• OOC home
• People
• Research
• Sustained Observations
• Publications
• Projects
• PhD Studies
• Working Groups
• Outreach
• Seminars
• OOC Intranet

Ocean Observing and Climate

D332 Cruise News and Information

This page will display daily (or as near as we can manage) news updates from D332.

Cruise Diary Pages (Change order - newest first)

News for Sun 17 Aug 2008

The science party flew out from Heathrow to St John's, some via Halifax, Nova Scotia, the rest via Toronto. It's a real pity the direct flights to St John's have disappeared. All arrived safely (we met a few of the ships' crew in Halifax on the way), early evening local time, and everybody seemed to be staying in the Quality Inn, a modern, decent harbourside hotel with a good view from the restaurant. Curry down the road for dinner.

News for Mon 18 Aug 2008

We all visited the ship after breakfast. I was pleasantly surprised to find that much of the scientific mobilisation had already been completed. The ship docked from the previous cruise a few days early, so containers had been loaded and unpacked, and the deck largely prepared for D332 science (CTD, moorings). Evening dinner was in a very good sushi restaurant called Basho. Dinner was accompanied by a little sake. It was a fine sunny day and a clear night.

News for Tue 19 Aug 2008

Today we moved on board ship from the hotel; unpacked, pottered around seeing about laptop connections, computer access, useful files and the like. Most had an evening ashore before sailing.

News for Wed 20 Aug 2008

Shore leave ended at 8 am and Discovery sailed at 9 am - but only to cross the harbour to the fuel berth. We departed properly (after bunkering was complete) around 1 pm, and the first CTD station was half an hour later. This was an occupation of the Canadian long-term monitoring "station 27", five nautical miles outside St John's harbour, in 180 m water depth. Measurements have been made here for over sixty years, and our Canadian colleagues ask that passing research vessels make a station here, which we were happy to do. There were a couple of small black whales (maybe pilot whales) flopping around some distance off. The rest of the day was spent steaming north-eastwards in fine weather towards the second station.

News for Thu 21 Aug 2008

Another day of fine weather, mostly passed in steaming to the second station, a proper equipment test in (relatively) deep water - 2000 m depth. We started the station around 9 pm and finished a couple of hours later. Much of the water collected by the Niskin bottles, on both this station and the previous one, was used to practice the techniques required to collect and store samples of seawater for later analysis back on land, to determine the (very low) concentrations of certain dissolved gases: carbon dioxide, CFCs and sulphur hexafluoride. Taking these samples requires delicate apparatus, and is tricky and time-consuming. More about this later.

News for Fri 22 Aug 2008

A long day of steaming in fine weather, heading for the start of the hydrographic section across the Labrador Sea from the Labrador coast of Canada to south-west Greenland. We arrived at station 3 in late evening; a thin strip of the Labrador coast was visible in the distance under a pink sky. Relatively shallow water on the Canadian continental shelf (200 m).

News for Sat 23 Aug 2008

Today was spent working across the wide Canadian continental shelf, with stations every 15 nautical miles (or so). We completed 9 of these stations during the day and began station 12 before midnight, but the labour-intensive chemical sampling proved to be very demanding. Sampling alternate bottles on alternate stations took almost everybody almost all of the time ... we need both more practice, and also a more sustainable procedure.

News for Sun 24 Aug 2008

Hmmm. The main hydro winch started causing trouble in the small hours during station 13. It took a while to recover the CTD, after which the engineers spent the rest of the day getting the spare hydro winch on line: checking hydraulics and electrics, re-running the CTD cable, making the data connection, testing with a dead weight over the side, making the electrical connection to the CTD itself ("terminating"), and finally running the thing for real. At least the break helped the chemists to catch up with the on-board sample analysis (for dissolved oxygen and nutrients), and the physicists to get stuck into data processing, all of which had had to take something of a back seat to the demands of the more complicated chemical sampling ...

News for Mon 25 Aug 2008

Another funny old day. Having completed the repeat of station 13 (the one effectively abandoned due to the problems with the main hydro winch), we had very nearly completed station 14 when, on recovery of the instrument package, the cable threw a loop resulting in a "bird's nest", so that the cable on the spare winch (which we are now using) had to be re-terminated. Still, lamb shanks for dinner.

News for Thu 28 Aug 2008

Tuesday 26 to Thursday 28 August

I'd been intending to send diary entries back to base daily rather than this rather patchy service you've been getting, and my apologies for that, but chemical sampling has proved rather demanding of everyone's time, causing the physics processing to be a bit delayed, so I've been neglecting the diary. Anyway, with this brief note I can tell you that we're trogging across the Labrador Sea, and at the time of writing (Thursday evening), we've just finished station 22, which is shown as the last orange circle on the track chart, with stations 2-21 the others. No. 1 is just off the chart to the south.

So far the spare hydro winch has been performing well, albeit in favourable weather. For the aficionados, we're veering and hauling typically at 50 metres per minute, a little slower than the main winch would normally manage, which would be 60 m/min.

So who's on board? The science group comprises the three scientific watch leaders, Liz Kent, John Allen and Ros Pidcock. They are leading the 0400-1200, 2000-0400 and 1200-2000 watches respectively. Chemistry PI is Ian Salter, supported by Emma Rathbone and Jorg Frommlet; also assisting are Katharine Cox, Katie Gower and Esben Madsen. The Dutch group from NIOZ, Texel, are led by Sven Ober, with Femke de Jong, Lorendz Boom and Santiago Gonzalez; we're grateful to Femke for helping out with the chemical sampling. Our senior scientific engineers are Dougal Mountifield (technical liaison officer) and Steve Whittle, with Dave Childs and Ben Poole. Finally, we have Leighton Rolley on keyboards, and I hope to be sending you a few of his holiday snaps in coming days.

News for Fri 29 Aug 2008

We're continuing to work across the Labrador Sea, and the weather continues fair. We completed stations 24 to 28 today, with the last one just at the base of the Greenland continental slope in 2600 metres water depth. Maximum depth in mid-basin was over 3500 metres. The notable local oceanographic feature is the West Greenland Current (WGC). Its influence was felt during the course of station 28, when the ship was moved 5 nm by the current running north-westwards at about 2 knots.

News for Sat 30 Aug 2008

Today was interesting, for work, weather and scenery. We finished the Labrador Sea section with stations 29 to 34, the last being our closest approach to Greenland, 5 nm off Cape Desolation. The first few saw us past the inner half of the WGC, and by station 31 we were up on the continental shelf in just 600 metres of water: the water shoals by 2000 metres in about 12 miles, so the stations have to be close together - typically 4 nm apart - so that we can properly resolve what the seawater is doing in the rapidly changing depths. This makes for rather demanding watches as the work happens continuously and fast. Also, crossing the WGC was interesting, as it was faster (2 knots) and narrower (about 10-15 nm) than I'd expected.

Early morning, we ran into thick, shallow fog, so had the peculiar experience of steaming very slowly, not being able to see more than a couple of hundred metres in any direction except upwards, where the sun was (relatively) warm and hazy. Eventually we ran out of the fog and Greenland appeared, occasionally slightly obscured by passing bands of fog, and we made our closest measurement (station 34). The weird weather also caused atmospheric inversion layers, resulting in odd mirages; there's a picture of one of these.

We turned to head out towards the next CTD section, but soon ran back into the fog. Overnight we deployed the Moving Vessel Profiler (MVP), which is a towed undulating CTD for making high-resolution measurements in the upper ocean: the top few hundred metres, typically.

News for Sun 31 Aug 2008

Liz Kent, assisted by Katie Gowers, has been processing the CTD data, so I can show you the results of our measurements across the Labrador Sea. The section plots are of temperature and salinity, plotted as though looking north, so Canada to the west is on the left and Greenland to the east is on the right. The vertical scale is actually pressure in decibars, but that is almost identical to depth is metres. The basics are easy to see. Top left and top right in the shallow waters of the Canadian and Greenland continental shelves are the very cold, fresh waters fuelled by ice melt: both melting sea ice coming from the high Arctic, and melting land ice running off Canada and Greenland. The Canadian side is colder, thicker and faster because it's a direct pipe taking water south out of the Arctic, coming through passages like Nares Strait, Lancaster Sound and Hudson Strait. The Greenland side is flowing north. In fact, a common feature at all depths in the Labrador Sea is the general cyclonic sense of the circulation: meaning the water circulates clockwise in the basin, north on the east and south on the west. Centred around 200-300 metres on both sides of the basin are cores of recirculating warm and salty Atlantic waters, entering on the east side and leaving, having been cooled and freshened (diluted), on the west side. Towards the east are separate red and orange blobs (both temperature and salinity) of Atlantic water eddies, spun off from the West Greenland Current. Next, wintertime cold winds pull heat out of the central Labrador Sea and cause deep convection, and it looks like last winter punched down to maybe 900-1000 metres depth: see the fat green blob on the salinity plot. Other recent winters have got a bit deeper, to 1500 metres (greeny-yellow), and the remnants of very deep convection from over a decade ago are discernible down to 2200 metres. Finally, down at the bottom is the deep banana shape made by the dense waters that flow over the shallow sill in the north-east Atlantic between Greenland, Iceland and Scotland. The coldest, densest waters come from Denmark Strait, and you can see how, on their circuit of the Labrador Sea, they are warmer on the west than the east. This is caused by mixing with overlying waters, which in this case are the dense overflows from the sill east of Iceland. These waters have taken a longer and more roundabout route to get to the Labrador Sea; they are most clearly seen as the red blobs in the salinity plots between about 2500 and 3000 metres.

Having named the science staff on this cruise, here's a run-down of the ship side. The Old Man for D332 is Richard Warner, Mike Hood is Mate, and 2nd and 3rd Officers are Phil Roberts and William McClintock. Robin Why is cadet. The engineering department is led by Chief Engineer Ian Slater (very confusing as our chemistry PI is Ian Salter; they can be distinguished by presence or absence of boiler suit), 2nd and two 3rd's are Chris Carey, Gary Slater and John Harnett; ETO is Dennis Jakobaufderstroht. Our purser is Mike "the" Ripper, CPO (Deck) - otherwise known as the Bosun - is Andy Maclean, CPO (Science) is Martin Harrison, PO (Deck) is Phil Allison, and the four SG1A's (I think that means AB in old money) are Gary Crabb, Mark Moore, John Brodowski and Ian Mills. Duncan Lawes is Motorman. Finally our wonderful galley staff are Mark Preston (Head Chef), Wilmot Isby (Chef) and Jeff Orsborn (Steward), without whom no cruise could be complete.

News for Tue 02 Sep 2008

Monday 1 and Tuesday 2 September

No news is good news, work continues in fine working weather, light airs, generally overcast, occasionally clear, odd patches of mist and fog, cool, some heavy rain for a couple of hours last night. We're presently working station 45 and the track chart shows stations up to no. 44, so we're well into the box section around Cape Farewell. There have been lots of seabirds around for a long time now - fulmars, kittiwakes, shearwaters, and a single Arctic skua passing quickly by. A nice whale showed up this morning for a couple of minutes, swimming on the surface, then showed us a clean pair of heels (?) before sounding. A medium-sized whale, not a minke, maybe a sei, possibly a young sperm whale ...

As a further illustration of what's happening in the Labrador Sea, John Allen has been analysing the upper-ocean currents measured by the ship. Our on-board acoustic current profilers continuously measure water motion from near-surface down to about 800 metres water depth, and the results of this analysis are seen in the current plot from a single depth (23 metres). The major deep-water flows are the West Greenland Current, clearly very fast at about 1 m/s (roughly 2 knots), and its analogue on the west of the basin, the Labrador Current, slightly slower and broader. If you look at the CTD plots from a previous diary page, this is where the recirculating warm and salty Atlantic waters live. The Inshore Branch of the Labrador Current, near the Canadian coast, is the very cold (sub-zero), very fresh pipe out of the Arctic for ice melt. Also clear are two eddies, rotating clockwise (anticyclonically) at about 30 cm/s (half a knot), which show up on the CTD data as the isolated blobs of Atlantic water in mid-basin.

Finally, yesterday was Ben Poole's 21st birthday, so happy birthday Ben for yesterday, and all the best for the future.

News for Sun 07 Sep 2008

Wednesday 3 to Sunday 7 September

We had a quiet period of routine CTD station work between Wednesday and early Saturday, getting from station 47 through to station 56 when the weather began to brew up. Our good fortune finally came to an end on Saturday morning with station 57, which we just fitted in between fronts coming through, but on Saturday afternoon and through Sunday the wind built up to a westerly force 9 (wind speeds around 20-25 metres per second), and the seas heaped up until we were recording significant wave heights (Hs) over 5 metres. Hs is a measure of wave height intended to be close to what a visual observer would estimate the average wave height to be. The highest likely individual wave would be 8 or 9 metres, and we did indeed have a few of those go past. The sea surface was covered in spindrift, and many of the wave crests were breaking - but typical open-ocean spilling breakers, not beach-style plunging ones that surfers enjoy. Leighton's photos from the bridge show what these conditions were like. Of course the hatches were indeed battened down; deadlights (solid metal porthole covers) were closed; watertight doors to the deck were dogged shut; work stopped for two days; the ship was hove to (bow into the wind), creeping forwards at a knot or two to maintain steerage way; the galley staff, unperturbed as ever, continued to produce top nosh for all meals (cracking black pudding, Grommet). The forecast indicates that we may be able to resume work tomorrow.

It's interesting to think that, while 5 m Hs seems quite large when you're in it, the highest waves recorded at sea were experienced aboard this ship during a December cruise in 2000 (I think) in the vicinity of Rockall, when Penny Holliday of NOCS was PSO. They had Hs of 18 metres, with an individual wave over 26 metres from crest to trough. If you're curious about what gave rise to these exceptional conditions, you can find Penny's published account in the scientific journal "Geophysical Research Letters"; the full reference with co-authors and year of publication (2006) is below.

Penny's paper:

Holliday, N.P., Yelland, M.J., Pascal, R., Swail, V..,Taylor, P.K., Griffiths, C., and Kent, E.C, 2006: Were extreme waves in the Rockall Trough the largest ever recorded?, Geophysical Research Letters,33, L05613, doi:10.1029/2005GL025238.

News for Mon 08 Sep 2008

The foul weather of the previous day eased off overnight. In order to complete the section in to the Greenland coast in daylight, I reversed the station ordering. This meant that by steaming straight in to a safe spot about a mile off the coast, we could work our way back offshore to join up with where we'd left off when the foul weather hit us. As the morning passed and we approached the coast, the swell subsided and the sea flattened; the sun was shining on Cape Farewell. We turned into tourists for a short while.

There were a couple of icebergs. Lots of wildlife showed up also, in good numbers. Dolphins in the distance, fulmars and shearwaters flying around, several minke whales, a group of sei whales, and interestingly some northern bottlenose whales came very close.

By late evening, we were working our way back offshore. The 1200 to 2000 watch (Ros, Jorg and Esben) had a rather punishing schedule, taking water samples from five closely-spaced CTD stations as we headed back out across the continental shelf and down the slope, and Ben and Dave hardly having time to reset the system before it was time to deploy again ...

Expecting to finish this group of stations overnight and into the morning, then beginning mooring operations.

News for Tue 09 Sep 2008

Finished the CTD section as expected, by joining up with where we'd left off to steam into the Greenland coast. One curious and noteworthy incident overnight was the arrival of deck of a bunch of shearwaters. Four of them decided to land and wander around for an hour or two, giving the opportunity for some close-up photos. There was nothing wrong with them, they hadn't struck anything, and when they had had enough, they flew off. As this was during the night, I didn't see them myself, but apparently they walk with a slap-slap noise reminiscent of a person wearing flippers.

9th September continued

Station 58 ended around midday, and we steamed off to try to recover the westernmost NOCS mooring, labelled "F". We were encouraged that the acoustic release was present and talking when addressed by the "dunker", the transducer lowered over the side to send acoustic commands. The release was told to release, which it did, and the mooring began its ascent, but it stopped after rising about 200 m. This was greatly puzzling. After trying to figure out why this might be, the best conclusion we could reach was that the upper buoyancy had been lost at some point in the past, leading to a length of the mooring's own line sinking down and tangling with the anchor. It was not recoverable, so with reluctance we had to abandon it and proceed to the next mooring recovery, a NIOZ profiler.

News for Wed 10 Sep 2008

A busy day for the NIOZ and NOCS mooring teams and the ship's crew. We were on site after breakfast for the first NIOZ mooring recovery, of a moored profiling CTD. The Dutch have had great and very encouraging success with this type of instrument in recent years. This mooring was safely brought aboard, as was a second NIOZ moored sediment trap (see photos). We then went to the next NOCS mooring, "C", and more disappointment followed with the failure of this mooring even to communicate. We had to abandon it. We steamed to the site of the NOCS "B" mooring and hove to, to await first light to attempt recovery.

News for Thu 11 Sep 2008

An early start, on site at first light around 0530 and successfully recovered the NOCS "B" mooring, then followed that by steaming to NOCS "H" and recovering that too. At least we have the two central moorings of the array back. We got to the site of the final NOCS mooring, "A", around midday as the weather began to close in again, and were forced to heave to before even attempting recovery. Spent the rest of the day in worsening weather.

News for Fri 12 Sep 2008

Foul weather, hove to all day. I'm aware that many of the photos that I send home are of interesting and attractive scenes: Greenland, icebergs, whales, sunsets, all that good stuff. So by way of a change, and as a reminder that much of anyone's time in the North Atlantic tends to be spent in a circle of grey, with reduced visibility, a choppy, grey sea, overcast, windy, often with mist, drizzle or rain, I'm sending back two really fine sequences of images by Mike and Kat. Mike's pictures show a view aft as the stern takes a plunge after a wave passes and several tons of seawater climb onto the aft deck. Kat's simply illustrate the grey-and-lumpy aspect of work at sea.

News for Sat 13 Sep 2008

The weather eased its grip and allowed us to restart work, with the depressing result that the final NOCS mooring, "A", was also unresponsive, and so was abandoned. We shifted to the NIOZ profiler redeployment site and carried out CTD station 67 there, to provide some calibration information for the profiler's sensors. Redeployment began late in the evening.

News for Sun 14 Sep 2008

The NIOZ profiler redeployment was completed overnight, which allowed the mooring guys time to rest before we arrived at the third NIOZ mooring site, where their second profiling CTD was successfully recovered, and irrespective of our bad luck, we're delighted that their stuff has behaved so well. Also we got back on the main CTD section, with stations 68 during the day and 69 at night. The foul weather has impacted on plans for resuming the section, however. The lost time means that I've decided to open out the station spacing by doubling the distance between stations from 30 nm to 60 nm. We lose resolution but gain time so that we might be able still to have a complete and continuous section at the end.

News for Mon 15 Sep 2008

Blimey, zoiks, hell's bells, drat, and oo-err missus. Late last night we received a met forecast, confirmed with another update this morning, that the remains of Hurricane Ike are reinvigorated and hurtling our way. We'd only just got started back on the CTD section and this turns up! This is what we read in the met analysis: "Low 994 southern Arkansas (ex IKE) expected 990 Great Lakes, further expected 990 Labrador with trough to southeast Greenland by 16/0001z, moving quickly northeast and deepening". That's the first time I've ever been at sea with an interest in the weather in southern Arkansas.

For several weeks now there has been a well-established blocking high over Scandinavia. In conjunction with the Azores High (in its usual position), North Atlantic depressions are being channelled away from the usual storm track (roughly Maine to Scotland/Norway) and onto a displaced and rotated storm track, such that depressions have been running east of north from Maine up the Irminger Basin (where we have been lately) and through Denmark Strait. Also they have been moving and developing slowly. The depressions were bypassing the Labrador Sea during the beginning of D332, so we were able to make quite steady progress through the western part of the cruise. Once we were out of the relative shelter of the Labrador Sea, we began taking the occasional pasting... Ike is following the same path as other recent depressions in the region, but with more oomph.

Anyway, what now? We managed to complete station 70 this morning, but where severe weather is concerned, flight is a good option, so we are steaming east without stopping for station work to ensure we stay out from under the worst of this fast-moving developing storm.

News for Tue 16 Sep 2008

It's 1500 GMT (1600 BST), we're in the vicinity of 58 degrees N, 22 degrees 30 mins W, and we're trundling eastwards to keep out form under the worst of the weather system formed from the remains of Ike. Prompt action by the Old Man looks to have worked. It's draughty at the moment (F6-7), but the waves are moderate (1 metre Hs). It's likely to get a bit draughtier and bumpier through the evening and into the night, but shouldn't be any worse than some of the rubbish weather we've already ridden out.

Anyway, since there's no active science going on (the underway instruments are plugging away, of course), we sent our roving reporter (Katie) down to the engine room to put the stokers in the spotlight, and she's taken some nice pictures.

---

---

News for Sat 20 Sep 2008

Tuesday 17 - Saturday 20 September

Knock me down with a feather, stripe me pink, snap me garters and call me Gertie, the awful weather continues unabated. We ran east, kept out of the worst of Ike, still got continually battered so no work. We had a short (roughly 12-hour) window in which we were able to return westwards to recover the NIOZ BOBO lander, otherwise we've been struggling in adverse winds or just hove to. A slight improvement is allowing us to make ground back eastwards, but any prospect of a continuous hydrographic section, even at coarse resolution, disappeared days ago. The main aim in the few days remaining is to get some chemical measurements in the North Atlantic Current immediately west of the Rockall-Hatton Plateau, so that's where we're going ...

But the Dutch guys had plenty to celebrate with all their moorings coming back, so they very generously threw a party for all on board last night (thanks to Sven, Lorendz, Femke and Santiago). Orange garments in abundance.

News for Sun 21 Sep 2008

Sunday 20 - Monday 21 September

Time and weather made even NAC measurements impossible, so we carried on eastwards through the Iceland Basin, all the way across the Rockall-Hatton Plateau, to heave to in the small hours of Monday morning, on a station a few cables off Rockall, to start a short section known as the Ellett Line. This is a section that has been running for a few decades now and is one of UK oceanography's contributions to global ocean monitoring. It is named after its originator, the late Dave Ellett. If you want to read more of the history and the science of this particular section, and a short biography of Ellett, then go here: http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/obe/PROJECTS/EEL/. "EEL" is short for "Extended Ellett Line" as the full occupation of this annual section usually now extends all the way to the south coast of Iceland. This interesting and informative website is another of Penny Holliday's creations that is relevant to our work out here.

Anyway: we steamed towards Rockall in steadily (finally!) improving weather, in a 3 metre following swell left-over from the foul weather now passed by to the west of us. We were optimistic of getting going on station work after a ludicrously long hiatus, caused by the worst period of sustained bad weather I have ever experienced at these latitudes and at this time of year. Imaging our consternation, therefore, when, on arriving at Rockall, we were unable to work because the 3 m swell, in running up the Rockall Bank, had doubled in height from 3 metres to 6 and occasionally 7 metres. This was quite unworkable so we stooged off further eastwards into the Rockall Trough in search of more amenable sea conditions. We eventually got started on station 71 later on Monday morning, only to discover that the CTD had broken. We wondered how many more things can go wrong. It transpired that the electronic sensor for measuring dissolved oxygen content in the seawater had broken. This might have been tolerable had it not managed also to make nonsense of the essential electronic measurement of seawater conductivity, used for calculating salinity. Salinity is the salt content of seawater and is needed to calculate seawater density, which in turn is needed for calculation of the geostrophic velocity. So we hauled poor old Dougal out of bed and sat him in front of the computer with a cup of coffee. After a short passage of time, he diagnosed the fault, replaced the faulty oxygen sensor, and off we went again.

However, the days' comedy was not yet over. Late in the evening, Mike the Mate phoned down from the bridge to tell us that the Navy had just sent a navigational warning to all vessels to keep out of the eastern Rockall Trough during Tuesday as a live firing exercise was to be conducted. By this time we were reduced to helpless laughter. For a fortnight we have been asking ourselves questions like: "what next?" and "surely this can't go on much longer?". The answers to these questions have invariably been: "bet you didn't expect this" and "yes, it can". So we're having to make a long dog-leg south (which you'll see on tomorrow's chart) to avoid the naval exercise area. Squawk!

So work finally ends tomorrow, Wednesday 24 September, at 6 am. This is our cut-off time in order to be able to meet the pilot in the Clyde estuary on time. He takes us up the river on the morning of Thursday 25 September to our berth in King George V dock in Govan, and it takes a day to steam from the end of the work line into dock.

Tomorrow's diary will be the last of the cruise.

News for Tue 23 Sep 2008

Tuesday 22 - Wednesday 23 September

Well, well, well. We had altered our planned cruise track to avoid the naval exercise area when we learned, on Tuesday morning, that the exercise had been cancelled... very helpful. Then in the afternoon of Tuesday there was a problem with the ship's engines that held us up for a couple of hours. I decided that, what with all the interruptions and problems, we should stop work and head for Glasgow a little early, so we departed the work area at 1700 on Tuesday evening, and at the time of writing, we're steaming through the North Channel between Northern Ireland and the west of Scotland. We have a busy day ahead of us, packing gear away, tidying labs, and, most importantly, finalising the cruise data to copy and take home.

The last couple of weeks have, in practice, been a near-total write-off, mainly due to the most extraordinarily persistent and unrelenting foul weather, but with a few other contributions to delay and down-time from other sources as well. However, the measurements we made in the first half of the cruise, over in the Labrador Sea and around southern Greenland, are pure gold, and we'll be working on that in coming months and years.

We'll pick up the pilot later today to take us into our berth in the King George V dock in Govan, where we should arrive around 1800. So this is me, Sheldon Bacon, signing off from the D332 diary. I hope you've enjoyed following the cruise.