After nineteen days on the ice shelf we’re all happy to be back on board Oden, with access to saunas, showers, and the wonders of the galley.  In those nineteen days we drilled through the ice shelf at three sites, one near the grounding line where the glacier first goes afloat, with the other two… Read More Collecting Data from the Ice Shelf – sediments, oceanography, and ice thickness.

Sediment cores are tubes of marine sediments that are collected vertically from the sea floor. These tubes of mud provide valuable records of climatic and environmental change. But, before we can begin to interpret these changes the sediment cores go through an organized stream of measurements and description, this all takes place in the sediment… Read More Sediment Cores: Core Description Team

Before arriving to Petermann glacier, the Boulder Team looked at aerial photos of Washingtonland, located to the west of the glacier, to determine the best camping site for our three-week field study. We wanted to be close to a rich sampling area and somewhere relatively sheltered and flat to make for easy camping. While on… Read More Boulder Sampling Alongside Petermann Glacier; camping logistics and lateral moraines

A few days ago my husband Paul and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary by splitting cores collected from Nares Strait and Petermann Fjord.  In spite of the high-velocity mud spatter, this ‘celebration’ was fairly sentimental for us: we got to know each other splitting cores on the exact same circular saw frame, nearly nine… Read More The Life-Cycle of a Sediment Core aboard the I/B Oden

People have been mapping the seafloor for ages.  A statue found in an Egyptian tomb from 2000 BC shows a seaman using a weighted line to measure the depth of the water ahead of his vessel.  For the next almost 4000 years, seafarers used variations of the same technique – dropping a weighted “lead-line” to… Read More Mapping the Seafloor: how sound revolutionized our understanding of the bottom of the ocean

We left Petermann fjord with a bang, literally. While shooting big compressed air bubbles into the water with the injector air gun, the Oden sailed into Hall Basin.   Earth science is mostly a very tangible science. You can touch a rock, run your fingers through sand, study a fossil with the naked eye, but… Read More Seismic reflection profiling: Going “underground”

‘Let’s start by observing the modern environment,’ Alan Mix, co-chief scientist, says while looking out over a series of terraces, cut down the middle by a braided river.  We hike from the helicopter drop off to the modern delta where sea ice and icebergs have washed up and sit perched on the shoreline.  Our goal… Read More A Terraced Terrain Indicates Sea Level Change

Here are our thoughts, voyagers’ thoughts, Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be said, The sky o’erarches here, we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet, We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion. The tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of the… Read More Every Arctic Voyage Needs a Mammal Observer…

  The Oden set a course for Petermann Glacier last Wednesday and after powering through the sea-ice for about four days, we have now reached the mouth of Petermann Fjord. The various research groups onboard the ship have been busy preparing their equipment and safety gear in order to be ready to work as soon… Read More Boulder Team awaiting deployment, after successful entry into Petermann Fjord

Our journey begins below the Arctic Circle, in Kangerlussuaq, a former US military base on the west coast of Greenland. The rounded, glacial landscape is covered in low, coarse brush, Muskoxen browse the tundra and a raging river drains the ice from Russell Glacier further inland.   Kangerlussuaq is a small airport village of about… Read More From Kangerlussuaq to the I/B Oden, getting underway….