Our labelled crates for the cruise.

The food on board was pretty incredible. I know everyone says this about research cruises, so I'll just tell you about the first day's food to give you a taster: there was lasagne with feta and pomegranate salad for lunch with smoked salmon, prawn cocktail with boiled egg mayonnaise and beetroot. There was also pizza that was apparently delicious but I didn’t have room for any more food. Dinner had an amazing soup to start; a coconut milk base with curry paste, dill, lots of vegetables and huge chunks of salmon. An even bigger chunk of salmon was the main course, with buttery parsley boiled potatoes, cauliflower and more of the amazing pomegranate-feta salad. There was also chocolate cake and fresh fruit for dessert. I was definitely using the cruise to nutrient load – I can’t afford to eat as many fresh fruits and vegetables back on land in Longyearbyen!

Waiting for a mooring to be recovered onto deck.

I was on the dayshift, which meant I was on watch from 06:00-12:00 and 18:00-0:00. We arrived at our first CTD station just after twelve, meaning it was the other watch’s job to help out. They recovered two moorings from the mouth of Isfjorden and did 10 CTD casts at stations across the mouth of the fjord. The shift changeover at 18:00 was just in time for my group to be able to help with cleaning and dismantling the mooring components. We then spent the rest of our watch reading through a bank of scientific papers on board relating to the aim of the cruise, which was to investigate the distribution of water masses, the tidal and wind driven exchanges and general circulation within Isfjorden and also tracing Atlantic Water in the West Spitsbergen Current and the adjacent shelf areas.

Our Cruise path; the first leg was the northern half.

The weather forecast was looking good and so after picking up the second mooring we began steaming up to the Yermak Plateau, which took about 18 hours from the Isfjorden. We all got up at 05:30 on the 13th to go outside and watch as we passed through Smeerenburgfjorden, which is the sound between Danskøya, Amsterdamøya and Spitsbergen. The area is a hotspot for wildlife and we hoped we might see a polar bear (ice bear to the Norwegians) or walruses. There was no wind - the sea was calm like a mirror and there were so many glaciers. We were disappointed in that we didn't see any polar bears, but the icebergs, puffins so full of fish that they couldn't take off and a fin whale that passed us by more than enough made up for it. 

Breakfast is eaten together between 07:30 and 08:00. As I was technically on watch, we had to eat quickly as we were about to arrive at some CTD stations just before 08:00. We did some CTD stations and then we tried to recover the first of the Yermak plateau moorings (YP1). The moorings are from the REOCIRC project. Everyone started to get a bit worried on board because there was no response from the acoustic release to the communications by hydrophone. We had to all stand out on deck scanning the sea surface in case it had released without a response. One theory was that because the mooring was very shallow (~20m) and the hydrophone was at about 10m that some topographical features were blocking the signal. Last year, they had a problem with the same mooring and they had to ‘fish’ it up using a wire dragged behind the ship, however they had a response from the acoustic release so they knew the mooring was there. We drove around a bit to look for the mooring on the echo sounder so we could try and fish it up, before someone tried the codes from the other Yermak plateau mooring on the hydrophone. Low and behold, we had a reply and the mooring released. I guess this is a working example of just how important it is to carefully record the arming and release codes from the acoustic release – and make sure they’re associated to the right mooring!

We then did several more CTD profiles along the Yermak Plateau, up towards the second Yermak mooring. The captain happened to look in a certain direction during our journey towards the second mooring and spotted it had already come up – the range on the hydrophone is pretty good!

A huge fin whale up at 79°N

There had been a pretty amazing smell coming from the kitchen for quite some time and my stomach was growling by the time we finished our watch and could go to have lunch. I was just about to head to my bunk after lunch to sleep when I nipped upstairs to pick up my water bottle with perfect timing to be told by the crew on deck that there was a whale close by. I rushed to grab my camera and headed out onto the bow deck to see a huge whale in the water. I had no idea that their blowholes were so noisy! The captain turned the ship a bit so we could watch the whale for longer. Gulls raced to the whale every time they saw it surface which was really awesome. I then went to my cabin and slept for a couple of hours, read some more of my book and had a shower before supper. I was surprised at supper to find tablecloths and candles on the tables in the mess room – apparently a Saturday thing on board. 

The CTD deck unit in the instrument room.

We started our next shift after supper by taking a couple more CTD profiles. We then collected in two long (over 500m in length) moorings on the Yermack Plateau. For each CTD station, we took water samples for calibration of salinity. At every other station we also took a water sample for the Institute of Marine Research. We also ran the hull mounted ADCP for the CTD sections.

Taking a water sample after a CTD cast.

The Instrument Room.

Sat inside, I started to feel a bit seasick at 10pm. The wind had picked up to about 10m/s and the waves were growing with it. Sitting in the warm equipment room with the shop rolling meant I felt pretty awful, pretty quickly. I took a seasickness tablet but it was too late really. I went to lie down in my bunk to try and feel a bit better and ended up sleeping until the next day; although it wasn't long before I was joined by other people also feeling seasick. Whilst I was in bed feeling awful, we met sea ice on the 80°N CTD section and had to turn back south. 

Sea Ice! (Photo: Gunnar Thorsen Liahjell)

Most of us were in bed all day completely seasick on the Sunday 14th. Those who were lucky enough to not be feeling seasick worked on taking the 79°N section, where the CTD pump stopped working. The wind had picked up to a near-gale and the sea was rougher, which felt worse by staying in the same spot for about 4 hours whilst it was tried to repair the CTD. Unfortunately the CTD needed a new part which we didn't have on board and after determining that UNIS' CTD wasn't in use, we steamed back to Longyearbyen to collect a replacement from UNIS.

The CTD after replacement (Ropes were for mooring component calibrations)

It took about 11 hours at full steam to return to Longyearbyen. We killed time on board eating, sleeping and watching the Norwegian Handball team compete in the Olympics in the saloon - the Norwegians love their handball. The Håkon Mosby is an old ship - she was supposed to have been replaced last year but the replacement has been delayed. This meant that we had a VCR and a multitude of video tapes to choose from for entertainment.

Beautiful scenery in Billefjorden.

Once we had picked up UNIS' CTD at about 8am on Monday 15th and it had been switched for the broken one, we went to the mouth of Adventfjorden for a test run. All was OK, so we then went to the mouth of Isfjorden to run the calibrations for the mooring components. This involved keeping the instruments underwater for (I'm not 100% sure on the time as I was asleep) about 20 minutes on two casts. There were too many instruments for the CTD frame so some kevlar rope was employed. We didn't have time to be able to return to finish the section at 79°N. This was a bit worrying for me as my report for the course was supposed to be on the 79°N Section! 

Beautiful weather for the journey back to Longyearbyen.

We then took a big CTD section through Isfjorden and up into Billefjorden, pretty much continuously through to the morning of the next day, where we returned to Longyearbyen. We had beautiful weather for the final day and we spent as much time on deck as possible. When cruising past Advent City, a tourist boat was hanging around at the shore so we had a look through the binoculars and were surprised to see two polar bears hanging around near a cabin. I took a photo through binoculars, which is really awful, but you get the jist!

The yellowy-white blob on the right of the cabin is (two) polar bears!

Returning back to land, most of my group had a couple of hours before they had to head out onto fieldwork for their other course. I had caught a virus and was too ill to leave my barrack for almost a week, so it was very good luck that I am on the Middle Polar Atmosphere course and not Meteorology.
I hope you enjoyed hearing about the cruise, and promise to post much more regularly now that it's getting darker!