Ice for the Icebreaker Healy!
We have been in ice for almost a full day...it is AMAZING! The Healy is truly an incredible ship. We cut through the ice like it is nothing. By the way, the Healy is the ONLY Icebreaker owned by the United States that is capable of doing this Arctic winter mission. The ship vibrates and rumbles. The lower the deck you are on, the louder the ice crushing sounds. We have been traveling at about 7 knots through the ice, so it has not been that thick, mostly first year ice. At dinner, the crushing noise was almost deafening.
The wake of the Healy in sea ice
Yesterday, I posted in my journal how sea ice is formed. After I posted my journal, we got to SEE many of those stages. I never knew sea ice could look so different. I had a difficult time staying inside ...I didn't want to miss anything that was happening in the water. It is so beautiful and unlike anything I have ever seen.
Thin sea ice as the water reaches the freezing point
Sea ice pancakes being frozen together
Sea ice pancakes with patches of open water
The Earth rotates on it's axis once every 24 hours, that makes one day. On the Autumnal and Vernal equinox, the hours of daylight and darkness are exactly the same – 12 hours of daylight, 12 hours of darkness. The Earth is also titled on it's axis at 23.5 degrees. Because we are so far north, when the sun does rise, it is very close to the horizon. It does not rise over our head as it would in Ohio. When it is daylight here, the sun looks very much like a sunset would - a sunset that lasts 4 hours.
The sun is always low on the horizon when it is up
I spent some time on the Bridge, with David, “the Bird-Man”. David is aboard the Healy doing a survey of marine mammals and birds for the US Fish and Wildlife agency. He stands on the Bridge during the daylight hours and records every bird or mammal he sees. Thank you Brian for letting me use your awesome binoculars!
Ms. Rose on the Bridge looking for birds and mammals
I spotted Ivory Gulls – a species of bird that only lives in the high Arctic and SEALS!! That was amazing. You are looking out on the horizon at miles and miles of white ice, then you see black dots. Sometimes they are together in a group, sometimes they are alone. All of those black dots were seals! Yesterday, more than 200 seals were spotted. This is a young seal David captured with his camera.
Young seal on the ice in the Chukchi Sea
This morning we hosted our first PolarTREC LIVE event from the Healy! There were more than 200 students on the call. USCG Healy Captain, CAPT Havlik, Dr, Ashjian Chief Scientist and myself gave a 30 minute presentation on our mission thus far and answered many great questions! Thank you everyone who participated in the LIVE event, it was so much fun!
Chief Scientist Dr. Carin Ashjian and USCG Captain CAPT Havlik
Standing on the Weather Deck with the Arctic sun, and the sea ice in the Chukchi Sea will be a memory I have for a lifetime.
An amazing Arctic sunset in the Chukchi Sea
Stay tuned as we continue our exciting voyage on the USCG Cutter Healy. Until then...
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever” - Mohandas Gandhi