Shortly after midnight, with the lights of Barrow glowing in the distance, we arrived at our next sampling line, the DBO line.

Deploying the CTD rosette with Barrow glowing in the distance

The DBO or Distributed Biological Observatory is an Arctic biological time series designed by Dr. Jackie Grebmeier from the University of Maryland (http://arctic.cbl.umces.edu/) to look at core oceanographic parameters such as temperature and nutrients in regional hotspots in the Arctic throughout the year.  This line consists of eight stations in the waters just offshore of Barrow crossing Barrow Canyon.  This time series is based on the cooperation of various research ships from the USA, Canada, Russia, China and Japan, committing to sample this line when they are operating in the Chukchi Sea.  I wanted to make sure to highlight the DBO in the blog because of the magnitude of importance of this kind of multi-national cooperation amongst scientists.  This collaboration and cooperation allows the collection of a tremendous data set that creates an annual and seasonal time series that will be able to quantify the changes to this important Arctic Ocean ecosystem in the face of climate change.

Map of DBO Lines (from http://pag.arcticportal.org)