Post Date: 4 April 2008
Seattle, WA
Posted By: Michael Cameron

Today is The Big Day! We Have Been Preparing for This Cruise for Months!

The science team: Michael Cameron, Erin Moreland, Kym Yano, and Mike Apatiki.

Today is the big day. All of the planning, organizing, checking and rechecking is over. We have been preparing for this cruise for months and now we finally get to go! The three of us from the National Marine Mammal Laboratory (i.e., Michael Cameron, Erin Moreland and Kym Yano) met at the SeaTac airport for our afternoon flight. We are sad to have to leave home, our friends and our families, but we are excited to start our work. Mike Apatiki (an Alaska Native hunter from Saint Lawrence Island) joined us in Anchorage and we continued on to Kodiak, Alaska. Our flight into Kodiak gave us a terrific view of the State Pier where our icebreaker, the USCGC Polar Sea, and the NOAA ship Oscar Dyson were docked right next to each other. Like last year, NMML researchers will use the Oscar Dyson to capture and instrument ribbon and spotted seals at the Bering Sea ice edge, while we utilize a helicopter on board the icebreaker to conduct aerial abundance surveys of the interior pack ice.

More from the Polar Sea survey>>>