Glaciers around Jones Sound

  • Recuperation bouteille prelevement eau

Luck is with us! Just out from Fram Fiord after one complete day to wait for better weather, no more wind and no more swell, stopped by the abundant ice floes. We can make all the planed stations in front of Jakeman glacier, hooked to some big ice floes. A station is: a CTD (instrument measuring salinity and temperature at each depth along the water column), and two or three water samples at some specific depths, with two 10 liters Niskin bottles. Then we have up to 4 hours of filtrations, done with a peristaltic pump or a simple syringe plus a filter. Here is a list, to let you know more about the objectives: nutriments, oxygen isotopes, chlorophyll, carbon particles, dissolved organic carbon isotopes and inorganic ones, mercury on three different forms, proteins, DNA, ANA, mineralogy, number of bacterias and also phytoplankton. Each filter is carefully stored in a fridge, a deep freezer or a special -80°C. After crossing Jones Sound we keep going working in front of the beautiful Belcher glacier from 6pm to 2pm the next day. We take advantage of perfect conditions to study interactions between ocean and glacier.

More in the west, after sailing along Devon island, Vagabond try to enter in the Sverdrup glacier bay. But there is no sounding on the chart, we can see lots of rocks and the swell is not helping. The day after we try to find a way to the glacier front and we are so happy to discover a kind of big shelter behind several rocky barriers. At 10 km from the entrance of the bay, on a peaceful sea we can work again... while the wind and the swell are rushing outside. We will spend 4 days and nights in here. In between two stations we even don't remember sometimes if we are just drifting or if we are at anchor! Leonie is taking her part of the scientific work and contribute a lot to reduce the time of the stations!

On the channel 26 of the radio we can listen to our friends from Grise Fiord, North of Jones Sound. They speak to each other from their speed boats, looking for narwhals and seals. It's touching to recognize each one by his voice, to understand their navigation conditions. And we feels less isolated.