By Ole Valk | The in-situ-pumps (ISP) are a very important scientific instrument on this expedition for the GEOTRACES-Team. These pumps are deployed on a rope and then they are going to the deep, distributed over several depths. There they pump for 2.5 hours sea water, which is going through ...[Read more]
Archives for September 2015
The Dirty ice blog
By Sandra Gdaniec | A couple of days ago we found something we have been waiting for and hoping to find during this expedition, namely ice rafted sediment, or as we like to call it, “dirty ice”. The ice is dirty because sediment and/or suspended particles from rivers have been incorporated ...[Read more]
Besides work
By Christiane Uhlig | After more than four weeks on TransArc II and getting used to the long and sometimes spontaneous working days, everybody on board has found his or her special leisure time occupation. Some use the time to relax with their favourite book, a Sudoku game or a simple lunchtime ...[Read more]
An Arctic deep sea volcano
By Joshua Kiesel and Franz Schroeter | We have successfully finished the transit from the 30 to 60 degrees of longitude and are now on the Gakkel Ridge, the doorstep of the North Pole. The Gakkel Ridge was named, in the 1960s, for a Soviet scientist. In 2001 the research vessels Polarstern ...[Read more]
Inter-calibration at the North Pole
By Ursula Schauer | On September 7, 2015 Polarstern reached the geographic North Pole. Already from some distance we recognized the outline of another ship: the US Coast Guard Cutter Healy. The officer on duty, Igor Hering, was steering the ship through the dense ice cover while it slowly ...[Read more]
Ice is nice
By Erika Allhusen, Robert Ricker, Hazel Hartman-Jenkins, Andreas Krell, Gerhard Diekmann, Ellen Damm | As Miss Smilla searched snow and ice for clues to solve an arctic crime; similarly, we search the arctic icepack to for answers to a variety of scientific questions. How is biomass ...[Read more]