Back to the grind...

We are officially back in the US and most of us are back to work (I think!). At least, I am. In getting a little slideshow ready for my coworkers to see what I've been doing lately, I had a chance to reminisce and evaluate my experiences. I'm not sure there are words to express my appreciation for my colleagues on the boat (scientists and boat staff included). The experience gained over the last 6 weeks has been priceless. Not only did I see wondrous things, I have a no-small-amount-of-CV-booster to add.

(Photo credit Selina Vaage)

Specifically, I'd like to thank Dr. Meng Zhou. Being a late addition to the UMass crew set to embark, I find myself incredibly lucky to have been working on something only slightly tangential to the missions of the cruise. Meng is a fantastic mentor, giving career advice willingly, life advice frequently, and being a good friend throughout. If any of the readers have a chance to sail with Meng, do not hesitate - agree to it immediately!

(Photo credit Dr. Alison Stimpert)

I'd also like to thank Dr. Doug Nowacek. Without the efforts of this awesome project Chief Scientist, the cruise simply would not have been such a great success. His dedication to the job of Chief Scientist allowed great coordination between working groups and ship time. It was a fantastic experience to be able to work with such a great scientist and person. I hope to sail with you again soon!

I'd also like to thank my night shifters (or Midnight Marauders)! Without you guys, I surely would have gone crazy. At the very least, embarrassing story time would not have devolved into hilarious embarrassing excrement stories without you all.

Thanks to everyone on the boat for a safe, fun, and productive cruise. You all are great!

Thank you Antarctica - for being there, mostly, but also for housing some of the greatest wonders of the world.

And now that I have gone off the deep-end and thanked a non-sentient continent for being a continent, I will sign off. Perhaps in the near future, I will have another adventure to report. One can only hope (and apply for grants!)

Cold now, hot later!

June 5, 2010

Yesterday was just another breathtaking day…

I began my day at 7:45 AM, when Eric came in the room and told me I'd
have a chance to go out on a Zodiac today. Needless to say, I was quite
excited, but that didn't stop me from catching 15 more minutes of sleep.

Anyway, after getting up, showering, eating breakfast and putting many
layers of clothes on and signing a waiver, I was ready to go. Our Zodiac
was lifted off of the deck, placed in the water and our group (Me, Selina,
Andy (the birthday boy himself!), Maria and Driver Kelley) began to descend
to the tiny boat. I was last to approach the ladder and right before I
began to climb downward, our outboard motor decided not to start. After
trying every combination of gas tanks, primer pumps, throttle positions,
etc. Kelley couldn't get it started. We had to call over another boat to
have Jeremy have a whack at it. No luck.

Then MT Dan Powers came to the rescue, starting the engine (after we had
been trying for a good 10 minutes) in a few pulls. We honored him by naming
our boat "Powerhouse" for the day.

We left the Palmer and went hunting for a good place for Maria to get great
shots of whales. It didn't take long, as the whales were just as eager to
see us as we were to see them. A pair of whales swam around us for awhile
while Maria got some great underwater pictures and I got plenty of video.

After one pair finished checking us out, we found another pair and took
more pictures and video of them. It was quite a fortunate day for
whale-sighting and whale-tagging, as the taggers got two tags on.

The whales the tag boat were following decided to split up, so the boat
called us in to track one of them. So, with daylight disappearing quickly
(it was around 2:30-3:00), we grabbed an antenna and tried to find the
other tagged whale.

We weren't very fortunate, however, as our antenna was misbehaving. After
15 minutes of fussing with it, Andy determined the wine just had a bad
connection and fixed it, somewhat. But even with the fixed antenna, we had
trouble following the whale, as it was taking short dives, disrupting our
tracking efforts.

After a little bit of tracking, it began to snow. Just lightly at first,
but soon very large flakes were falling. The wind was only around 4 knots,
so it was quite peaceful. However, the larger flakes dropped visibility
greatly, so the Palmer had to call us in. As we headed back, the beacon
from the Palmer grew fainter and fainter as the snow got thicker and
thicker. We had a GPS, so we knew where it was, but it was still very
strange to be so close to the only thing lit up and not be able to see it
clearly.

After getting safely onboard the Palmer and eating a dinner of buffalo
chicken pizza, it was time for the mostly-nightly science meeting. Upon
everyone arriving, our Chief Scientist Doug told us we all had to sign a
safety form or waiver of some sort. I thought for a second and remembered
we had planned a soccer match for Andy in the Helo Hangar. Not letting the
surprise slip, we all headed there and gathered for planning of the games.
We figured that it would be best to have teams of three, games to one
point, winners stay. Some music was put on, we stood around the impromptu
field and watched as two teams would try to kick is between two ping-pong
paddles placed on the ground.

Competition was fierce! The field had a distance of only about 30 feet, but
trying to advance a ball past three other people proved quite difficult. We
played for about an hour and were all a little sweaty. My team had a streak
of four games, so we were especially tired.

But that didn't stop me and sever others from playing a couple games of
basketball afterwards. A little half-court 3-on-3 with substitutions really
burned the last of our energy. Tired and sweaty, we decided two games was
enough and headed either to our rooms to shower, or back to the lab to
complete their shift (me).

Like I said, it was just another breathtaking day (in more ways that one)!

Palmer Station + Rock and Roll

It's been about a week since the last post! Oops, sorry about that all.
The weather has been generally terrible. The nights have been a little
better than the days, however. Winds tend to die down at night and we have
a nice pleasant snow. We've had several snowball fights in the night,
assisted in shoveling the helicopter pad and refueling the Zodiacs. But
all in all, there isn't much new. Lots of unpublished data, however! ;)

Well – we were supposed to go to Palmer Station last night, and we did!
For about 20 minutes. Unfortunately for us, the weather turned bad in a
matter of minutes after landing the final boat. That meant that we had a
few perilous moments fighting the mob to buy souvenirs for friends at home.
I'm afraid I might not have bought enough... bahhh! We'll see, I
suppose. This is one of the only trips I've wanted a large amount of
souvenir collection. I ended up buying several clothing items, several
small pins, a magnet, and several stickers. AND, the ability to state,
"I've been on the Antarctic continent"! Pretty cool.

After leaving the station, the night crew had a few hours to sleep thanks
to the day crew agreeing to stay up until 2am. Shortly after 2am, however,
we approached the French Channel. The approach was rough – 5 degree
roll/pitch was not uncommon. As the ship turned to make the Channel, the
swells increased, rolling our ship with might. Winds were up to 45-50
knots. Seasickness. Identifying my odd stomach feeling was a little late
for the drugs to start up. It was a long night. Currently, the winds are
back down to 20-30 knots and we're getting ready to tow for plankton. I
may go take a quick nap before dinner to make sure I've got my sea legs
back.

Discovery!

After many weeks of study, we finally discovered the origins of krill
within Wilhelmina Bay!! Alert the press!

Fog!

Our weather has not been as cooperative as earlier in the trip. We have
had frequent snows followed by windy days. Today was no exception,
unfortunately. As the day began, it was clear that we would have weather
for the day, but the fog steadily encroached on our visual observation
range until finally we could only see approximately 100m from the boat.
This definitely made an impact on our ability to see whales for tagging.
Finally at about 1pm, we found two whales – a pair off in a krill-less
bay. Virtually devoid of life other than birds, these two whales were
enough to send a couple boats after them for radio tagging. (I went to bed
since I had been up for the night shift.)

Fast forwarding approximately 6 hours, I woke up, showered, and brushed my
teeth. The boat had the usual movement of keeping station, bow and aft
thrusters periodically forcefully turning the boat. We must have not been
able to tag today. I eat by myself in the mess, since I am there
approximately 1 hour dinner serving hours are over. Soup and some canned
peaches.

Arriving in the dry lab, I survey the monitors giving our position,
heading, speed, wind speed, etc. We have been on station for over 2 hours!
The whales are sleeping… or something. Oh, yes we did get a tag on
today. Good thing we radio tagged a narcolepsy enhanced whale – we'll
be able to study outlier sleeping habits! Just kidding.

Tonight will be a relatively quiet night for the krill gang. As our main
job while animals are tagged is to make sure our ADCP and echo sounders are
operating correctly, sitting in one place will make the job rather mundane.
Meh. Maybe I'll have to post twice in a day. (Play
dramatic/suspenseful music)

P.S. Yesterday I went out on the "tag" boat whose goal was to pick up
the radio transmitting tag after it detached from the whale. Unfortunately
the mechanism to release the suction cups holding it on was a little
delayed, so we weren't able to pick it up on our boat due to some rough
seas. Attached is the photo of the team locating the direction of the
signal. Enjoy!

The morning bust forth!

After a couple of sadly cloudy and windy/snowy days, we had the most
magnificent sunrise yesterday morning. As I speak, the sun is making its
way toward the horizon to dawn another day, but alas, no photos of today
yet. Counting and measuring krill from our catch overnight, the view from
our starboard window was breathtaking. Sitting at the mouth of Wilhelmina
Bay, the sun crested, bursting forth a full spectrum of reds, oranges, and
yellows. The residual weather was still rolling over the mountains in a
fast moving misty pattern reminiscent of the epic trek across Antarctica in
"Happy Feet". Okay, maybe not as windy – though the night before
gave us 50 knot wind gusts with over 30 knots sustained. It is not a calm
place here. So many krill were caught last night that I, for one, have no
concept of the numbers. So many krill were in one of the nine nets, that
the sample had to be split in half three times (yielding 1/8th the total
krill volume). It still was a tight fit in our 1 liter plastic jars!

Our tag team has been awesome, tagging whales just about every day they
have left on our Zodiac rubber boats. Unfortunately, the whales were
having just too much fun yesterday, so our tags fell off relatively
quickly. Overnight we surveyed a shallow bay – Charlotte Bay.
Unfortunately, we were unable to survey the entire bay due to large
icebergs jutting some 4-6 ft above the water surface in solid ice. The
radar, to my untrained eye, looked treacherous at best. We were able to
map the bottom surface using our acoustic instrumentation along the way and
produced new data.

As a side note, the "Happy Feet" reference really came about because we
watched it tonight. Fun movie if you don't mind the inaccurate portrayal
of tap dancing penguins. They obviously can't produce a real tap without
the proper footwear, yet all the penguins in the movie were shoeless.
Notice: no penguin feet were frostbitten during the filming of this moving.

Also, I was eliminated from the ship ping pong tournament today. Note to
self: never underestimate National Geographic Videographers' ping pong
skills.

-E

(no subject)

Just another typical day in Antarctica. Wait, no it wasn't! Someone must
have tipped off the whales because there were TONS of them just waiting for
our fellow whale scientists to sight and tag them. Seals seemed to lounge
on every iceberg and barely noticed our huge ship pass less than 100 feet
from them. So it sounds like it would be a boring day for us krill-folk,
but hold on!

After lunch, we were hanging out around the dry lab when the opportunity to
take a cruise in a Zodiac around the bay presents itself. Well, the
opportunity was presented by the lovely MTs who work so hard to get
everything running as smoothly as possible. Well, we didn't need to be
asked twice! Meng, Eric, Joy, Greg, Colin and I hopped on the boat and Mark
whisked us away to enjoy what Antarctic marine life had to offer us.

We set off away from the ship and circled halfway around it so Greg and all
of us could get plenty of video and photos. After that, we set to work
trying to find a whale or two to pursue. It didn't take long for a pair
of whale to surface and we sailed their way, getting even more video and
photos.

After the first pair had left, we decided to cruise even further away from
the ship to the opposite side of the little bay, careful not to run over
any icebergs. Every now and then we would see a seal or two, lounging on a
small floe. They would lift up their heads, watch us for a while, maybe
scratch themselves and go back to sleep. Then repeat.

Then, another whale sighting! This time, the whales came within 100 feet of
our little boat. I got some great video of that encounter, as I'm sure
everyone else did, as well. This group circled our boat once and decided to
take off. What an adventure so far!

Heading closer to land, we found a seal floating in the water, just rolling
over and over. He never even realized we were there. These seals can be
quite oblivious sometimes.

Greg interviewed Meng right there on the boat, asking him about iron,
krill, global warming and how it's all connected. I really don't think
there could have been a better backdrop. The sun was setting, giving deep
contrast between the water and the ice. Our main ship in the background
looked like a toy.

The sun began to hide behind one of the many islands, basking the shoreline
in beautiful alpenglow. We figured it would be a good idea to head back to
the ship. Of course, our boat is not exactly an icebreaker, so we had to
take the long way back. And I mean the LONG way. The icebergs had made
little aisles that we just couldn't break through so we had to go from
the end of one aisle to the other, cross the bay, and head back down
another aisle to get to our ship. Of course, our fearless MT Mark piloted
us with relative ease safely back. We'd see a whale every now and then on
the way back and slow down to take more video and photos.

This day was by far the greatest day down here. There's nothing quite
like getting as close to nature as possible without getting a dry-suit on!