Today is day three of sitting in the tail end of a low-pressure system that we are waiting to pass. For the past two days we had to resist the urge to put our coring and CTD equipment in the water due to choppy seas and gusting winds. This is, of course, on top of the added challenge that we are living on an icebreaker in unusually ice-free waters. It is the Oden’s football shaped hull that can allow her to list in even the slightest ice-free swell and her teeter-totter motion quickly separates the real sailors from the occasional cruising scientist.

Eventually, however, the sea will calm and we will be able to deploy the coring equipment and the CTD again. The CTD is an instrument that measures conductivity (salinity), temperature and depth profiles in the water column. It is mounted in a cage with 12 water sampling Niskin bottles directly above. A winch using a conductive cable lowers this cage (rosette) to the bottom of the seafloor while the CTD continuously collects data that can be viewed on a computer screen in real time. On its return to the surface the Niskin bottles are electronically closed at key depths capturing different water masses. Samples are drawn from these bottles and later analyzed to monitor CTD/rosette performance, and for oxygen isotopes to assess meltwater content. From this data we hope to be able to describe the boundaries and spreading of water masses, infer their mixing histories and interactions with sea-ice and continental ice.

In the meantime, while the pressure system outside is low, the moral inside the Oden remains high. Being at sea presents you with the unique challenge of rolling with the punches and making the best of all situations. Creativity can be at its finest when sitting and waiting for weather to pass and more often than not you take on new hobbies you never dreamed of trying. A big favorite on the ship has become the PS3 game Rock Band. Almost nightly you can poke your head into the movie lounge and see grown adults playing with fake guitars and beating on plastic drums like kids who just raided their mom’s kitchen cupboards creating an impromptu band from pots and pans. This is entertaining none-the-less because we are after all scientists and not the lead singers of famous rock bands even though while in that moment of playing Rock Band, we might actually think we are.