Mail Buoy - July 7, 2007

Hi to all crew and scientists,

Is the ice around the Arctic where you've been so far thinner than in years past and do ice breakers damage it, or does it freeze right back over. (Hi to sister Hedy!) I love the web site. Thanks.

Janet Edmonds, Barnstable, MA

Dear Janet:

Thanks very much for your question and for following Dive and Discover (your sister, Hedy, says hi):

Whether the ice is thinner here than in past years is not a question we can answer as most of us have not worked in the Arctic before. One of the difficulties in answering is that the ice changes as the weather systems change. High pressure causes the ice to converge, whereas low pressure causes it to spread outwards. We have encountered ice from 5-7' thick so that is definitely ice that has accumulated over many years.

The ice breakers "damage" the ice in that they break it up into smaller pieces—that is how we are able to move through the Arctic Ocean. Some of those pieces roll over and reveal the algae that grow on the bottom of the ice floes. However, when you look back in the wake of the ship, you see the pieces all convering again and they will no doubt freeze up.

Susan Humphris

Dear Uncle Rob (Dr. Reves-Sohn),
How many layers of clothes do you wear?
How long is the boat? How many feet?
How big are the submarines?
Love,
Jake Chaffee, Long Beach, California, USA

Dear Jake,

Thanks for your questions. Please see my answers below. (See you in Cape Cod this August!)

How many layers of clothes do you wear?
When we are inside the ship we wear regular clothes, just like you would wear at home. When we are outside we wear winter clothes, similar to what you might wear to go skiing. If we are working on deck for a long time, or if we are going out on the ice, we wear special suits called 'Mustang suits.' These are heavily insulated one-piece suits with built in flotation so that if you should fall into the water you would survive long enough to be rescued.

How long is the boat? How many feet?
The boat is about 330 ft. long.

Do you have the submarine on a line?
No, the submarines are free swimming robots with no strings attached.

How big are the submarines?
The submarines are about 5 feet tall, 7 feet long, and 2 feet wide.

Dear Uncle Rob (Dr. Reves-Sohn),
If they are making a river with the boat, will the maps of the world change?
How thick is the ice? I thought it was one story thick.
Is the blue ice in the pictures thicker than the white ice?
From,
Will Chaffee, Long Beach, California, USA

Dear Will,

Thanks for your interesting questions. Please see my answers below.

If they are making a river with the boat, will the maps of the world change?
The ship breaks a path through the ice that leaves a trail of broken up ice chunks behind the ship. However, the ice is constantly moving, so that this path can either open up even more, or it can close completely, leaving no trace within several days. Most maps of the world just show a huge white area over the Arctic ice cap that do not take into consideration of how the ice moves, opens, and closes. However, we have satellites that can make detailed pictures of the ice and where there is open water. The path the ship makes does indeed show up in these images, and I think some of these pictures may be on the Dive and Discover website, so you might be able to see this for yourself. We use these satellite images to figure out how to get from one point to the next. We cannot just go in a straight line between two points. It is much faster to find the breaks in the ice and use those.

How thick is the ice? I thought it was one story thick.
The ice in the Arctic ocean varies from just a few centimeters up to several meters thick. The only time you find ice one story thick is on an iceberg, which is a piece of ice that formed on a glacier on land, and then fell off into the ocean. Those are mostly found in Antarctica, but there are places in the Arctic where they are also formed, such as Greenland and Siberia, for example. As a matter of fact we do see little pieces of icebergs all the way up here, where we are working. They stick out like a sore thumb when you see them. Kind of like seeing a huge rock in a flat desert. And they are usually much darker than the surrounding ice because of all the dust they have accumulated when they were on land or near the shore.

Is the blue ice in the pictures thicker than the white ice?
Most of the ice is covered with snow. As the weather gets warmer and sunnier in the summer, this snow melts and forms blue pools on top of the white ice. This explains the different colors you see when you look out on the ice.

[Back to top]