Crack by our tower widened today, but things are still stable. It’s up to 1m in places. The rest of the area went through a major shift. Satellite maps show a large region of shear and that shear basically ripped our flow in half just outside the outer wall of the Fortress. Fortunately, the ship and our main camp is still connected to the Fortress, and the Fortress is intact. But just forward of the ship by about 250m we had the ROV hut (remotely operated vehicle for underwater surveys), and this went for a ride, moving away from the ship then heading south by perhaps about 500m. The area had been active for the past few days, with smaller openings, then ridges forming. We were constantly trying to move power lines and other equipment away from the path of destruction. But then the big ice move, which has necessitated rescuing the main infrastructure from ROV city using helicopter sling loads. Let’s hope this big dynamic event doesn’t spread into the rest of our floe, and that the ROV hut finds a safe resting point that is not too far from the rest of our little civilization.

Recovering the ROV Site: When a new crack opened up between the Polarstern icebreaker and the ROV (remotely operated vehicle for underwater surveys), the ROV site was disconnected from our main floe and drifted. From the bridge, we could watch the ROV move from the starboard to the port side of the vessel. The ROV team decided to recover all of the valuable equipment from the site to save it from further drift. Our helicopter team operated a swing load recovery, bringing back the ROV, its control hut and power hub. Alfred-Wegener-Institut / Marcel Nicolaus (CC-BY 4.0)

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