The last days have been beautiful. Actually quite light out, although the sun had been below the horizon for about a week now. The sky is a sunset of color most of the day. And there have been relatively few clouds, giving a nice view of the sky….. and the full moon! Large and bold. Arctic full moons are so amazing, really bringing out the deep purple in the surrounding sky. The moon has been tugging on the ocean, leading to big tides that cause our drift trajectory to oscillate, and this causes the ice to have a lot of pressure in different directions and at times to open. Right now there is a fantastic array of leads around Polarstern heading out forward of the ship and to its port side. Fortunately we are mostly working on starboard. I had a totally new Arctic experience today. Standing out at Met City working on our tower…. Chatting for a few minutes with colleagues and then grumble. Our world shifted underfoot. We looked at each other, not sure if we were experiencing the same thing, but indeed the three of us standing there all felt the same thing; we could see it in each other’s eyes. And then, underfoot, a small crack formed, we watched it move its way across the surface and off into the distance. Over the following couple of hours it slowly widened, eventually getting to about 5cm across. Such a cool experience, to feel and see the ice changing! But, this crack will pose a big challenge for our met tower as we intended to install a guy line anchor in that ice that is now on the other side of the crack. With an anchor in place, if the ice were to move away it could simply pull the tower down, or bend it in half. Clearly something to be avoided! So this may delay our tower raising…. At least until we are convinced that the ice is stable.
