Fieldwork
The ANDREX recovery cruise (JR239) is taking place in March-April of 2010, between Montevideo, Uruguay (estimated departure 18th March) and Stanley, Falkland Islands (estimated arrival 25th April) on the British Antarctic Survey ship RRS James Clark Ross. This cruise aims to complete the stations remaining after the abandonment of the original ANDREX expedition in Dec 2008-Jan 2009 after 27 stations had been sampled (see below).
To follow the progress of the cruise, please check back regularly to the UEA LGMAC Fieldwork website, where updates will hopefully be posted, the blog of the JCR’s Radio Officer, Mike Gloistein, for daily updates of what is happening onboard ship, or the ANDREX cruise blog.
The intended ANDREX cruise track and station locations extend from the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula and initially proceed eastward along the crest of the South Scotia Ridge. This segment of the cruise track repeats a set of 55 stations that were occupied in 1999 during the U.K. ALBATROSS expedition, and includes a survey of the Orkney Passage, the deepest gap in the ridge. Thereafter the cruise plan tracks the climatological position of the gyre’s northern boundary approximately whilst skirting the southern flank of the ridge system that limits the gyre to the north.
In practice, this approach repeats most of the stations conducted in 1990 during the German WOCE S1 cruise west of the Prime Meridian, as well as some of those occupied further east in 1996 as part of the German WOCE S4A expedition, with only some deviation from these historical tracks on a few occasions so as to remain close to the gyre’s northern boundary and adjacent ridge system.
The initial ANDREX cruise (JC30) left Cape Town, South Africa on 26th December 2008 on the RRS James Cook, with the first station being sampled on 31 December 2008. Approximately 120 stations were envisaged, with a typical spacing of ~35 km (with finer sampling over regions of steep topography) over a distance of ~4500 km.
Unfortunately, only 27 stations were completed before the cruise was curtailed. An ANDREX recovery cruise is therefore scheduled to return to the region to complete the remaining stations (marked red in the cruise plot) in March-April 2010 on the RRS James Clark Ross (JR239).
