October 13

Temp: 28 F

Weather: Cloudy day, big seas, clear night, winds 25 knots

We are far and deep into the Arctic Ocean. First, we are about 180 miles north of Alaska—this is by far the most distant from land I've ever been. The closest land south of us is the coastal area of Cape Halkett near Teshekpuk Lake. Second, we are in the Canada Basin, an area of the Arctic that is incredibly deep. Today we are in about 3,800 meters of water, which is nearly 2.5 miles.

See more photos and follow the Healy's route on this map.

We spent the day running a line heading north into the Basin, stopping every hour or so to do a circulation-temperature-density (CTD) cast.

In many ways, today was a pleasant repeat of a few other days combined. Like the last couple of days, the wildlife report was slim: several Ivory Gulls and one Ross's Gull, which makes for a very slow day of bird watching, although the quality of the species we're seeing is excellent. It has become normal now to expect to see these two birds which only a week ago were one of the Arctic's well-kept secrets.

For fun, a few of us practiced archery again on the Helo Deck, shooting another round of drift arrows into the sea, in hopes they'll be found by someone who will log onto the website printed on the arrow and report where it turned up. I was the only female out there shooting this round. My dad used to teach me how to shoot a bow when I was a kid, and aside from one shot the other day, I've not shot a bow since. We were in 10 to 12 foot seas with 25 knot winds, and my first few shots were terrible. But, having recently finished reading the Hunger Games series, I channeled my inner warrior and managed to get one off, hitting not just the target, but the string it was attached to. I let myself believe it was pure skill, rather than lucky circumstance, that earned that shot.

Speaking of lucky circumstance, it's Saturday night, so the Morale Team was at it again. I won twice at Bingo again tonight (ok, to be honest, the second time was a tie). People are starting to wonder how it is I do this. I think next week I might get searched on the way in for any type of paraphernalia I might be concealing, or maybe I'll just get football tackled if I yell out "BINGO" one more time.

And there was one more repeat, of the best kind of all. In my puffy down jacket up on the Bridge Deck, I watched satellites shooting their straight lines through the Milky Way, faking head-on collisions with stars in their path, and two meteors crisscrossed the sky. Jupiter shone large in the east among bright stars on a new moon night. And then the sky opened up for an aurora show even better than the first one a few days ago.

The aurora is oriented around the magnetic North Pole, forming a circular, off-center band around the Earth. In Alaska, optimal viewing is from about Fairbanks to Barrow. Tonight we were so far north that we were actually north of the northern lights. We watched as the aurora formed in the southern sky, first with vibrant green bands dancing, then expanding into a dome overhead in pink, green, and white curtains trailing off in all directions. There have been many firsts for me on this voyage, and for sure tonight is one I'll not forget. North of the northern lights—as we head back south again toward the vicinity of Prudhoe Bay, I don't know when I might see that again.

Melanie Smith, Landscape Ecologist, Audubon Alaska