Temp: 23 F    Weather: Partly sunny, then cloudy, 15 knot winds

Now that we are nearing Barrow Canyon, at the boundary between the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, we are seeing more wildlife. Today about 15 bowhead whales passed by the ship, a few ringed seals, and we began seeing more bird species such as Short-tailed Shearwater, Northern Fulmar, Thick-billed Murre, and Yellow-billed Loon.

(Photo: Recovering the Glider, by Donglai Gong)

Follow the Healy's route home on this map.

Since it's Saturday, the Morale Team planned more fun activities. First, we switched roles for the evening. The scientists cooked dinner and the crew had permission to dress in street clothes. About 15 scientists chopped, peeled, and grilled ingredients, then assembled and baked 40 pizzas to feed the 130 or so people aboard the Healy. We had fun seeing behind the scenes in the galley and making creative concoctions, even though it turns out that most people want a slice of plain old pepperoni pizza. Afterward the crew held a dance contest in the hangar, and many of us played card games, dice games, and word games in the lab.

You may recall the story of the glider, which we released west of Barrow Canyon nine days ago (see the Oct 11 post). We were testing the buoyancy of the device to see how well it would resurface in fresh Arctic water. The glider was deployed by Donglai Gong, Assistant Professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. He had the worried look of a parent watching his child do something dangerous for the first time. After an hour in the water, the device did not resurface, and it broke free from the buoy it was tethered to, which meant an early deployment and an uncertain future for the glider. And that is where we left this story.

Starting a couple of hours after the glider was released, it began surfacing and sending email messages to Donglai, which was a very good sign, and he decided to signal the glider to begin its science mission, believing that it would surface again. Two hours later, it did, and it began making progress along its route, although at one point a software glitch was trying to send it to the North Pole. He was able to fix that by sending a message from his computer back to the glider, reprogramming its destination. After that, it proceeded across Barrow Canyon, collecting data on temperature, salinity, and depth, sending messages every two and a half hours to his email inbox.

After swimming 300 kilometers from the Chukchi Sea to the Beaufort Sea, it was time to reunite with its pilot. We returned to an area west of Barrow Canyon, deployed a small boat into friendly seas and successfully recovered the glider. Mission complete: the glider's first journey through the Arctic was a success. Donglai already misses getting emails from his little yellow friend.

The glider has brought onboard a treasure trove of data. While continuously sampling for nine days it produced over 300 CTD casts and 9 gigabytes of audio data. Preliminary analysis shows that the data has added richness and detail to this area not previously achieved. Donglai’s already discovered the sounds of whales and seals passing nearby. The glider will be back in the future, for longer missions, and if solutions to technical issues can be engineered to allow it to navigate around sea ice, then maybe someday it can stay all year long.

Melanie Smith, Landscape Ecologist, Audubon Alaska