Achieved activity

The project ran extremely well with access holes drilled and kept open through the ice shelf for up to 9 days (for a full account see the Logistics Report). This was critical for the success of the project. All instruments and sampling devices deployed through the access holes functioned and were recovered. The two most central of the 4 proposed sites were occupied, and a third site at the edge of the ice shelf monitored over a period of three weeks for currents in the upper 2/3 of the water column. The field operation to deploy the camp, drill and ream the access holes took longer than expected for the first site especially. In addition the techniques that we would trial to re-drill a hole and recover the frozen-in mooring were evaluated and it was decided that these required further development before this procedure would likely be successful. We decided to concentrate on two ice shelf holes setting short-term current moorings in both and a sea ice site where a mooring was deployed for 22 days.