The weather forecast promised sun, instead we got rain and horizontally blowing snow. A good opportunity to organize and prepare equipment for the coming weeks of intense and busy fieldwork. Testing timelapse cameras, preparing survey equipment, charging batteries and assembling a mooring. The cage on this picture is holding a combination of pressure and magnetic sensors. Now it’s missing some ballast at the bottom, a rope and a buoy. Then it will be mounted to the sea floor close to the glacier front, where we expect the freshwater to start flowing out very soon. The data from the sensors will tell us about the existence, direction and velocity of currents at the sea floor and probably also record any occuring calving at the glacier front. But first we need to calibrate the devices, build a mooring and deploy it in the fjord close to the glacier. And if that is achieved there is the tiny little detail of getting it back in two months time after it had plenty of chances of being smashed into pieces by massive icebergs. One step at a time.
Let’s get it out first, then we can worry about the rest.