Fram Strait – this and that
This article is part of the series “2026-10: Fram Strait cruise KPH”.
Just some random images. Some of my own that I haven’t use yet, one not taken by me and some more from the last days.
15 October – the moonpool
If you have ice around the ship, it is good to have a moon pool, a vertical shaft inside a ship to give access to the sea. Here you can deploy CTDs without them being crushed by ice floes on the way up. Today temperatures got into double digits – in the negative range – and the surface of the moon pool has been freezing. The CTD itself is somewhere in the water below the ship, but no CTDs were harmed.
Every day – the food
If you are on a cruise with the icebreaker Kronprins Haakon there is a good chance that you gain weight. The meals are outstanding and sometimes the lunch provides more variety than a normal restaurant has on the menu. And then there are the Saturday dinners with steak and vegetables and potatoes and gravy. Now I’m flying back to Tromsø and that’s good, because one another week on the ship and I would just burst while eating.
25 October – clearing the ice
Sometimes the sea ice is welcome, for example for an ice station. Sometimes it is very unwelcome, for example for the recovery or deployment of a mooring, a “Christmas tree” of instruments on a long cable anchored in the ground and usually staying untouched for a year. Several times we had to change plans, because the ice was too compact and thick. However, sometimes we used the icebreaker to push away the ice, building an ice-free pool round the mooring’s location. That can look pretty funny on the navigation screen, where the ship’s track is displayed.
26 October – ice station
One day later there is an opportunity for another ice station; the tenth and last on this year’s Fram Strait cruise. I fly the drone again. Lia Lechler (UiT) from the sea ice team makes this nice photo where I am just about to start sending the drone up to an altitude of about 80 metres.
27 October – it clears up
It was not easy to find a window to fly the drone the day before, because it drizzled for a long time. But today there is a clearer day in our cruise’s roller coaster weather. It looks like a sunrise or sunset but it is neither, because it is polar night and the sun stays below the horizon all day long.
30 October – arrival in Longyearbyen
After doing measurements in Kongsfjorden we do measurements in Isfjorden today. After dinner we have our expedition de-brief. Shortly after the last of 98 CTD casts is finished and we steam to Longyearbyen, where we started the expedition 17 days ago. Then it’s time to go out, feel the ground under our feet, walk to town and grab a beer.
31 October – rainy
The town looks quite dull, because it has +7 °C – much too warm for the season – and the snow in the valley has melted. It is raining.
1 November – travelling back
Today it has become a bit colder and the rain turned into snow. Good for Longyearbyen, bad for our flight, which departs with a delay of 35 minutes. There are at least 16 people from the cruise on board this airplane and I cross my fingers that everyone gets their connecting flights, whether they go to Norway, France, Denmark, or in Scotland.
And if I get my flight, I’ll be back in Tromsø at 20:55.
I got it :-)