Disko Bay Expedition

Olga’s question

Will you comment on this survey? It were interesting. And what’s about the Grigoriy Mikheev. Is it a Russian vessel?

Carol Cotterill’s response

Dear Olga,
Firstly I’m so glad you’re reading the blogs on the Cape Farewell website! So in answer to your questions – yes the Grigory Mikheev is a Russian ship. She used to be a Russian research vessel and has now been converted to accommodate tourists. The crew are Russian, and the staff looking after us onboard are multi-national – Russian, English, Austrian and Belgian.

The survey is very interesting on this expedition. We are using sound to investigate beneath the seabed. We create a bubble in the water, which when it collapses releases a sound wave. We use marine microphones called hydrophones to listen to the sound being reflected back from the seabed initially, and then each sediment boundary beneath the seabed in turn. We are managing to “see” up to 400m beneath the seabed in places which is incredible for us!

I need to spend some time interpreting the profiles – like 2D slices through the seabed – but we have seen channels gouged out by old ice flows that have now been infilled with 100’s meters of sediments. There are lots of interesting features being revealed. However, the nature of science is that we need to go back and place our data into the big mix of existing data from this area in order to understand the detailed picture of what is happening and has happened in the past!

If you, or anyone else has any other questions, please send them in and I will try to answer them as soon as I can.

Have a look at the previous QA.