an ekmen or core sample. Unfortunately, even after this process, we managed to make the first trap too short and when we tossed it over, it just sunk. Bye bye trap. On the second try, we decided to be smart about the ordeal, and attached the last buoy to the boat to make sure it wouldn't sink. The rope went slack, so we untied it from the boat assuming it had hit bottom, and it then proceeded to disappear, probably eaten by nessy below. On Tuesday, we deployed another trap, which we didn't lose, but it still didn't hit bottom. In fact, when we first deployed it, it looked like it had hit bottom - but two minutes later the buoy was running away towards the ice and disappearing below - luckily we were still attached. From these observations, it is likely that we were attempting to deploy the traps on a morainal bank, and the rock that is holding down the trap is rolling down the steep backside.

Today Ross, Mike, and I stuck around Ny Alesund for the morning to work on setting up the echosounder on one of the boats. The boat that we are using has a rubber hull and as a result we had to find a new way to clamp our required supports onto the boat without bending the hull. Luckily, Mike put his carpentry skills to work and developed a system so that we can clamp down the supports onto the hull from the inside and outside. Hopefully tomorrow we will start running transects with the instrument in front of Kongsvegen/Kronebreen, if it is not raining.

after-breakfast group meeting

calm waters at Kongsvegen

echosounder set up (photo by Mike Rhinard)