Bering Strait 2015 Mooring Cruise

As part of a Bering Strait project funded by NSF-AON (Arctic Observing Network), in June/July 2015 a team of US scientists undertook a ~ 8 day cruise in the Bering Strait and southern Chukchi Sea region on the US vessel Norseman II, operated by Norseman Maritime Charters.

The primary goals of the expedition were:
1) recovery of 3 moorings carrying physical oceanographic (Woodgate), bio-optical (Whitledge) and marine mammal acoustic (Stafford) instrumentation. These moorings were deployed in the Bering Strait region in 2014 from the Norseman II.
2) deployment of 3 moorings in the Bering Strait region, carrying physical oceanographic (Woodgate), marine mammal acoustic (Stafford) and ocean acidification (Juranek/Hales) instrumentation.
3) accompanying CTD sections (without water sampling).
4) collection of accompanying ship’s underway data (surface water properties, ADCP, meteorological data).

Despite extensive fog, all moorings were safely recovered and redeployed, and a total of 258 CTD casts (on 15 lines) were taken. For full details, and preliminary results, see

2015 Bering Strait Mooring Cruise Report.

Figure: Ship-track, blue. Mooring sites, black. CTD stations, red. Green arrows indicate direction of travel. Depth contours every 10m from the International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO) [Jakobsson et al., 2000]. Lower panels give detail of strait region at the start (left) and end (right) of the cruise. See cruise report for daily detail.