Mooring Deployment Concludes in the Beaufort Sea

ACEP researchers have concluded three weeks of fieldwork on the Beaufort Sea deploying moorings and conducting oceanographic surveys. The researchers are working on the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management-funded project, “Central Beaufort Sea Wave and Hydrodynamic Modeling Study” and on a deployment/survey for Sandia National Labs. They traveled between Foggy Island Bay and Drew Point, across nearly 150 miles of Alaska’s north coast. They deployed five moorings and one weather station, collected hundreds of miles of bathymetry data, and completed dozens of CTD casts, bottle samples, and sediment grabs.

Work will continue on the Beaufort Sea in September to retrieve a temporary mooring before the winter ice comes in and to download photos from two cameras attached to the weather station. Researchers will then return in summer 2019 to conduct additional oceanographic surveys and swap out existing moorings that will remain installed until summer 2020.

The research is generously funded by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Sandia National Labs. For more information, visit the project website, https://www.aoos.org/foggy/, or contact the project’s principal investigator, Jeremy Kasper, at jlkasper@alaska.edu.

Jeremy Kasper and Nick Konefal prepare to deploy a mooring during their fieldwork in the Beaufort Sea. Photo courtesy of Nick Konefal/ACEP.