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By: Olivia Adams
My name is Olivia Adams and I am currently a fourth-year undergraduate at Pennsylvania State University studying Earth Science with a minor in Marine Science. I sailed Expedition 398P, JR Academy, aboard the JOIDES Resolution in February 2023. As part of the STEMSEAS network, I was able to apply to be a research assistant on a month-long scientific cruise in the Arctic Circle with a group of scientists from around the world. That experience is described below:
I spent the month of November 2023 aboard the R/V Kronprins Haakon, a Norwegian icebreaker, in the Norwegian Sea. Through a collaboration with the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and STEMSEAS, two STEMSEAS alum were selected to participate in the Northern Ocean Surface Evolution (NORSE) 2023 cruise. This was the third and final cruise of the project bringing together researchers from the Multiscale Ocean Dynamics (MOD) lab at Scripps, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, the Applied Physics Lab at University of Washington, the Applied Research Lab at University of Texas at Austin, University of Bergen in Norway, and Centre for Marine Research and Experimentation in Italy. While I am only a fourth-year undergraduate student at Penn State, I was accepted straight into the science party and was treated equally alongside graduate students, postdocs, research scientists, engineers, and principal investigators alike.
The vessel was built in 2018 and is equipped with all the newest technologies. We joked we were on a vacation cruise rather than a scientific cruise as the vessel had a massage chair, a sauna, and multiple comfortable places to relax and do work. We spent most of our three weeks at sea out by the small volcanic island of Jan Mayen, Norway looking at the front between the Greenland Meltwater (cold and fresh, aka minty) and the Atlantic water (warm and salty, aka spicy) and how they interacted. We spent one day at the beginning in the Lofoten Basin Eddy to deploy some floats and SVP Drifters to track the movement of the eddy.
I awoke at 0230 every morning to be in the Education Lab by 0300 for the beginning of the Sunrise Squad shift. Everyday our tasks varied a little based on the location of the ship and the experiments being run, but most days we profiled. Profiling meant standing outside on the back deck in steel-toed boots, lifejacket, hardhat, and too many layers to move to operate the electric fishing reel with the Fast CTD profiler or the EPSIfish profiler. Both instruments measure temperature, salinity (conductivity), and depth/pressure. The CTD measures chlorophyll, back scatter, dissolved oxygen, and dissolved organic matter. The EPSI measures turbulence. To profile, we let the instrument free fall through the water column until the fishing reel hit 1700 turns (roughly 200 meters depth) then we slowly returned the instrument to the surface of the water and then started the process again. During profiling shifts, each of us would be on deck for an hour at a time with a half hour overlap with someone else. This meant there was always two people on deck and we got a chance to work with and talk to each person on our shift at some point during our three weeks at sea.
Some days, we would deploy and/or recover the Bow Chain. The Bow Chain is a 30-meter-long cord with 59 RBR Thermistors fastened at 0.5-meter intervals. The chain has a 200-pound weight at the bottom that keeps it vertical in the water column as the ship moves. The top of the Bow Chain is secured to a float on the surface of the water that is attached to the bow of boat. This instrument is deployed off the bow to avoid measuring any mixing of the water column caused by the ship. The Bow Chain can pick up on microscale changes in surface layer temperature and salinity data. Using the bow chain data, we were able to identify some interesting filament fluctuations in the surface water. Each time the Bow Chain was recovered, we downloaded the data. This involved individually unscrewing and plugging in the RBR Thermistor to a computer. After downloading the data, we cleaned and greased the O-ring and marked the Thermistor as good to be redeployed with a piece of tape.
Our last morning on shift, I helped another member of the science party deploy the V-Wing off the back of the ship. The V-Wing works in tandem with the Bow Chain to understand the surface anomalies. The V-Wing has a 200-meter-long cord with RBR and Concerto Thermistors secured at a certain interval with the V-Wing body at the bottom measuring turbulence.
On days we were not profiling, we spent our shift as helping hands on deck if needed. On last year’s NORSE cruise, they deployed four moorings on the Jan Mayen Ridge, which we recovered this year. Two of the moorings were acoustic moorings from UT Austin’s Applied Research Lab. One was the “source” and one was the “receiver.” There were also two environmental moorings, one from UT and one from University of Bergen. In addition to the moorings, we had several gliders. Two gliders were recovered that had been out since early summer collecting data. We deployed three other gliders which we recovered at the end of the trip. The University of Bergen glider was supposed to stay out until June and head down to Iceland, but it was recovered due to an issue with one of the salinity probes. There were also 12 SWIFTS on board that were deployed and recovered during the cruise. I did not do any work with a SWIFTS as researchers from U Washington’s Applied Physics Lab did all the deck and data work with them. We also had the DBASIS/Wire Walker, which is a meteorological buoy with a 200–400-meter wire off it that has an instrument walking up and down taking temperature, salinity, chlorophyll, and back scatter (and maybe more) measurements.
One of the questions the science party was hoping to answer was how water masses change in response to surface forcings (storms). We happened to have a storm roll through while we were out by Jan Mayen (which everyone was excited about). Due to some rough conditions, we spent two days in “hiding” in the lee of the Jan Mayen volcano, and were unable to actively profile. We had several SWIFTS, gliders, and the DBASIS out in the height of the storm sending back data. The maximum wave height the ship saw was around 4.5 meters, but the SWIFTS recorded waves of up to 7 meters in other parts of the basin. After the storm, profiling continued. Analysis of changes in the mixed layer were ongoing when we disembarked and I am unsure of the patterns seen post-storm. I am beyond grateful for this opportunity, thanks to ONR, STEMSEAS, and MOD. This cruise paired with my STEMSEAS cruise from Heraklion, Greece to Tarragona, Spain aboard the JOIDES Resolution for JR Academy in February 2023, has changed my outlook on my career path. I plan to continue onto graduate school for a Masters in Geoscience this coming fall focusing on paleoclimate and mass extinctions. After graduate school, I plan to secure a job where I can continue to do shipboard research and paleoceanography. Hopefully I will stay in touch with the science party from the NORSE 23 cruise and continue to see the research resulting from the data we collected!
