Today is August 22. We are mid-way through leg 2 of this Arctic Climate Impacts Expedition in Sermilik Fjord. We have been wildly busy since arriving in Tasiilaq on August 17, but things are going really, really well. We’ve been incredibly lucky: none of the problems that could have thrown a wrench in to our well laid plans - fog grounding the helicopter, heavy ice impeding the ship’s transit, scientific equipment breaking down – have happened. I chalk this up to “the luck of the Irish” since four of our crew are Irish - the chief engineer, media officer, heli pilot and videographer.
Since things are going so smoothly, I’m taking a few moments out of my busy day and have taken my laptop up to the bridge to churn out a blog. Here’s a bit of a running description of what’s going on from my vantage point.
The helicopter is about to take off to take a TV crew back to Tasillaq after they spent the night on the ship. The helicopter will pick up another TV crew in Tasiilaq, and bring them to the ship for their night on board. It’s 9am now and this is the helicopter’s third flight. The helicopter first started flying at 5:30am to take a team of glaciologists to Helheim Glacier to retrieve GPS units that are recording the glacier’s flow speed (an indicator of its melt rate, and in turn, the pace and intensity of global warming here in Greenland).
Off on the starboard side of the ship a team of oceanographers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, led by Dr. Fiamma Straneo, are conducting “CTD casts.” “CTD” stands for “conductivity, temperature, depth,” three indicators in the deep waters of Sermilik Fjord that will help them to understand the complex dynamics of currents and how they deliver warm water to Helheim Glacier at the head of the fjord. The CTD cast is done with a device that is lowered through the water column on a metal line, using a winch that’s been welded to the deck just for this purpose. The fjords here in Greenland are very deep, and the CTD casts often go to depths of 700m/2300 feet. As one of the oceanographers described it, this fjord is like a submerged Grand Canyon.
Here on the bridge, Captain Pete is trying to maneuver the ship through waters that are completely covered by ice at the surface. Huge icebergs float amongst the smaller pieces of ice, and as the ship moves through the ice, it sounds like a huge gin and tonic outside as the ice moves (Ok, Pete says it is more like a frozen daiquiri, I maintain the gin and tonic comparison). He can take the ship through the smaller pieces of ice, the ship shoves them aside, but it’s impossible to shove or move the larger icebergs. When I went to grab my laptop out of my cabin I looked outside the porthole and just a few feet away was a solid wall of glacier ice, the port side of the ship was sitting next to an iceberg that measured about 15m/50 high. And that’s a small iceberg. We’ve seen bergs that are so huge that they look like tremendous walls of ice, or small glaciers themselves. It’s unreal.
Because there is so much ice in the fjord, moving the ship is very slow going. The CTD casts are conducted in lines across the fjord in order to get a picture of water currents and movement. The ship is trying to follow straight lines across the fjord that are drawn on the chart, but in reality, it’s impossible to follow them due to all of the giant icebergs in the water. The ship’s actual course is a zigzag on the chart, not a straight line.
It is crazy beautiful here. After close to two months without sunrises and sunsets, it’s nice to be at a latitude where we can enjoy them again. We have been very lucky with the weather and the skies have been clear, so when the sun sets at night it casts a pink and orange glow on the ice in the fjord. Two nights ago we saw some faint northern lights that was also a treat.
After today we have three more days in Sermilik Fjord before departing Tasiilaq late on August 25 and heading north toward Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier, and then on to 79 Glacier even further north up the east coast of Greenland. This period in Sermilik Glacier is our busiest, most hectic time on the entire three-month expedition, and so far it is going swimmingly well, better than I ever expected. The factors that guarantee a successful expedition in the Arctic are a good crew, and lots of luck.
We’ve got an amazing team on board, even after almost three months on board together everyone is working hard and doing great work. All we need is for our “luck of the Irish” to continue to hold.
Melanie is an expedition leader on board the Arctic Sunrise