Arctic buoy’s oceanic voyage to Erris

Arctic buoy’s oceanic voyage to Erris


Exhibition opens in Áras Inis Gluaire

Áine Ryan

FOR Erris film-maker Fergus Sweeney an Arctic buoy is the most exotic piece of flotsam he has ever come across while walking the shoreline at Blacksod, in Erris. Turns out the buoy, now the subject of an upcoming exhibition in Áras Inis Gluaire, was originally attached to an ITP, an ice-tethered profiler, which was put in the Arctic Ocean almost three years ago by the US Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to measure climate-change.
At some stage it became detached and drifted 15,000 miles on a 3.5 metre ice-floe while still sending messages back to the institution in Massachusetts. Sweeney traced its origins and discovered that the buoy belonged to a network of devices in the Arctic measuring global warming and the ocean’s role in shrinking sea ice.
WHOI investigator, John M Toole told The Irish Times last week: “We’ve deployed about 60 in the Arctic since 2004 and we have had a few which washed up on Iceland and northern Svalbard [Spitsbergen] and on the outer Hebrides. This is the furthest south we’ve had one travel.”
He said ITP 47 had been deployed on April 11, 2011, as part of an annual sampling effort with the North Pole Environmental Observatory Programme.
It was programmed to transmit observations on ocean temperatures and salinity versus depth via satellite, while drifting slowly on Arctic ice. However,  it fell silent on Christmas Eve 2011 but resurfaced later and, even though it was damaged, continued to send position information until October 2012.

Exhibition
NOW ITP 47 has been given a new life as the subject of an exhibition developed by Mr Sweeney and Transition Year students at ColΡiste ChomΡin, Rossport. Commissioned by Brendan Murray, the Artistic Director at Áras Inis Gluaire, through multimedia it tells the story of the institution’s work and the buoy’s voyage across the ocean.
“ITP 47 is still working and still has a message. It wants to tell us something about what’s happening to our planet further north,” said Fergus Sweeney.

MORE Drifted ITP 47 opens on Thursday, February 6, at Áras Inis Gluaire, Belmullet. www.arasinisgluaire.ie