During the HiAOOS 2024 cruise on KV Svalbard to the Eurasian Basin in the Arctic Ocean, the UAK students (Jens Didrik Berg, Veronica Haugen and Astrid Stallemo) contributed to a range of onboard activities. One of the main activities was to listen to acoustic signals from the transducer lowered from the ship and the deployed transponders at the ocean bottom. A small boat was used for the listening at different distances from the ship. The second activity was to conduct an XBT and XCTD transect from the deck of KV Svalbard, investigating the temperature structure in the eastern Nansen Basin. The third main activity was the deployment of a surface buoy and small wooden boats on the sea ice for the project Float your Boat. Apart from these activities the students helped on deck during deployments/recoveries and on general tasks onboard, learning useful practical and theoretical knowledge of the Arctic.
Jens Didrik Berg, master student with the Optics Group at the University of Bergen, participated in the cruise to gather data for his master project, and to learn more about how environmental research and monitoring is performed in the ice-covered Arctic Ocean. The optical instruments (three Ramses radiometers) were mounted on the starboard side of the helideck. Two instruments measuring irradiance (one in the ultraviolet and the other in the visible regions of the spectrum) were mounted pointing skywards, as close to normal to the ocean surface as possible. The third instrument measuring radiance was mounted pointing off the ship towards the water/ice surface at a 45-degree angle. The instruments were also used from the small boat to measure radiances upwards and downwards in the water column.
