It has been a race against the clock from the very start. Our time on the Arctic Sunrise was limited to a total of 12 days - subtracting 36 hours on each side for transit leaves you with a grand total of 9 days to perform a scientific operation that is usually done on a 40 day cruise.
This meant working pretty much 24/7 (facilitated by daylight day and night). You still try and keep a semi-regular routine, getting up for breakfast, having fixed lunch and dinner times, but working shifts 0-4am, then 4-8am the next night and so on makes things really confusing after a while.
We were powering along with surprising success, had already scanned top and bottom of 3 floes and ventured further into the pack, mooring to a 4th. Weather was clear, but the wind had picked up and the currents were strong. On ice work was going swimmingly, Joseph and Will scanning away and we were drilling hole after hole. The ice started to close in slowly, but the currents seemed to calm down a bit so the AUV went in the water. But what we had been seeing on the ship was deceptive and the currents at 20m depth were stronger than ever - and before anyone could react the beloved Fish was swept 200m downstream and soon enough stopped talking to us. A hectic 24 hours of search operations followed, but these were increasingly impeded by the closing ice. And then, on Tuesday morning, nothing was moving no more.
No comments:
Post a Comment