While the amount of daylight each day is only minutes and we spend most of our watch in the Main Lab (with no windows), some people are beginning to miss the sun! Joel's wife, Martha, was concerned that Joel may begin to feel the effect of the lack of sunlight, so she gave him a Blue Therapy Light before he left. Blue Therapy Lights are used to treat Seasonal Affective Disorder or the “Winter Blues”. Joel offered his Blue Therapy Light to me yesterday, so I tried it out! He made a joke that someone as happy as I am may be doing cartwheels after using the light. The light was interesting...I am not sure I “felt” a difference, but we will see how I feel as the voyages continues over the next 4 weeks.
Ms. Rose using Joel's Blue Therapy Light for Seasonal Affective Disorder - although she is feeling just FINE!
Yesterday, the CTD casts finally began to show some variation. We had been in fairly well mixed, shallow waters so the graphs from the CTD data were essentially straight vertical lines. On the following graphs, temperature is plotted in red, oxygen in blue, fluorescence in orange and salinity in green. The lines that we are most interested in are the temperature and salinity plots. The Fluorescence plot tells us that there is not much phytoplankton in the water which would be expected this time of the year. Oxygen is important so that we know how much oxygen is available to zooplankton and bacteria in the water.
In the shallower waters, our CTD graphs were showing well mixed waters with no thermocline or halocline.
The water deepened yesterday on the Hannah Shoal and we were able to detect a thermocline and halocline in the data. On the following graph, you can see how the red line goes straight down until it reaches about 47 meters, then it drops more dramatically. The area where it drops dramatically is called the thermocline. That signals a different mass or type of water. You can also see the halocline, the area where the green salinity line increases dramatically at about the same point.
We can finally see a thermocline and a halocline...CTD Graph from November 18.
It was such big news that the CTD showed some variation that everyone gathered around the computer screen to watch the data come in!
Everyone gathered around the computer monitor for the CTD data - finally something more than vertical lines!
We were treated to KING CRAB at lunch today, along with a seafood feast of shrimp, scallops, steak fries and bread. Thank you HEALY Mess staff! TASTY!
The HEALY Mess Staff ROCKS - a seafood FEAST - King Crab, scallops and shrimp!
As always, I will end my journal with a stunning shot of the Arctic winter landscape...it is one of the most amazing places I have ever seen.
Each day in the Arctic is another opportunity to appreciate our wonderful planet!
New Vocabulary
Thermocline: - A layer in a large body of water, such as a lake, that sharply separates regions differing in temperature, so that the temperature gradient across the layer is abrupt.
Halocline: - A relatively sharp discontinuity in ocean salinity at a particular depth. In general, water with a higher concentration of salinity sinks below water that is less saline; therefore, saltier haloclines lie below less salty ones. An exception is the surface halocline of the Arctic Ocean, which is both colder and more saline than the warmer Atlantic water beneath it and which protects the polar ice from melting from below.
Question of the Day
Looking at Graph 2, explain why the density of the mass of water below 47 meters is different than the density of the mass of water at more shallow depths.
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