My experience in the Baltic Room

On an icy morning I was given the opportunity to accompany our Marine Technician, Tony, in the Baltic room (where the CTD is housed and deployed) for the entirety of a CTD cast. The crew in the bridge had opened a hole in the sea ice to allow us to deploy the CTD, and we got started straight away leashing up and nudging the CTD out of the giant Baltic room door. The ocean was still and the view of the sea ice around us spectacular - we were treated to the first cloudless day in a long, long time. Given the relative calmness of the ocean, we were able to observe the rosette as it sunk to the deep, as far down as 20 metres! As the downcast progressed, we split the time watching out for any encroaching sea ice and observing the unspooling of the wire on the winch. The winch has had some troubles during the upcast at previous
stations, so it was interesting to see first hand the mechanisms that enabled it to handle over 2000 pounds of tension and neatly wrap up at the end of the cast. There was a generous dose of admiring the view as well, of course.

On the upcast, we ensured the winch re-wrapped successfully. The upcast

went by smoothly, and while some imposing chunks of sea ice did drift by, they were handily pushed away by the impressive force of the ship's bow thrusters. As the CTD approached the surface, Tony and I leaned over the edge of the Baltic room door to see the rosette through the clear water. We could even see the surface bottle fire at 5 metres, which was a treat! Observing casts from the relatively sanitised space of the CTD console, we often don't grasp the power that our single click can have, namely, that it fires the spring-loaded mechanism on the rosette. Seeing it fire first-hand reinforced the importance of our job as CTD watchstanders. Finally, it was time to retreive the rosette. The winch operator gently pulled up and the rosette popped out of the water, slowly drifting into the Baltic room with Tony's aid. The entire process took three hours, but in that time the importance of what we are doing here was solidified for me. Thanks to Tony for being such a great guide, I can't wait to hang out in the Baltic room again!