DeDe's adventures in the Arctic
My Aunt DeDe sent this interesting narrative to me via e-mail in late August 2003:
For those of you who didn't
know about this in advance, I am on the US
Coast Guard icebreaker Healy and we have just completed a transit of the
Northwest Passage. Al Hayashida, a colleague from work and I got to join
them for this leg of the trip in addition to the upcoming leg for which we
were originally invited. I have been trying to keep sort of a log of what
has happened and what we've seen. I thought you might find it interesting.
Warning: you might want to get out a map that shows Greenland and the
Canadian archipelago. We will be heading into Barrow, Alaska, in a few
days to drop off some of the scientists and journalists from this leg of
the trip and pick up new ones on Saturday, the 30th. Unfortunately, we
can't send photos via this email system because of a limit on the message
size. I do have some good ones, though, and will be happy to show them to
you at some point!
13 Aug - Flew from San Diego to Albany. Spent the night in Schenectady.
14 Aug - Went to the Norman
Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA. Then, we
went to 1 Indian Kill in Scotia, NY, Ellen and Pat's former home. It is
now painted green and looks like the present owners are taking good care of
it. We were in the local Super KMart buying snacks for the plane flight to
Thule the next day when "the lights went out." Luckily our hotel only
lost
power briefly, but almost everything in Schenectady was black. It took
quite a while for us to find a place for dinner and an open gas station.
15 Aug - We went to the local
Air Force Base in Scotia and were given a
flight brief before we piled into a C130 cargo plane. There were two large
containers of cargo - one containing all of our luggage and one with things
for the ship. We sat along the outside edge of the plane on fold down
canvas seats with webbed backs. They were actually more comfortable than
we expected. There was a thermos of water and one of coffee for the 7 1/2
hour flight. Everyone made themselves comfortable and read
or slept. It was too noisy to really carry on a conversation. We were a
mixed group of about 25 scientists, engineers, photographers and
journalists along with one Coast
Guard commander. Counting CDR April, there were 4 women. When we landed
at the Air Force Base in Thule, Greenland, we were warmly greeted and shown
to the local North Star Inn.
16 Aug - We went to the pier
and rode an Air Force tugboat out to the USCGC
Healy. Healy is the newest of the Coast Guard's icebreakers and she was
really designed to do science. There is lots of lab space, lots of
computer capacity, lots of oceanographic equipment already installed, big
winches, lots of deck space and two heliocopters to support experiments in
the vicinity of the ship. To find out more about the ship, go to:
http://www.uscg.mil/pacarea/healy
17 Aug - We got a tour of
all of the science spaces today from Dale Chayes,
the Chief Scientist, from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia
University. We have worked on other projects with Dale over the last
several years, including the SCICEX program where civilian scientists could
propose experiments and ride on Navy submarines to collect data. One great
feature on the Healy is that all the oceanographic equipment on board gets
navigation data from the ship's Integrated Bridge System (IBS) and a time
stamp from a GPS. That makes tieing all the data together later much
easier! My stateroom can accomodate 3 people (2 in bunk beds and 1 on a
converted couch) but was really designed for 2 - there are only 2 desks,
for example. Two staterooms share a bathroom in between them. My
stateroom is on the 02 level - two decks above the main deck - on the port
side. It is right across the passageway from the Scientists' Conference
Room/Library/Lounge. There is a lot more room here than on a submarine.
My next door nieghbors are Stephanie, a wildlife biologist who works for
the Coast Guard, and Natasha, a writer/correspondent for Outside magazine.
Kevin Wood from NOAA gave a talk tonight about "Arctic Climate During the
Age of Exploration." According to him, the conditions reported by the
early Arctic explorers are quite similar to what was seen in the 20th
century.
18 Aug - Today we got watch
rotations set up for gathering all the
different types of observations while we are underway: oceanographic data,
bird and mammal sightings, electric propulsion data, and ice reconnaisance
(sp?) data. Al and I will be part of the team gathering the oceanographic
data. We all got training on how to use the Science Data Network aboard
the ship and the computer guru set my laptop up with a wireless ethernet
card so I can take it anywhere on the ship and hook into their system -
quite handy. This email will go out over the Iridium satellite telephone
system. They have another system that uses InMarSat to send email, too.
We were given mailboxes on both systems in case one is not working! The
InMarSat system provides us live Internet access twice a day for an hour
each time. So, we may be in a place where very few people have gone, but
we have good communications back to our regular jobs, etc. Al and I did
wash this afternoon and he was surprised to see that there are about 10
washers and 10 dryers here for the 50-60 crew members plus the science
party (we're about 25) because on a submarine with 130 people there is 1
washer anad 1 dryer. Ah, the luxury of space.
19 Aug - Well, I went out
on the 02 deck forward of our staterooms to watch
them hoist the anchor at about 10 am. One of the professional photograp
hers was out there taking photos, too. I'm sure my pictures won't be
nearly as good as his, but it was fun to watch. It involved about 8 crew
members, each with one specific job. Going our of the harbor at Thule and
crossing Baffin Bay we got to see some beautiful icebergs. They were much
larger than the ship in many cases. Of course, we didn't get oo close to
any of them! Everyone was out on deck taking photos around midnight
because the sky was beautiful as the sun was getting lower on the horizon.
I don't think it actually did set tonight. I think the first true sunset
will be on Tues.
20 Aug - I got up around
6 a.m. and looked outside to see that we were
just about to enter Glacier Strait between Ellesmere Island and Coburge
Island. I was torn between running outside to take some photos or taking a
shower. For everyone else's benefit, I took the shower first! Then, I
bundled up and went out. My stateroom is on the port side of the 02 deck.
So, I can walk out forward to the small deck area above the main deck and
below the bridge. It was so windy that I made sure each camera (digital
and point-and-shoot 35 mm) was wrapped around my neck or wrist to prevent
any loss. Coburg Island was shrouded in mist and the southeastern corner
of Ellesmere looks pretty bleak/rugged. The heliocopter pilots did the
flight ops brief and Joshua, one of the freelance photographers, and
Natasha, the Outside magazine writer, went off with thems to Grise Fiord.
There was a student from that part of Ellesmere on the last leg of the
journey and the Coast Guard needed to drop off the styrofoam cups they
shrank for everyone from that village! (I'm glad they have their
priorities straight!) They sent the styrofoam cups down in a laundry bag
when they did a cast for water samples and the increased pressure squeezes
the air out of the styrofoam cups and turns them into miniatures.
Today was clear and brisk and quite windy at times. I took
quite a few photos as we went into Jones Sound around Coburg Island and
then came back out via Lady Ann Strait. Then, we turned south along Devon
Island. Near the end of the day we entered Lancaster Sound - 100 years to
the day since Amundsen did! Al Martin, another writer on board, wrote an
article about that. I think you should be able to find it on the Healy
website.
Al and I got a tour of the power plant spaces this afternoon
from one of the Mississippi State profs. There are two of them and then
about 6 guys from Northrup Grumman doing a study of the propulsion system
and the power usage during various ship operations. They are especially
interested in what happens once we start breaking ice. There are 4 huge
diesel motor generators that provide the electric power for the shafts.
Tonight Stephanie and Marc Webber did a talk about how to identify marine
mammals from the ship and what ones we are likely to see.
21 Aug - Now we are in Lancaster
Sound, south of Devon Island. I think
Callan would love to see these islands - they look very interesting and
quite different in structure as we go along. It is more ice-free on the
north side of the sound, so we will hug that side as we head west. I go out
on deck about 10 times a day to see what I can see and take photos. We
went up to the bridge this morning and talked to the mammal watchers and
Christopher from the National Ice Center and Yves from the Canadian Ice
Service. Their main job is to advise the captain and chief scientst on ice
conditions as we enter the areas that contain heavy ice floes. Yves also
reports to his home office in Ottawa to give visual confirmation of ice
conditions that have been reported by satellite images. I also got a good
less on binoculars from Marc, the Paciific Walrus management specialist.
Dale Chayes gave a little talk tonight about the multibeam
swathmapper (measures bathymetry - ocean depth in a wide swath, width =
about 2 times the water depth as the ship goes over it), the Acoutic
Doppler Current Profilers (ADCPs) (measures currents in various layers of
the water), the sub-bottom profiler (looks at eh different layers of
sediment, etc., on the ocean bottom) and the thermosalinographs (measure
temperature and salinity of the water), all the things we keep an eye on
during our watch. Mostly we are just looking at displays to make sure they
are continually updating and then checking periodically to see that the
data files are growing in size. The computer lab is at the aft end of the
ship on the 01 deck. I usually take a couple of short walks up to the
flight deck or over to the starboard side of the ship to see what's going
on when I start to get sleepy or bored.
Today we went by Beechey Island, Wellington Channel, and
Conrwallis Island, then went through Resolute Strait near sunset. I could
just barley see some buildings on a little ridge. We'll cross the entrance
to McDougall Sound early tomorrow.
22 Aug - Well, I missed the
polar bear last night. They saw him at about
11:45 p.m. from the bridge. Evidently they could watch him with the
binoculars for about 10 minutes. Stephanie was pleased that they had paged
her and she got to see it. Today there have been lots of bearded seals and
a couple of ring seals. I have a photo with one of the bearded seals head
out of the water. I saw him in the water next to the ship as I was walking
from the Computer Lab (aft) toward my cabin (forward). So I stopped to
watch him and then saw another one a little ways ahead of the ship sunning
himself on the ice. I got to watch him dive into the water.
We were crunching through fairly dense ice (~9/10) this
morning, so Yves, the Canadian ice observer, and Christopher, from the
National Ice Center, got to go up in the helo and look for a good route for
the next 6 hours or so. They also saw a polar bear, about 18 miles ahead
of us. Maybe he'll still be around when we get up there! Now we're
hugging the northern edge of Barrow Strait, along the southern edge of
Bathurst Island.
Early this afternnon, they passed the word that a polar bear
had been sighted about a mile ahead of the ship. I was on my way back to my
cabin, so I grabbed the digital camera and headed out onto the foredeck
Anyway, sure enough, right ahead of us in the middle of a fair-sized floe
stood a polar bear. I had fooled with the digital camera and found that you
can only turn the digital zoom on in a few modes, so I quickly flipped to
one of them and turned it on. I got about 5 shots of the bear in various
stages of lumbering away from the ship. He didn't quite fill the viewfinder
and the ship was of course heaving some, so I wasn't sure what I'd get.
They are quite grainy, but you can certainly tell there's a polar bear
there!
Tonight, Rubin Sheinberg, from the Coast Guard Logistics Center gave a
talk about new Coast Guard ships with stern chutes that small boats can be
launched and retrieved in. I didn't know they made those kinds of ships.
Before going to bed, I always go out on deck to see if there's anything
exciting going on. I try to remember to bring my camera. Well, there were
beautiful pink and red clouds when I went out and then I ran into 3 of the
Northrop Grumman guys by the starboard rail and they had just spotted a
mother polar bear and 2 cubs getting out of the water not too far off. In
my excitement, I thought I had put the digital zoom on (because it turns
off when you shut the camera off), but evidently didn't. So, I have about 6
shots with beautifully colorful clouds and three tiny bear spots. Then,
they turned the ship some and went in to tell Al, etc., that they needed to
grab their cameras and come out. This time I did get the digital zoom on,
but they were further away. Still, I have ~15 shots of them as they took
off away from the ship.
23 Aug -This morning when
I got up we were in open water in Visocunt
Melville Sound, but Yves, the Canadian "ice pick" (since he chooses
the
best route through the ice), said we would be getting into more ice later
today. Today's exciting sighting was a bowhead whale (Stephanie saw it
spout). Evidently we were/are outside its known area, so Stephanie was
quite excited and said she'd have to send a note into Mammals-R-Us (I can't
remember the name of the journal).
Another highlight today was the pudding eating contest. About 8
guys entered, including one of the young electrical engineers from Norhrop
Grumman, Charlie. Each person was given his choice of chocolate or vanilla
pudding - in a #10 can. Then, they had 15 minutes to each as much as they
could. A petty officer nicknamed Shrek was the winner. He ate about 5 lbs.
Charlie managed to eat about 3 lbs. Most folks got queasy just watching!
Al and I came up with a revised watch schedule so everyone is "on watch"
about 6 hours per day and everyone seems to like it better than the old
one. It is nice to know that you have 6 hours that you need to be in the
computer lab, because then you can plan the other things you need to do
around that. Al and I had the late watch until midnight. Afterwards, I took
a few photos and then headed to bed. We had crunched some fairly
significant ice during the evening and that continued last night. Actually,
I had tried to take a nap during the afternoon and was awakened when we hit
the first serious ice, ~ 4:15 p.m. It's hard to take a good still picture
to show the ice breaking... We were crossing Viscount Melville Sound from
Melville Island over towards Prince of Wales Strait. They decided not to
even try to go through McClure Strait because it is packed with pretty
thick multi-year ice that is very strong.
24 Aug - Just as I got up
this morning we entered Prince of Wales Strait.
It was rainy and pretty misty. It hasn't gotten much better, but we did get
into some more ice. It seemed pretty old/strong and the ship did a
"bollard" - not sure whether that is spelled correctly or not. They
put the
engines on full, but just push against the ice and not really go forward.
Indeed, in this case, they were drifting backwards with the current. It
gave them a reason to turn on a third engine. The Northrop Grumman guys
were running around to make sure that all their systems were recording data
from various parts of the shop's propulsion system so they wouldn't miss
it. They were really excited and said this is the only place you can do a
test like this! Of course, we didn't get very good bathymetry data while
they were doing their test - sometimes the ship was just shuddering.
I had the morning off, so I took some photos out of my
porthole showing the different ice conditions. Then, I went out on the
flight deck and took some photos of the Princess Royal Islands in the
middle of the strait. Al and I had the third shift today, but we also set
the local time back by 4 hours so that we'd be on Alaska time. So, we all
stayed up a few hours later and we stood watch a couple of extra hours.
The food is quite good and
tonight's entree choices were King
crab legs or Beef Wellington. Sundays are always a little more laid-back
for the crew than the normal work routine during the week. Also, the
Sunday dinner is probably the best meal of the week, although I heard raves
about the Eggs Benedict for breakfast this morning.
Al did a slide show about
submarines in the Arctic and I
pitched in my views on a few things for tonight's seminar. Everyone seemed
to enjoy it.
25 Aug - We were just coming out into Amundsen Gulf south of Banks Island,
this morning when I got up.
In the morning it was sunny and fairly warm. While Al and I
were on watch the surface water temperature was up to about 3-4 degrees C
and it was very low salinity, like 25-26 ppt. The swathmapper was in
shallow mode since the water depth was <200m lots of the time, so I got to
try to keep up with the changing depth by manually moving the gates to tell
it where to look for good data. That was complicated by the fact that, at
times, there was a fairly dramatic cross-track slope of up to about 50m
over the 500 or so meters.
It got cloudier/foggier/nastier by early afternoon. Of course
that's when the bridge pipes that there are polar bears up ahead. Just
about everyone went out to look and shoot photos. It was another mother
with 2 cubs. In the cold rain it was hard to get good photos, but I got
similar ones to the ones I shot the other day. Then, I just stood and
watched them for another 5 minutes or so. Quite neat! Evidently there was
also a single bear later in the afternoon resting after his seal feast
(lots of blood, etc.), but only the folks on the bridge saw him.
Kevin Wood from NOAA gave a talk showing the sketches and
paintings that Arctic explorers made during the 19th century. It was really
nice that on each slide with the drawing/sketch he had a few words about
who, when, where and then a chartlet with the location marked. Of course,
while Kevin was speaking, the bridge piped that a polar bear was 500 yards
away off the starboard bow. Almost all of us were too polite to jump up and
go out and see him. Doug Jones, one of the Northrop Grumman guys said he
got a few good film shots.
John Trone, the photographer who is working with Al Martin on
PR stories for the ship sat across from me for dinner tonight and we
started talking about family, etc. When I mentioned that I had grown up in
Mass., he said his daughter was going to school in Boston. When I asked
where, he said Boston Architectural College (I think that's it proper
name). I laughed and told him that's where our nephew was headed in a
couple of weeks. Small world, huh? I'll have to tell Brad to look up
Carolyn Trone, a sophomore in Design.
26 Aug - .This morning while
we were on watch, I noticed that all of a
sudden all the navigation data we were getting as inputs for the multibeam
sonar were screwy - it was calculating speeds in excess of 100,000 kts and
the bearing was literally spinning the ship around. So, I called
1-800-Dale (actually, we all have pagers, so I just paged him) and asked
him if the ship was spinning around and he said, "No, why do you ask?"
Anyway, I also told him about the other navigation data and it said there
was a time stamp problem. He came down and looked at everything, with DeDe
peering over his shoulder and we discovered that somehow the ship's
navigation system thought it was Friday Aug. 29th at 3:00 p.m. What? Dale
called the bridge and then went up there. They didn't realize that there
was any problem until we pointed it out. They were impressed that we had
discovered it. Now, everything is back to normal and we are collecting
good data again.
Al and I talked with the
Operations Officer this morning
about whether the Healy could be used as a floating ice camp for submarine
exercises. That's one of the things we are checking out while we're here.
He said he'd get us some more information about costs, helicopter lift
capacity, etc. Al and I will write up a small report on that along with
our trip report when we return to work.
We were playing a game of
cribbage this afternoon when they
announced that polar bears were spotted off the starboard bow. I got out
there in time to see one in the water and the second one go in. The two of
them swam towards each other and then swam away from the ship. They really
are majestic creatures.
Tonight's seminar was given
by Dave Monahan, from the Canadian
Hydrographic Service. He spoke about Article 76 under the Law of the Sea
Treaty and Bathymetry. It was quite interesting and explained why the
2,500m contour is important to map accurately if the U.S. wants to claim
the continental shelf that extends out into the Beaufort and Chuckchi Seas.
We will map part of the 2,500 m contour along the Canadian and Alaskan
coasts during this part of the trip. On the next leg of the trip, we'll
head out from Barrow, Alaska to about 78 degrees N and look for the 2,500 m
contour and then follow it for a few days until the captain decides we need
to turn around to get back to Barrow for them to meet the next group of
scientists.
It was a little foggy this
morning, but got nicer as the day
went on. Kind of like San Diego - night and morning low clouds and clea
ring during the day!
27 Aug - The weather is not
looking so friendly today and they had to
cancel the helo ops scheduled for this morning. We are out in deep water
(>2000 m) headed west in the Beaufort. The word is that they are looking
for a big floe that Yves, the Canadian "Ice Pick" (ice forecaster/ice
recon) saw in some satellite imagery he got yesterday, so they can do ice
liberty for the crew. That might be fun!
We did do a detour into
the heavier ice, but they couldn't
find a place that looked good enough to let folks out to walk around, play
baseball, etc. There is plenty of ice, but its loose, weak multi-year pack
ice with lots of melt pools. It hopefully made some pretty photos at
least!
Our seminar tonight was
on the Ship's Propulsion System, by
the two professors from Mississippi State and the Northrop Grumman guys.
It was pretty good, too! There was a beautiful sunset tonight and we all
took more photos. I have volunteered to distribute photo disk to everyone
if they will post their photos to the Science Data Network here on the
ship. I can make master CDs before I get off and then mass produce them
once I get home. The people taking 35mm shots are going to get digital
versions made when they have them printed and send the digital copy to me
for inclusion on the CDs.
Aug. 28 - We couldn't have
asked for a prettier day. No on wants to sit in
their staterooms because it is just beautiful outside. The sun feels nice
and warm, but it is probably around 40 degrees. There is almost no wind,
so it seems much warmer than it ahs been. The sky is almost totally clear.
We're making zig-zags from about the 50m to the 2500m contours
crisscrossing some of the area that USS Hawkbill mapped in 1998 and 1999.
This will give them some tie points between the two data sets.
I was up at 5 am and took
a shower and printed out a few
things for ASL work before I went down to go on watch. It was pretty
enough then that I stopped on the 01 deck and took a few photos of the sun
behind a cloud and the small bits of ice floating by. During our watch, Al
typed my little cheat sheet of 3-hour position info into an Excel
spreadsheet. He also put everyone's addresses and email addresses in
another spreadsheet. I spend most of my time looking at the various
monitors and watching the "data" we're getting. We went over a pretty
sharp, steep slope and then back up the other side of what must be a
canyon. It looked cool on the SeaSurvey (multibeam) display.
Tonight, Joshua Paul, a
photographer, and Natasha Singer, a
writer/correspondent for Outside Magazine talked about their jobs and how
they got started and how they got to ride on this part of the trip. It was
quite interesting. Joshua has taken photos for some prestigious magazines,
including The New Yorker and Saveur. Natasha is very funny and seems to
enjoy somewhat quirky stories. She had gone to Talkeetna to cover the
annual bachelor auction for GQ and really enjoyed it. The folks there
liked her, too, and suggested that she come back for something truly
Alaskan rather than the big publicity thing she had seen. So, she went
back for the Carrhart Ball where everyone dresses in the oldest Carrharts
and tells stories about how their Carrharts saved their lives. It sounded
just wonderful - like something we would enjoy!
Aug. 29 - All the folks who
are getting off in Barrow tomorrow are packing
up, cleaning their rooms, etc. It has been a wonderful trip and a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I'll miss the new friends I've made, but
Al and I are also looking forward to this next leg of the trip. We should
see more serious ice conditions and how well the multibeam sonar works in
deep water with lots of ice crunching under the hull...In the shallow water
we've been in, we haven't really seen how well the multibeam can work (or
that's what Dale says anyway).
The next leg has lots of
bathymetry-types on board from
Sweden, Denmark, and the UK. Martin Jakobsson, who did that new colorful
Arctic bathymetric chart hanging in our front hall, and five other folks
from UNH will be coming along.