We’re now about halfway through leg 1 of SWERUS-C3. There was a mid-cruise dinner and party last night. It hardly feels like we’ve been out so long already; it feels like we just left Tromsø a few days go, not three weeks ago! Time is going fast on the cruise! I felt rather surprised that we are near the halfway point, and more than a little sad that the time is going so fast.

Someone has taped to one of the walls this message: “HAVE FUN, YOU’RE IN THE ARCTIC!” But there’s so much work to be done every day!

Yesterday was one of the sunniest days we’ve had. A clear blue sky over a relatively smooth ocean. Standing outside near one of the dark-colored parts of the ship, it felt quite warm.

Oden attracted a horde of small seagulls yesterday (black-legged kittiwakes, Rissa tridactyla). Though we’ve seen gulls of various species through the cruise, including kittiwakes, never so many. There were over 200, who would eventually gather on the ocean surface, and float there quietly, until one of their sworn enemies, a jaeger, would fly into their midst. Jaegers often get food by stealing it from the kittiwakes. At one point we spotted 6 jaegers at once harassing the kittiwakes.




There was also a spectacular halo around the sun; visible only if you had sunglasses on, or in a very short camera exposure. Fortunately Patrick had polarized sunglasses on at the right moment to see it!

We are in deep waters north of the New Siberian Islands as I write this; soon we will enter the East Siberian Sea, which is a shallower sea, and is the second major study area of this cruise. All of our equipment for atmospheric methane sampling continues to works well; looking forward to writing some papers about what we’ve seen when we get back home!