23
gratuitous ice picture
Tagged Under : Bering Sea, photo
The track for this cruise is to follow about four big long lines that go from shallow water near land out to deep water – which also means from ice to no ice. We’re heading away from mainland Alaska on one of these lines now, so we’ll probably get to the ice edge later today or overnight. So the ice kinda looks like this now:
It’s in broken pieces – the big one in this picture might be eight or 10 feet across – with little refrozen bits in between. It was really, really windy yesterday, gusting up to 50 knots (which is nautical miles per hour, and if I had a unit converter on this computer I’d tell you what that meant, but just believe me: high winds).
In the ice, it’s usually really calm, but last night there was a pretty big swell moving through the ice. It’s really wild to watch that. I’m used to thinking of the sea ice as flat and kind of like land, so when the ice is moving up and down, it’s a little disorienting. That’s probably how the ice in this picture got broken.
Today’s post is our 20th – the halfway point! As we head in and out of the ice edge, the science should change, so we’re not worried about having enough to write about. We’re more worried about forgetting to do some of the stories we’d planned.
My goodness. I saw that picture three times before I realized you made a Firefly reference. Clearly, my geek skills are lacking.
I did? What firefly reference? I mean, I make a lot of them, but…which one?
Oh! Not the ice picture above… Sorry about not being specific. I was referring the the final picture from day 20 (linked to above) with the inflatable glove bag.