The AUV, sitting on the lab bench waiting for input. Photo: Marthe Austad
We embarked on this campaign in good spirit and were promised good meteorological conditions throughout the whole field work period. Foolishly, we believed our supervisor, the “bio-meteorologist”, little knowing that a storm would hit upon us on Wednesday. Wednesday started out calm as dead jelly (Scyphozoan) on the beach, giving the plankton group a chance to sample the daily snack for the microscope. As the day got older, the wind got stronger. The group working with light also got some of their measurements, enough to make a day out of it, together with data sorting. An AUV-mission was planned for the third group. Scheduled for launch around 11:00 am, local time. It was supposed to make a transect 2 km long and about 75 m deep, but the wind would not have it this way. Because of waves the Homo sapiens, dressed in the gorgeous emergency suits, had to abort the mission and head back to the marine lab to wash an AUV who had been in the water for 12 minutes. Needless to say, the third group felt that the weather was having favourites.
None the less, life in Ny-Ålesund goes on, and it’s still, like, pretty cool stuff, actually.
Text: Sverre Julian Hekmersen Håpnes, June Jakobsen, Sander Verbiest
