A plan B was activated in 2022 when we failed in the attempt of acquiring in-situ stress data for constraining spatial stress field variations across seeping sites in the Fram Strait. The planets aligned for a successful plan B. Thanks to a great cooperation with Ifremer we got granted a proposal for taking Penfeld (the French cone penetration tool for academia).
We cruised well this time and I am tremendously grateful to the ship administration (IMR), the ship crew, the Penfeld team (Genavir), the CPTu scientists (Ifremer), PhD and post-docts (UiT and the University of Texas at Austin) for all the contributions to a successful research campaign.
We collected in-situ pressure, friction and resistance together with thermal data that will allow us constraining the mechanical properties of methane rich sediments at Arctic submarine slide settings. We will look for potentially weaker or overpressurized zones, prone to collapse and leakage.
It is recomforting to end a project with a positive outcome. Both the Captain and myself felt we had a revenge! We celebrated!
