The thin sections in the table below came from ice cores in the fast ice off of the coast of Barrow. With the help of plastic sheets and tubing sea ice was allowed to grow without the influence of under-ice currents.

The heavy duty 8" PVC pipes were installed on February 9, 2005 when the ice thickness was 80 cm. The plastic sheets proved more difficult to install and were not put into the ice until March 28, 2005 when the ice thickness was around 1.20m. See pictures of the installation and the ice cores.

The purpose of this was to establish a relationship between several parameters that have an influence on ice algal growth at the underside of the ice in the spring. Two of the biological parameters are light conditions and nutrient supply. For this reason an experiment was set up by the ice algae biologist Sarah Story who installed 18 tubes that simulated different light condiotions and nutrient concentrations. The ice core samples drilled out of the rectangle and the tubes in May 2005 were cut into 5 cm sections and immediately centrifuged at 1400 rpm. The ice thickness then was about 1.48cm (meaning the ice in the rectangle grew 26cm and 68cm in the tubes after the currents were cut off). The ice samples were later to be used for permeability measurements in the cold room in Fairbanks. Due to a freezer malfunctioning and subsequent partial melt of the samples this could not be done anymore but thin section were prepared to look at ice crystal orientation.

As can be seen in the table the underice water currents have an impact on the crystal alignment. Outside the rectangle were the ice was exposed to water currents, the crystals are aligned parallel to the shore (predominate current direction here). Inside the rectangle and in the tubes were there was no current the crystals are smaller and have a random orientation.