We sat in our snug lab while sheets of rain bearing ice pellets pelted against the windows. The Chukchi Sea is very angry, with big rollers breaking on a narrow beach. Few people are about, the weather is too awful (plus it is Labor Day weekend). Annika Marie was moved down south deeper into Elson Lagoon to be sheltered from the wind that was coming from the SW. Winds from the west bring big seas and swell in the Chukchi, and threaten the road that we take out to Niksiuraq to board the boat. Previous storms have already eaten away at the shoulder of the road, exposing the bags of sand used in previous repairs that now lie like large hippopotamuses in the surf zone. Perhaps tomorrow we’ll ride out and see if there is anything left of our passage to the boat.
Coming into Elson: The sky as we came home was quite lovely. This was at about 10 PM. Photo courtesy Dr. Carin Ashjian. August 2014.
The weather was benevolent when we first arrived but has taken a turn for the worse.
On Friday we ventured out to sample along a transect that extends across Barrow Canyon from south of town (down by Monument). The transect is one that is sampled by many oceanographic vessels that come to this region, both US and international. By all sampling the same line, we can collect a record of how the ocean varies annually and interannually and evolves through the summer season. As we drove out to the boat, we thought that the Chukchi Sea looked….OK. When we reached Niksiuraq, we started to have second thoughts. Elson Lagoon had significant waves. And we have to get in a small rubber boat to reach the Annika Marie? Yikes. Recipe for wet pants. We decided to give it a shot though and headed out through Plover Pass into the Beaufort and then around to the west into the Chukchi.
It was definitely marginal. Work was difficult, we devoted significant energies to maintaining our positions on the deck or in the cabin. Leaning against cabinetry as the boat sways back and forth in the swell can produce some interesting bruises! As we went further out, and as the day progressed, the seas picked up and soon we were seeing whitecaps and eventually 5’ rollers. We were able to tow our acoustic Doppler current profiler only for 2 segments of the 9 segment line and then had to pull it out because the seas were too rough. We also had to curtail our sampling with Niskin bottles and the Tucker trawl at some stations. Despite the difficulties, and the resemblance of our bodies to pinballs inside some insane pinball machine, we did sample with the CTD and ring net across the entire transect.
Johnny at the Winch: Johnny is the deckhand on the Annika Marie. He is from Seward AK. Photo courtesy of Dr. Carin Ashjian. August 2014.
As we approached the landward end of the line, the seas abated somewhat, perhaps because of location (out of the current) or perhaps because of the time of day (the weather was changing). It was an exhausting day. The boat is very seaworthy and we are not worried about her ability to handle the weather. And we know when to stop doing some of our sampling activities. But trying to work in all that motion is very difficult.
Waves over Barrow Canyon: Heading out to Barrow Canyon. The waves weren’t too bad in this photo. Photo courtesy of Dr. Carin Ashjian. August 2014.
In the middle of all of the hypermotion, it was a good day in the “galley” (well, Annika Marie doesn’t really have a galley). Phil made a rosemary Italian boule that came out fantastically, a great surprise since the oven is only at about 300 degrees. I made corn bean salad, which was a bit of an adventure as it required me to use a cook’s knife to dice the onion and peppers (just don’t put it down anywhere, don’t wave it around, and keep it away from everyone else in case there is a sudden lurch and involuntary gesticulation of the arm). Then for the main course, Steve baked some of his one-day smoked red salmon that he caught this summer in Cook Inlet. What a delicious dinner and a suitable reward for our trials during the day!
Dinner! A serving of salmon, the loaf of bread, and the salad. Better than most food we get in Barrow. Photo courtesy of Dr. Carin Ashjian. August 29th, 2014.
On the far side of the Canyon we caught a good bunch of the large copepod Calanus glacialis and even more of the very large Arctic Ocean species Calanus hyperboreus. So the water there must have come into the Canyon at its mouth from the Arctic. On the near side of the Canyon, we caught far fewer copepods and more amphipods and other taxa. At our last station, closest to land, we caught a bunch of pterpods that showed up as black beads in our sieves.
Coming Home: A panoramic view of the stern of Annika Marie as we were coming home. The Chukchi Sea is behind us. We were going about 16 knots. Photo courtesy Dr. Carin Ashjian. August 2014.
So here we sit, waiting for the weather to become more benevolent.
Two days ago the forecast was for 40 knot winds Tuesday. Luckily, things have changed for the better, now they are forecasting 25 knot winds. But this is the Arctic – the weather forecast (and weather) can change in hours….we will just keep hoping for another nice day on which to go out. The wind looks lower tomorrow but I fear that the seas will not abate for a while.
Upcoming www.wunderground.com weather forecast for Barrow Alaska. September 2nd, 2014.
Lights over NARL: The odd colors of NARL are illuminated by this intense clear light. NARL is the Naval Arctic Research Lab. The whole complex belonged to the Navy in the 60s and 70s. The Navy is long gone but the name remains. Some of the Quonset huts in the photo are residences. Others are part of Ilisagvik College. The bones in the foreground are from bowhead whales. Photo courtesy Dr. Carin Ashjian. August 2014.