Arctic Expedition - Day 15 - Teachers at the North Pole
The view from the bow of our icebreaker USCG Healy (Master Chief Sullivan) Ship's current status: visibility: low, foggy; temp: 37F; latitude: 70.39 N; longitude: 137.30 W The third straight day of sunshine and more vitamin D for a crew with good morale. Very little coring today (relative to previous days of core, core, and more coring). We are transiting west, towards an area with very shallow waters and geologic features called pingos , which are mounds "of earth-covered ice found in the Arctic and subarctic that can reach up to 70 metres (230 ft) in height and up to 600 m (2,000 ft) in diameter." What we seem to be more interested in, however, are pingo-ish, underwater hills that "form when methane hydrate (a frozen mixture of gas and seawater) decomposes beneath the seafloor, releasing gas that squeezes deep sediments up onto the seafloor like toothpaste from a tube," according to Charlie Paull and William Ussler, MBARI geologists. Our goal i...