Patrick Robinson from somewhere near the South Orkney Islands -- Today, chief scientist Keith Nicholls and his team from the British Antarctic Survey recovered a pair of oceanographic moorings that were deployed two years ago.  First, we traveled to the exact location the mooring was deployed.  The mooring line and instruments sit well below the surface and stretch all the way to the bottom, some 3,000 meters below.  

A view of the mooring from the ship. A mooring is an oceanographic instrument which is anchored to the sea floor, and is comprised of a series of suspended instruments between the base and a float. Moorings are designed to collect many different types of samples and measurements: from temperature and currents, to sediment sampling depending on the study. Photo: Patrick Robinson.

The crew working to recover the mooring. Photo: Patrick Robinson.

Got it! Now the crew is reeling in the mooring. Photo: Patrick Robinson.

Photo: Patrick Robinson. 

To release the instruments and floats, they sent a signal to a mechanism at the base of the mooring and gave a 'release' command. The mooring line was so deep it took nearly 30 minutes for it to reach the surface.  One of the crew spotted the bright yellow floats and they spent the next few hours reeling in hundreds of meters of cable, stopping to remove each instrument and float along the way.  Keith will use the data from these mooring lines along with the data sent back from the seals to better understand the ocean circulation patterns around the Weddell Sea.