Danny Baza Blas

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...

Our current location and status can be discerned from the above image. Day 8 gave the science team a little precipitation, 30-knot winds, and rough seas. Today's workload was a near-exact carbon copy of yesterday's--multicore, piston core, gravity core--with the only difference the rougher seas and a different sampling station. This afternoon the sun made a brief appearance. The keyword here is brief. We are currently underway, headed east on the Beaufort Sea, to our next sampling station. by Steve Walters Look for a new video tomorrow. Today was spent re-editing Day 7's video to give it more context to the outside world. If you have any questions, please send it to: danny.blas@healy.polarscience.net

Click to enlarge current status Good day, Day #7! On-board USCGC Healy, it's windy, cold, and the ocean we are floating upon is just a wee bit perturbed. Source: http://goo.gl/Wpu9LY We are currently coring and sampling sediments in the Beaufort Sea, around the area where the Mackenzie River meets the Beaufort Sea, north of Tuktoyaktuk . [Click to enlarge map image to the right] The science has begun to take an exciting turn. Not only are we tracking-down the signals for the icy source of the Younger Dryas, as explained in yesterday's blog , our principal investigators (PIs) have made an unusual and momentous observation. Using the CHIRP instrument , a multibeam bathymetric surveyor, our PIs observed a "bench," on the continental shelf, with an abundance of what appears to be undisturbed sediment build-up that had been previously undiscovered. This non-tectonic build-up of sediment appears to extend for hundreds of kilometers, from about Barrow, AK to th...

Click to enlarge current position [Today's video (below) "In Transit" includes appearances by: Martin Reedy, Akash Kataria, Lloyd Keigwin, Neal Driscoll, Woody Sutherland, Steve Walters, Chris Griner] The image to the left displays our current position (latitude and longitude) as well as the current temperature, wind speed, and barometric pressure. Our current position is on the Beaufort Sea at a point near where the Mackenzie River empties into the Beaufort Sea. Click here to see a map . The ship, the crew, and the science team are engaged in full-bore instrument deployment at the moment. The gravity core , multi-core , and piston core instruments have been in-and-out of the water all morning and afternoon. Marti Jeglinski 's team are busy taking the cores, labeling and storing the cores. Brendan Reilly has been scanning the cores, using an assortment of instruments, to determine the contents of the cores. Brendan does this without opening the core...

Day Three, August 17, 2013 of Healy Mission 13-02 was an exceptional day for the science team and the crew of USCG Healy. We finally raised our anchors, after three days on the ship, and began movement on the Arctic Ocean. The earlier parts of the day were spent unpacking and setting-up all the equipment that will be dropped into the ocean to collect data and sediment samples. Saturday was also the day we practiced: (1.) man-over-board, and (2) abandon ship drills. "Better safe than sorry" is what mom taught us. Saturday was movie night, which was hosted by ENS Follmer, MSO in the helicopter hangar. There was one movie, The Grey and a Weather Channel documentary on USCGC Healy titled Breaking Ice . Saturday was a good day.  Check out the video about Day 3 on USCGC Healy as we begin our journey around the Arctic Ocean, collecting the things we need. And finally, expect more blog posts about the science our science team is working on. Currently we...

Day two was an opportunity to get to know the ship better, its crew, and some of the protocols related to having a successful time on board USCGC Healy. Day two had me visiting sick bay because prior to my departure flight from San Diego to Barrow, I "tweaked" my knee, and it became inflamed and was quite painful. Doc, who happens to be Chamorro (just like me, from the island of Guam) hooked me up with an ice bag and some anti-inflammatory and pain reduction meds. Today I awoke almost pain free. Pictured to the left is USCGC Healy source: http://goo.gl/6ZOBDw Today the science crew members are busy setting up and staging the instruments which will be deployed from the rear of the vessel, using the A-frame to lower it into the ocean. A science crew, pictured to the left, sending sensing instruments into the water: source: http://goo.gl/g2WH51 I hear we will be headed to sea this afternoon. In the meantime, I'll be recording videos to edit for the next blo...

Barrow, Alaska, very cold desert is the most northerly point in the United States  http://goo.gl/R1K8Ym Day one of the Arctic mission objective was--pretty much--getting onto the ship, the United States Coast Guard ice breaker  USCGC Healy . If you read my previous blog post, you already know the trip from San Diego, CA to Barrow, AK was a long one; however, the ending of Day One was worth it. I'll get to that in a moment. When the Alaskan Airlines flight landed in Barrow, we were met by a convoy of pickup trucks and vans, which collected the members of the science team, and delivered us to the Search and Rescue Hangar (SAR). (Take a peek of the SAR in the video below.) The first order of the day at SAR?: order lunch! And we did, and it was surprisingly good. It never occurred to me that good pizza could be had in Barrow, a very cold place with zero paved roads. (Another person on the science team, Mackenzie, who will be a senior a...