What a way to mark the end of our 2021 field season - we were treated to a spectacular Aurora to end a great cruise on Sikuliaq. This trip marked Sikuliaq’s deepest excursion into the pack ice – over 200 nautical miles from the ice edge in a year with an unusually rapid and extensive freeze-up.

Summer and fall 2021 are busy for IOP. Healy is the first of 3 major cruises. We’re almost done out here with 7 of 8 moorings recovered in tricky conditions through the ice. Now just need to find a spot to drop the gliders.

SG227 has called in and reported being (mostly) on-station, marking a second consecutive over-winter. Launched in the Beaufort Sea in Septemer 2019, SG227 over-wintered successfully into summer 2020, but could not be recovered due to ship availability. This also marks the longest Seaglider mission to-date. Here’s to hoping we can get a recovery ship this year so we can reward it for a job well done!

Thanks to Capt. Thorben Lund and crew from the Landhelgisgæsla vessel Þór for the flexibility to recover SG234 after the glider developed a late mission sensor problem. They were able to execute a superbly efficient recovery just prior to starting the latest deployment of NISKINe surface drifters. It is unfortunate that 234 will miss co-sampling with the drifters, but the glider did collect excellent data for 6 months prior to the fault.

SG219 and SG(X)237 are happily in the water following deployments from RRS Discovery as part of the DY130 cruise. The gliders were deployed ahead of the EXPORTS cruise DY131 so they could be part of the hunt for the eddy that cruise will focus its sampling on. Thanks Filipa and all onboard who helped make the deployments a success!