I’ve been feeling a little sad these past few days because the Healy 0701 mission is coming to a close. There’s been so much data taken, so many measurements done, and more than a few hypotheses tested. So WHAT has been learned?
The CTD was lowered and fired over 200 times in rough water
This research here, this Bering Sea Ecosystem Study, has been some of the first research done with SEASONAL ice during this time of the year. SEASONAL ice is ice that melts and then reforms each year. The algae blooms occur because the seasonal ice melts, creating a stable freshwater layer, a place for the algae to grow. The algae take up nutrients, which act as a fertilizer, and explode in numbers. The nutrients are quickly used up. The bloom for that year is over.
Rob tested the water for iron, getting baseline data to see if it is a limiting factor in Bering Sea productivity.
In areas of the Bering Sea that we visited that were really shallow, like around Nunivak Island, the ice has melted and the nutrients have been used. The bloom is over.
Nancy Kachel collected many samples from the CTD during this research mission.
What has been a surprise to some of the scientists is that the very productive algae blooms occur at the ice edge, not so much under the ice.
When phytoplankton reproduce very quickly they can actually turn the color of the seawater green.
The algae need sunlight, and the sunlight just doesn’t seem to penetrate ice. Algae explode in large numbers when the ice, under which they have been growing, melts away.
Although this seems to be a small observation, it is actually HUGE! Or at least it was for me. Look at areas of the Arctic that do not have the seasonal ice. The flow of energy in that ecosystem is different. The energy transfer from sunlight through the high Arctic permanent ice to the algae that populate the Arctic Ocean is different. Same thing with the Antarctic permanent ice.
This is one of the deepest drops that the CTD made. Over 3000 meters!
If the Arctic or Antarctic holds more seasonal ice, i.e. starts melting, the model of how energy is transferred in the polar region will change. Knowing how seasonal ice acts as a medium to facilitate algal blooms will be very important. Right now is a critical time to research this key component.
TAS Maggie observing the sea ice
I learned a huge amount about ice. I made ice observations many, many times. The scientists on this mission to help them interpret their data will use that information.
The science community has named this an International Polar Year (IPY). What I am doing, in trailing along with scientists, is acting to translate and understand the Bering Sea Ecosystem Study, and to act to educate others about cutting edge scientific research of climactic change. I think I can begin to start telling you the story.
Monday, April 30: The ice is here so ice observations take place every two hours. I had a feeling today was going to be a wildlife bonanza and it was. We saw lots of ribbon and spotted seals and birds. As always the time up in the bridge turned into hours.
I learned how to filter seawater and replace filter papers in Dr. Ray Sambrotto’s Lab. He is measuring the productivity of the Bering Sea.
After lunch I concentrated on getting my presentation to Dr. Ray to edit for the webinar on Thursday. Robyn and I worked out the times for the last webinar and got some images together for the Thursday show. David Hyrenbach as always came through with a good baseline Powerpoint for others to work off.
The ship is tracing a path we have gone before. It is tracing the path through the most productive areas we’ve been to. Much of that area is not under ice. Needless to say, I noticed that there was very little ice algae growth on the ice. The researches say the productivity is in the water, not on the ice. I am sure there will be some new conclusions brought forward.
Tuesday, May 1: Learn to Burn. First it was ‘learn to return,’ our survival safety class. Now it is ‘learn to burn?’
Well, the Healy works hard to be ‘green.’ There are only certain amount of resources available for a big 422 foot ship going out to sea for a whole month. Conservation of resources is a necessity.
We have been told how to conserve water when we take showers and wash and brush our teeth. We sort our trash into burnable, recyclable, and food compost. We only wash full loads of laundry.
The majority of the trash we are able to burn. However, not EVERYONE can burn. One has to be trained to burn. The two scientists that burned on the first leg of this trip, left on Saturday. The large pile of burnables present in the science conference room spurred Robyn and I to volunteer for a job that nobody wanted to do.
Steven Elliot, our coast guard science liason, took time out to teach us the specifics of burning. Lucky for us, two Coasties came in while we were being trained and put a bag of trash in the incinerator that was WAY too big. One of the ship engineers came down to the incinerator room and scolded them. We watched with eyes large, and vowed never to make the engineers angry at our burning ways.
Robyn and I were very happy to finish burning the bags of trash.
It took the bulk of the afternoon to burn the many bags of burnable trash the science conference room had to offer. We collected bags from the science lab too. When we left the incinerator room it was 90 some degrees. Robyn named us the ‘Fire and Ice’ team. We observe the ice and we burn the trash.
Wednesday, May 2: The cups that the students from St. Paul decorated have been sent down to the deep and back up. They will be so excited to see the results. I will be sending them from Dutch when I get there next Monday.
St. Paul students will be happy to get their teeny weeny cups back.
The scientists have been named as chefs for the Morale Night Dinner on Saturday. It was decided we would cook with a Mexican theme, since it was the fifth of May. I wanted to make a piñata. After all who doesn’t like a piñata? We used paper mache and bright green gloves to try and make a hard ball. No go. It collapsed. So I talked with some guys who have made piñatas in the past and tried to follow their guidelines.
Our first attempt at making a piñata failed.
The trick was NOT to use paper mache, but duct tape and cardboard to fashion a hollow container. I chose to make a diatom using cardboard and discarded egg dividers. At 7 pm, Janet Scannell, our dinner coordinator, told me the piñata was out. I was disappointed. After all that work, no piñata. I cleaned up my mess and focused on Thursdays IPY webinar.
The ice is back. As a loose loose pack. Still lots of open water amid the flows. Skimming the waves between the flows were Laysan and Short-tailed Albatross, my Hawaiian friends!
Thursday, May 3: An IPY webinar at an early hour on ship. 9:00! We had two very important guests so we wanted to do our best. Somehow, between all the planning e-mail, a time reminder went out with the incorrect time. Now a half hour of time is a precious thing to busy people. We told our guests to hang tight, we would let them know when time had come. Thirty minutes of time has never passed more slowly.
But pass it did, and a very informative hour followed. Between Dr. Ray Sambrotto, the cruise Principal Investigator, and Captain Tedric Lindstrom, the Healy captain, the internet audience was wowed.
Immediately after the webinar, the Arcus folk had arranged for me to talk directly to my students. This was a huge special treat for me. I teach very active seventh graders, and their attention span and the schools technical equipment did not lend itself to easy listening. For a whole half hour I was connected to my Green Honus (fourth period students) who asked me any and all kinds of questions. Oh my, how I missed my students.The rest of the day was spent catching up with journal writing, editing pictures, and ice observing.
Friday, May 4: Today, we decided to try and work with our mp3 voice recorders. Robyn had recorded Carleton Ray discuss walrus ecology and I wanted to work with a Frank DeLima presentation from my school. Ice observations, writing, answering questions from the webpages, cleaning our rooms, the day was done, and we weren’t any closer to our mastering the mp3 podcast platform.
To the Coast Guard, it’s all about safety.
There were many last-minute dinner problems that came and went. And the ice was always present and changing, we made sure of that.
Saturday, May 5:
Between cooking a Mexican banquet for 130, I ran up to the bridge to take ice observations.
Started like any ordinary day, but soon morphed into a remarkable one. Check out my journal entry for May 5 to fill in the blanks between. OH, by the way, we also took in a tour of the ships engine, and cooked a Mexican banquet for 130. It was fun and delicious. And so ended our next to the last week on the icebreaker Healy.
Saturday May 5, started off ordinary, as ordinary as a Saturday on an icebreaker in the middle of the Bering Sea can be. I was lingering over lunch with Gavin Brady and Dr. Michael Cameron, two members of the NOAA National Marine Mammal Laboratory ice seal team. They were telling leopard seal stories and fun factoids about other seals. Unfortunately, I had to excuse myself, as it was time for me to make an ice observation up on the bridge.
In that very short period of time that it took me to lumber up the five flights to the bridge of the Healy, something happened. We were stopped at a station, a ribbon seal had been recorded close to the ship, and the ice seal team was going to try and tag it.
Much of the ice we encountered last week was soft and honeycombed. You wouldn’t want to go ice hopping on this.
I stopped right smack dab in the middle of my observations and flew down three flights to the hanger, where the seal team was hastily putting on their zodiac safety gear. Our last week on the Healy had us in rotting ice, or fog, or no ice at all with few opportunities to tag ice seals. This was a golden opportunity, as the boat was stopped and on station. Zodiacs away!
Jay Ver Hoef, the newest member of the ice seal team, geared up in a MS 900, bunny boots, white stocking cap, helmet, and ice camoflage overshirt.
Permission was granted and the seal team was good to go.
Dr. Mike talks netting strategy to the ice seal team.
They met together, refreshed their netting strategy, and waited.
The purpose of a strategy meeting is to review boat approaches and answer any questions that might arise.
The Coast Guard worked as quickly as it was able to.
Lee Harris stands next to Captain Lindstrom. The Healy supports scientific research by facilitating technology and equipment dispersal.
This was only the second time these zodiacs were launched; the crew was working out protocol and safety procedures.
The ice seal team rolled the zodiacs onto the deck so that they could be lifted into the icy Bering Sea.
Time ticked, ticked, ticked away.
The ice seal team tracked the ribbon seal as they waited patiently for the Coast Guard to get the three zodiacs into the water below.
Each zodiac had to be lifted by crane up and over the helo deck fencing.Zodiac one contained Dr. Mike and his driver Dave Withrow.Sean Dahle and Lee Harris scooted off in zodiac two.This was Jay’s first decent down the Healy Jacobs Ladder.
Gavin Brady with driver Jay Ver Hoef descended the Jacobs ladder into the zodiacs below. They chugged off into the frosty fog, and were gone.
The zodiacs slipped into the fog and out of sight.
They had radios, GPS and other contact equipment. We knew they would be safe.
Steven Elliot, Tom Bolmer, and Captain Lindstrom help the zodiacs find the seal in the ice-maze.
The rest of the seal tagging was done within a quiet and serene ice flowscape.
Dave Withrow, one of the ice seal team, took pictures of the Healy from the zodiac.
The three boats split up and surrounded the ice piece upon which the ribbon seal reclined. Sean Dahle and Gavin Brady quickly took control of the animal, it was a juvenile male.
The ice team wasted no time in getting measurements and data from the juvenile male ribbon seal.
The rest of the team measured its weight, some blood, it’s length, sex and attached the flipper tag.
The team attached the tag on the right rear flipper.
Ribbon seals are willing subjects. They are true ice seals; they never touch land and rarely encounter humans. Because of their naivety of humans, they can often be approached more easily than other arctic species.
Ribbon seals can often be approached more easily than other arctic seal species.
This young male waited patiently for the ice seal team to finish taking data.
This young male was true to its breed.
The ribbon seal slipped off the ice and into the Bering Sea. The tag will send out valuable information for a year.
So tagging number two can go down in the ice seal journal and in the event log of the 0701 Healy Science cruise as uber successful. Ordinary days? There are none, when you are on an icebreaker somewhere the middle of the Bering Sea!
I have watched a lot of science happen these past three weeks. I have asked a lot of questions and taken a lot of pictures. See I needed to understand what was happening here in the middle of the Bering Sea. And I need to know it so well that I can go back home and tell my students all about it.
The producers in the Bering Sea ecosystem are diatoms and other phytoplankton. They are productive because there are lots of nutrients in the water.
I have been trying to synthesize ecosystem science and understand. Gradually, oh so slowly, I can see. And it hasn’t been easy. Scientists often do research with a very specific topic or organism. They work in small teams. They need to gather accurate data during the mission and/or store samples to continue research back in their labs.
The scientists on-board Healy work in small teams, with one scientist named again and again as contributing essential data to the Bering Sea Ecosystem STudy. This scientist works alone but is a huge team player. Meet Dr. Calvin Mordy.
Dr. Cal Mordy figures out what nutrients are in the water samples pulled from the Bering Sea.
Cal figures out what nutrients are in the water samples pulled up from the varying depths in the Bering Sea. These nutrients are like fertilizer for the tiny phytoplankton producers that cling to the bottom of the ice that covers the Bering Sea. Understanding why, how and when these tiny green food factories grow and multiply is another researchers problem. Yet another researcher is cataloging what zooplankton consumers are present and in what quantity. Cal? He’s all about the nutrients in the water of the Bering Sea.
Cal tirelessly and exactingly tests hundreds of samples of Bering Sea water.
Remember that the zooplankton (consumers) depend on the phytoplankton (producers) for food. Nutrients are key in this research. Cal tirelessly and exactingly tests hundreds of samples of Bering Sea water, at different depths in the water column, and returns information back to the BEST (Bering Sea Ecosystem Study) scientists so they may integrate that information in their research. Lots of people depend on him for their data. They make calculations of different solutions from his cue.
Many researchers on the Healy depend on Dr. Mordy for his data.
With so many people depending on him for data, does he ever make a mistake? ‘Never,’ he says, and I believe him. Mistakes advertise themselves, he explains. Any data that is out of sort is flagged. Those samples are run again, to verify the data in question. Often those samples are the result of a leaky bottle or a misfired bottle. That data is pulled. That’s that.
Somehow it is so comforting to know that Cal has such a strong grasp of this key piece of the Bering Sea Ecosystem Study. Deep in the lab onboard the USCG Cutter Healy, there is a scientist at work. Cal systematically finds out what nutrients are in this icy cold water and in what concentration. In the BEST cruise, it all starts here.
I stuffed the cups with some sturdy brown paper towels to keep them separate and then placed them in a mesh laundry bag.
Here is Claire’s cup before we sent it down.
The Marine Scientist Technicians (MSTs) connected them to the CDT sampler that was dropped below 3300 meters!
I took this picture of the screen as the CTD was reeled up from the bottom.
How much pressure was down there? Scott Hiller, from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, plugged some numbers into an equation and told me that there was some 5100 psi (pounds per square inch) acting on those little white cups. The temperature was just above freezing.
Cups are strapped onboard the CTD
Two hours after dropping them down to the bottom of the Bering Sea, they emerged strapped and dripping.
And MUCH smaller.
Oh how CUTE!
It will be a lot easier mailing these to the St. Paul students. My have they shrunk!
So what did we learn from this?
Well, there are lots more questions that arise. How far do the cups have to drop in order for them to compress? What is the tipping depth, the depth that they begin to compress? Does the length of time that they are submerged make a difference in how they compress? Where does the gas that is in the cup go?
Ah, science, sweet science, raising more questions than answering once again.
