SA Agulhas II Winter 2017 Cruise: ice edge drifters

Brief description

Three Trident Sensors Helix beacons (Unit 1,2,3) were deployed about on ice floes close to latitude 62.8 S and longitude 29.8 E on 4th July 2017 to measure sea ice drift.

The region where the instruments were deployed (Antarctic Marginal Ice Zone) consisted of first-year ice on average ~50 cm thick. The instruments were deployed by hand by three people, lowered by crane from the ship to the ice on a basket cradle on floes ~5 m in diameter.

The temporal resolution is 4 hours. The survival of the sensors depended on staying fixed to the floe and the battery life.

Unit 1 provided GPS location from the 5th July 2017 to 1st December 2017, started at 62.84 S and 30.20 E and finished at 61.55 S and 55.99 E.

Unit 2 provided GPS location from the 5th July 2017 to 3rd August 2017, started at 62.83 S and 30.20 E and finished at 62.36 S and 31.57 E.

Unit 3 provided GPS location from the 5th July 2017 to 15st August December 2017, started at 62.59 S and 29.98 E and finished at 61.16 S and 35.60 E.

In the .xlsx submission sheet 1 refers to Unit 1, sheet 2 to Unit 2, and sheet 3 to Unit 3.
First column is the Unit Identifier (1,2,3)
Second column is the date in the format day/month/year
Third column is the UTC time in the format hh:mm:ss
Fourth column is the latitude in degrees and decimals, the negative refers to South
Fifth column is the longitude in degrees and decimals, the positive refers to East