The ups and downs in developing an under-ice moored profiler called the ICYCLER

The ICYCLER is a moored oceanographic profiler designed to measure surface layer water properties under mobile ice cover. The instrumentation is deployed in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago to measure the surface properties passing from the Arctic Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. The profiler is designed to provide daily 50-meter salinity-temperature-chlorophyll profiles for a full year. A description of the ICYCLER design was presented at the ISOPE2003 conference (Fowler et al., 2004). An ICYCLER prototype was successfully used in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago during a year-long deployment. A second re-designed ICYCLER was deployed in the summer of 2004 but was not recovered until 2 years later. Simultaneous ice and oceanographic events caused the mooring to move 11miles eastwards into deeper waters where its buoyancy tank collapsed and the entire mooring sank to the bottom. Data presented showed that ice may have snagged the sensor float when it remained near the surface for a day because of excessive cable resulting from strong ocean currents.