81.46' North

 

Here's a bit more of a detailed blog to show you what we have been doing on the cruise for the last 3 weeks whilst traveling up to 81.46' North; which I believe is the furthest that the JCR ship has been! Check out Celeste's blog for a photo of a Walrus and a cool photo of a minke whale!  

http://celestethelion.blogspot.co.uk/

 On a ship it's definitely easy to stay indoors so we all make a habit of sitting outside watching the world (mostly the wildlife) go by.

 

One of my best moments of the trip so far is just before we reached the ice at 2 am after a zooplankton net a few of us were outside enjoying the sun when we noticed humpbacks breaching. It was an astonishing site that actually made me cry with happiness because it was nature at it's best - how can something so big pull it's self out of the water like that. The biggest question is why do they do this? Scientists think it is to show an emotion, mostly likely happiness, which makes sense as when we are happy we jump around (well I do at least)!

Johan's photo

We entered the ice which emerged out of the fog rather eerily. I was very happy to be back in the ice...even if it has not been that long since being on a boat in ice. The sea kind of looks weird to me without it now ...which is kind of a strange thought!

Camille made us line up like Sardines..!


The JCR is not an ice breaker, it is ice strengthened! So it was pretty exhilarating to be pushing through the rotting sea ice, I spent most of my spare hours on the bow watching the ice fall apart beneath the ship. I loved the sound it made, the colours that were emitted and watching little Arctic cod fall off the bottom and find their way back into the water as their small home had been flipped over by the ship.

 

Doc Helen's ice crushing photo



We have completed almost 55 zooplankton nets!! wowza. That's one at each station midnight and midday! I've got a lot of hours under a microscope to look forward to when I get home!




Louisa's photo of a Tetrapod! so cute. like angels of the sea

Writing down the logs is fine, but at the end of the day when I'm trying to read my own handwriting to complete my logs is a nightmare!




 

 

 

Just to put it into perspective....this is the projected sea ice conditions for 2080... a terrifying thought! That is the main reason why we are all here...to get better measurements on this change and to see how the organisms from the water column, ice and all the way to the benthos from animals living on and within the mud and rocky substrate are going to cope.  

 

Mega corer going into the sea to core the sediment ... lots of beasties. This lets the CHAOS team see the core of the sediment.

 

I do think it is time for me to go home and get some time on land (or maybe in the sky).....  

 

 

 

The mud team!!! Working long hours, usually they do a 48+ work stint at each station, splitting up the work between them to get all of the trawls and cores completed for all of the various projects!

Peekaboo ... polar bears kept us entertained every few days! It was awesome to be allowed live and work within their home.

Pore waters (water between the sediment) was analysed for nutrients whilst on board!

 

  This trawl 1.2m wide, towed for only 5 mins and can carry onboard cameras to reduce impact whilst still showing scientists what lives on the seafloor. Larger trawls towed for long time periods can be very damaging compared to this specifically developed trawl.

Sacrificing a few poor beasties will help us to predict how they are going to cope with the fact that the Arctic is one of the fastest warming places with the overall aim to understand how much carbon is being buried by life on Arctic seabeds.

 

The trip was made even better by having already two already great friends Sian and Emily who I spent a season with at Rothera in 2015/2016 (we kept in contact since). As you can see we are constantly laughing and enjoying being in such an incredible environment; we have all been so lucky to have this great experience.

 

One of our first missions in the first few days after we got out of the ice and back into comms was to recover the sea glider! It was a pretty fun mission of hide and seek for a few hours. Then it called into NOC at Southampton and was told to stay put on the surface, we then spotted it and retrieved it by this very clever and very well driven winch - net.

 

This is the great team that I have spent the cruise with - everyone has worked exceptionally well together mucking in and helping on each others project to ensure that all of the work gets done. We can't wait for 2 days rest (site seeing) in Tromso in a few days time before we all fly home and go back to our daily lives...what ever that is I do not know yet!  

 

 

 

 

Ursus maritimus! Polar Bears!

After 2.5 weeks of no communication we are now back online as we have headed back South. For the last two weeks the RRS JCR has been sailing up the Barents sea where we reached 81 degrees North! I will upload a full science blog about all that we got up to in the next few days when the internet has fully recovered. For now, here are some epic shots kindly given to me by Johan (as usually I forgot my camera or just wanted to sit and enjoy the presence of such a big apex predator) of some polar bears we saw along our way ice breaking and transiting through the pack and fast ice of the Northern Barents Sea.

 Their scientific name is Ursus maritimus, translating to maritime bear which as we saw is a very fitting name for them as they navigated around broken up pieces of fast ice, rotting pieces and also big areas of open water. They are very powerful swimmers using their front two legs for the power and their back legs as rudders to assist with steering. As you can see here the power in their legs is incredibly strong as they leap between the pack ice.

 My favourite fact about polar bears are that they give birth to twins, if they don't then it's generally a rarity. Bears usually live in large territories so it is difficult to breed when males and females are separated by huge polynyas (open areas of water) and brash ice. However; when the females do breed and do raise their young...they try to stay away from the males as they have a terrible habit of eating the younger polar bears...even their own!! Giving birth to twins also increases survival rates of their offspring. The mums seem to have a great time though as before they give birth they eat so much food that they basically pass out into hibernation then sleep off all of the weight they've just put on and wake up to fatten up their twins!

 I was very happy to be back in the ice, the colours that is created from the melting and refreezing of ice is incredible...it also happens to be one of my favourite colours. They sit and walk around the ice edge hunting their prey, which is mostly seals. Though I noticed as a comparison to Antarctica there is a lot less wildlife around the ice, seals do not sit on the floes like they do down South and there were less whales apart from in the Southern Barents sea just south of Svalbard!

My next blog will include all of the interesting science that we have been conducting over the past 3 weeks...everything from box coring, to finding cocopops (Copepods) in my nets, to small scale trawling and also glider recoveries)!