The Oden Arctic Technology Research Cruise left Longyearbyen, Svalbard, yesterday evening. At the moment we’re heading west towards the east coast of Greenland, where we will deploy four IPS/ADCP mooring lines. Then we’re going into the ice.

Most of Saturday was spent transporting researchers and research equipment to Oden – around 40 pallets of gear and 27 researchers. When everybody was on board Oden there was an introduction and safety course and some of the researchers prepared their equipment for the studies taking place during transit, i.e. sea spray and icing studies.

The researchers was transported to Oden by boat. Photo: Jan-Ola Olofsson

Researchers arriving at Oden. Photo: Jan-Ola Olofsson

After dinner, around 18.30, Oden left Longyearbyen, but only about an hour later we received a SOS call from a sailing ship near Ymerbukta. We headed in their direction and were on standby near the shipwreck for a while. The situation was eventually handled by a helicopter and another ship from Longyearbyen, and we could continue towards our destination.

Today the weather is cloudy and there’s nothing much to see outside except the endless ocean and the birds circling the ship, but the ship is full of activity. The meteorologists, multibeam operators and marine mammal observers have been busy since yesterday. There’s also a lot of meetings and preparations for the upcoming research projects on the sea ice.

The marine mammal observers going to work. Photo: Jan-Ola Olofsson

At 14.00 Oden will briefly turn around and head into the wind and the waves, to make sure the sea spray researchers can collect some data. Next stop is the mooring line sites. We are supposed to arrive there later this afternoon and then we’re heading into the sea ice later this evening.

Jan-Ola Olofsson, Swedish Polar Research Secretariat