CTD festival vol.2 – the 2014 edition

30. July, 2014

Last year we (team water column) started a project under the “code name” CTD festival. This festival included three full days and 30 CTDs all along the Mohns Ridge going north. This translates to no sleep, huge amounts of coffee and even greater amounts of candy. We did all this to hunt for hydrothermal systems as well as getting a better understanding of how much volatiles are actually diffusing up through the ridge itself.
This year we were going to finish our work to the very end of the Mohns Ridge. It all seemed a very easy task, with the CTD being a very reliable instrument which rarely fails. We started out around 20:30 on the 28 of June and we were going to work all the way until midnight the 29. However, things are never as easy as it seems. On the fifth CTD there suddenly appeared to be a problem on the wire carrying all the weight of the CTD and all the expensive sensors mounted on it. The wire seemed to lose tension and started to hang lose around the winch. Needless to say, we were all a bit on edge with all the expensive equipment hanging from a broken wire 2400 meters below us. Luckily the story has a happy ending. The CTD was retrieved safely and the wire was fixed a day later by the hard working crew of the G.O. Sars. Unfortunately we would have to wait a little while longer to finish our festival

The CTD is arriving the ship from the bottom of the ocean

Desiree sampling for methane and hydrogen and Tamara is sampling for helium isotopes in the background.

Our beautiful CTD and Tamara in the background

The art of helium sampling, performed live by Tamara

A very tired face ready to inject a sample for analysis of methane and hydrogen