Hello again,
This week was a little slow on the Healy (literally and figuratively). We were transiting through really thick sheets of ice, and also celebrated the 4th of July. The festivities included movies like Independence Day and American favorites like grilled burgers, hotdogs, and of course popcorn. Although I did miss out on celebrating with friends and family back home, not many people can say they celebrated a major national holiday while transiting through ice in the Arctic Ocean.
Even though we had a slow week, we had some amazing wildlife encounters, seeing plenty more pinnipeds, but more amazing was seeing numerous polar bears, including a mother escorting her two cubs! Seeing these wild creatures in their natural habitat was truly exciting and it was fun seeing all the crew trying to find them with binoculars or telescopes.
As this leg of the cruise is coming close to an end, I have become much more versed in the more important underway collection equipment like the echo sounders and the water walls. While a wastewater dump was happening, we realized we had to turn off our seawater collection to avoid contamination and bad data. This allowed me to learn how to use the freshwater systems to flush both water walls. Now that I have more experience I was tasked with opening one of the water walls entirely on my own while Christina was opening the other water wall. It is beneficial to open both at the same time because the seawater flow goes through the main wall, then continues on to the second wall so when you adjust the flow on one it affects the flow to the other. You generally want the flows to stay the same across both water walls during data collection.
It’s now been a few days since we have been out of the ice but it was a crazy experience hearing and feeling the crushing and scraping against the hull and a totally different experience to being rocked to sleep by the waves. Not to mention not seeing a sunset for almost two weeks!
