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On August 19, 2002, I, Gail
Grimes will be leaving on a 35 day, Arctic Adventure. I will
be aboard an icebreaker, USCGC Polar
Star (WAGB-10). I am a high school teacher who will be on a research
expedition with teams of scientists from the University
of Washington, Scripps Institution
of Oceanography, Oregon State University
and Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.
Each day I will be reporting to my students at Lake
Stevens High School. We will be corresponding via e-mail and
daily updates on the web. Before I leave on the expedition, Rebecca
Woodgate, chief scientist from the University
of Washington, and I will be visiting the schools in Barrow,
Alaska to give them information about what we will be doing on this
expedition, as they share with us information about their home and lives
in Alaska. We will follow-up with them when we return from the 35
day trip. This expedition is sponsored by the National
Science Foundation (Arctic
Natural Sciences). Our aim is to understand the oceanography
of this part of the Arctic, a cross-roads near the top of the world, where
the Pacific and Atlantic currents meet. In 5 weeks, we aim to cover
some 2000 miles, taking measurements from the surface to the sea floor
(up to 2.5 miles or 4 km down), measuring water velocity, taking water
samples from depth for chemical analysis, some to be done at sea, some
to be done in labs back in the US. We will study natural chemical
tracers (the high nutrient signals from the Pacific, the geochemical fingerprint
of the Alaskan and Siberian rivers) and manmade pollutants (for example,
CFCs, tritium from nuclear testing, and radioactive iodine from nuclear
reprocessing plants in Sellafield and La Hague). We'll also install three
sets of instruments, spanning the water column but moored to the sea floor,
which will take measurements of temperature, salinity and water velocity
every hour for a month. Then, of course, there's the human aspect of taking
about 180 people and confining them to a 120m (400ft) long ship for 5 weeks.
It all started in a swimming pool
in Seattle...
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