Rijpfjorden is a one of the many fjords in Svalbard. It is located on the Northeastern island of the Svalbard archipelago. The island is named Nordaustlandet (North East Land). In addition to being the northernmost fjord on Svalbard and in Europe, Rijpfjorden is a special fjord during IPY, because there is a research station, where some of the people from UNIS (including me) and the NP (Norwegian Polar Institute) will do fieldwork during this year. Not the most typical task for a UNIS student, but possible if you are lucky enough. In this matter, I am incomprehensibly lucky (thanks to my supervisor Jørgen).
Before we can begin the story, I have to introduce the team. Our crew for the expedition was:
Jørgen Berge . Associate professor in marine biology at UNIS. Coordinator of Ice-edge program and CLEOPATRA. Long experience in marine biology, mostly amphipods. The leader of the trip.
Stig Falk-Petersen. A proud (and only during the expedition) agent of Norwegian Polar Institute. Experienced and long-time researcher in Arctic marine biology. Expert in use of lipid-analysis in smaller animals.
John Inge Karlsen. Also known as Sir John. The most important man on the expedition. Repairs all the stuff we manage to break (and that’s a lot). Also works as the one responsible for safety and logistics.
Henrik Nygård. PhD student in marine biology at UNIS. Working with amphipod ecology and ecotoxicology in the “amphipod group”.
Mikko Vihtakari (writer). A lucky master student in marine biology at UNIS. The “reporter” in the expedition. Working with amphipod ecology together with Jørgen, Henrik, Katrine and Laurel.
Other members of the team, who couldn’t take part in the expedition this time:
Eva Leu. Another member of NP. Joining the expedition in April.
Janne Søreide. Going-to-be post-doc at UNIS. Joining the expedition in April.
Katrine Berg-Hansen. A bachelor student in marine biology at UNIS. Working in the amphipod-group.
Laurel McFadden. An adventurer. Working in the amphipod-group until the end of April. Official language advisor (read: fixer) in the team.
Our plan was to fly to Rijpfjorden 1st of March 2007 and come back on the 19th of the same month. The job was to follow the plan Eva and Janne had made for us. In this point, I have to give an example of the exactness of this monstrous plan: On page 8, it says that when you measure ice thickness, the numbers in your ruler must start from zero. A piece of knowledge that is apparently not possible to understand without reading the plan…Ah, yeah and this particular piece of advise was only one of many in our sampling bible…
However, I have feeling that this terribly long introduction is finally over and we can start the story. So let’s do it. Here is the story, how I saw it:
1.3.2007 Day 1. Thursday.
A great day. Launch of IPY – and even more important: today we are leaving for the north. Finally! I have been waiting this day since October 2006.
The first flight to Rijpfjorden left around mid-day. My task was to stay in Longyearbyen to make sure that all the cargo got onboard until the next (and last) flight. I didn’t really have time to enjoy the IPY launch at UNIS, because I had to drive back and forth in the town arranging things. I have to admit that didn’t really bother me, since I was going to leave for one of the greatest adventures in my life so far.
Svalbard seen from the air. Impressive, isn't it?
60% of Svalbard is covered by glaciers. The biggest glaciers on Svalbard are HUGE. This is only a piece of an average sized glacier near Newton toppen, highest point of Svalbard.
The second helicopter left Longyear with loads of cargo after beginning to pack all the stuff around 1530. I arrived in Rijpfjorden just before five o’clock. After unloading the helicopter, it left us. In the same moment, I got a new definition for the phrase “middle-of-nowhere”. The new definition is simply: Rijpfjorden “research station” . Two small huts and one container over one and half hour helicopter trip distance from civilization. Closest living human being (except us) must have been really far away.
Camp Rijpfjorden.
Anyway, after isolation shock everything started to roll smoothly. We arranged stuff we had, warmed up huts and took our first Drytech™ dinner. Drytech is a new definition for fast food in middle-of-nowhere. It needs only warm water and five minutes and you can eat it straight from the bag. After eating, you can burn the bag and all evidence of the meal is gone (except for a strange taste in your mouth). There are at least 7 different labels on the Drytech™ bags. Despite having different text and colour on the labels, the contents of the bags taste more or less the same. A brilliant invention!
2.3.2007 Day 2. Friday
This day passed extremely fast. All we did was build up the camp. Nothing special to tell about the day. As an introduction to the noble research station in Rijpfjorden, I’ll present a picture from every single building in the camp:
Bjørnehiet (=Bear den) is an old NP's cabin and our main building&cantina.
Sukkerbitten is another place to sleep. Tropical nights in High Arctic guaranteed for a person sleeping in upper bed, because of Sir John and his fancy stove...
Container & lab tent. Remember the word "field accuracy", when reading filtaration results...
In this photograph you can see (also) scooter boxes, which can fly without wings.
The Weatherstation of Rijpfjorden.
3.3.2007 Day 3. Saturday
I don’t know how cold it was during the day, but it was cold enough to make water pumping impossible. Gammel Erik (=an ancient Norwegian bad guy) had come for a visit. When we tried to pump drinking water from a lake behind the camp, it instantly froze in the hose 20 cm out of the water. There was no way to go outside with out heavy clothing and a face mask.
Someone told us over the satellite phone that the weather station next to our camp showed -26 degrees and 16 m/s wind. In those kinds of conditions the wind chill could fall well below -50 (if calculated in the same way as the Longyearbyen weather stations). Such cold weather made all outside work almost impossible to carry out. Thus we didn’t manage to do anything really significant except for some improvements to the camp and Bjørnehiet. Good work considering conditions, anyway. We were still alive.
4.3.2007. Day 4. Sunday
If the weather was crappy yesterday, today it was excellent. Even through it was cold, we were able to pump water on the first try. Because the weather got better, we saw our first animals during the expedition. Two ptarmigans near Bluffwarden.
Here are three proofs that I didn't lie about the weather.
We also started to do our job, why we came here – sampling. It was a good feeling to deploy some amphipod and sediment traps after having some problems in the start. After dinner we measured the ice thickness (with a ruler that started at 21 cm, but we did some hard-core mathematics to convert the values, don’t worry). Ice thickness turned out to be around 50 cm - more than enough for safe sampling.
Sampling in sunset - finally!
5.3.2007. Day 5. Monday
During the morning Henrik and I gathered the first amphipod traps from the expedition. From the 3 shallowest surface/ice traps we got Gammarus wilkitskii, G.setosus.and Anonux nugax. From the bottom traps we got only A.nugax. Quite expected results. Sediment traps were kept for the next day.
We made three different transects for amphipod sampling. They are called Southern transect, Lóven transect (which is a straight line from the camp to Kapp Lòven) and Northern transect. The transect we used today was the Lóven transect.
After lunch, we tried to establish a zooplankton sampling station over deeper water. The plan was to head towards the mooring and establish a station well before the mooring to avoid disturbing the instruments. Our desired depth was more than 150 meters. After heading 4 km towards NNW we did a test hole. Depth was 105 meters. Thus we decided to continue 2 km forward.
As it turned out, the sampling was a complete failure, because three overly curious and fearless polar bears forced us to go back to the camp. They didn’t flee even though we shot around five flares. They were just hanging around 100 meters away from us and slowly coming closer. Therefore, we had to flee with the snow scooter (which btw, looked like a circus caravan, because we had a bit of hurry to take all the stuff with us) for an early dinner. The polar bears looked to be a mother with two two-years-old cubs, because there was not notable size difference in the bears. We will have a new try for sampling tomorrow.
Sometimes Svalbard is a merciless place, because some of the Norwegian ancient bad guys doesn’t feel pity to give lessons for their guests. During dinner, Rasmus (=another Norwegian ancient bad guy) had come for a visit. There was some wind during the day, yes, but the wind wasn’t anything special. However, when we were eating dinner, the wind started to blow very strongly in gusts. After the dinner we found out that Rasmus had blown the scooter boxes (weight about 400 kg) and our toilet tent to lean towards Sukkerbitten. At same time the wires of the hut had broken. We had to work for 2 hours in the wind, which almost blew us down, to fix the damages. The work turned out to be really dangerous, because once and while Rasmus just decided to grip the scooter box, we were pushing to wind cover, and threw it many meters over astonished arctic adventurers. Still, Rasmus gave us some mercy and no one hurt, but an accident was close. After all this, we didn’t lose anything except for some parts of the toilet tent. Really strange wind. Otherwise almost calm, but suddenly the wind hit so strongly that you almost fell down. I have never experienced anything similar.
Text and photos: Mikko Vihtakari