My phone rang twice yesterday – the first time it was Anna Wåhlin, who had just sat her feet on land again in Punta Arenas, Chile after two months in the Amundsen Sea With Ran.
The second time it was a local, Bergen number and I was very surprised to hear Nadine’s voice on the line! It still amazes me, that (when things work) you can talk to someone on a ship in Antarctica and it sounds as if they are in the room next door…
She had bad news, there were too much ice, the captain couldn’t go nearly as far south as we had hoped for to deploy Our moorings and we have to move them further north to deeper water. 1500m instead of 800m. Where should we add the extra line? Should we rearrange the instruments? We discussed a bit and agreed on a solution.
When I woke up this morning there were five missed calls from the same Bergen number – and there was soon a new call from Nadine.
– More bad news. The captain couldn’t make it even to 1500m, they were now about to deploy the NPI mooring at 2000 m. What should we do with ours? No point in going deeper, we don’t have more lines to add and many of the instruments can’t be deployed that deep. Deploy it on Maud Rise? Move instruments over to the NPI mooring and bring the rest home? Bring them all home? Not an easy decision!