In the Drake…

60.07S, 67.37E

We are now in the Drake Passage, a.k.a. the Drake Shake. So far the wind
gods have treated us gently, with partly sunny skies and breezes in the
20-30kn range. This makes the ship move quite a bit, with water splashing
onto the lower portholes and pouring over the lower decks, so we cannot go
out there. Everyone has settled in and is preparing for their work, once we
get down to Antarctica.

Although we are sailing through the vast open ocean that reaches for as far
as you can see, there are subtle changes in going south. Once we got out of
the strait of Magellan, lots of birds were flying around the ship. We saw a
lot of giant petrels, some cape petrels, a few wandering albatrosses, a few
more black browed albatrosses and some soothy albatrosses. And I’m
pretty sure I saw two Magellan Penguins in the water, diving down as the
ship approached. This morning, when I looked out the porthole, a lot of
smaller, grey birds appeared that weren’t there yesterday, I think they
are prions of some sort.

The ships sensors that are displayed on screens all over the ship also tell
things are changing. Yesterday, the water was 5C, today it’s 1C.
Yesterday, the fluorometer that looks at algae in the water was around 0.7
with spikes around 2, now it’s been steady below 0.5 (close to Antarctica
we hope to get up to 10). There are some large scale ocean currents that
flow around Antarctica and get squeezed together in the Drake passage. This
gives the changes in the water temperature and nutrients in the order of
days of travel time. But as these large systems interact, you also may see
that you’re traveling through little patches of warmer or colder water
that last for maybe an hour. This may also be a spot where more nutrients
get mixed in, and the phytoplankton can respond. So, all of a sudden, a
patch of higher phytoplankton biomass may appear in the big blue ocean.
This patchiness is good for the bigger animals that can seek for these
patches for higher concentrations of food. But it makes life for
oceanographers hard, since we can only take little scoops out of the big
blue ocean, and have to reconstruct how things work based on those. And it
makes a big difference if you get a nice juicy phytoplankton scoop, or a
barren Drake scoop.

Due South!

Gert, Kate, Anna, and icebreaker Natahniel B. Palmer



We’re under way to Antarctica! After two hectic days at the quay of Punta
Arenas, Chile, we left last night (Fri) and sailed through the Strait of
Magellan to the east. Now we’re cruising in the sun in the southern
Atlantic, along the tip of Ushuaia to the south.

The two days in Punta Arenas we’re filled with locating your crates,
checking if everything is there, unpacking and stowing. Prior to the cruise
we had requested a list of stuff from the ships inventory, including
filtration racks, pumps and instruments. All the stuff was put in a big
pile in “our” corner of the lab. Kate worked her way through the pile
and packed everything wave-proof in cabinets and tied instruments to the
benches. The only thing missing were the C14 isotopes that we need for our
photosynthesis measurements. Gert had been working for weeks to make sure
everything was shipped on time, but due to a series of miscommunications
and lazy people the C14 didn’t make it to Chile in time. Since you
can’t really expect a ship with 45 scientists and techs to wait for
several days, normally this means this the end of that part of research.
However, we’re in the unique situation that a Swedish ship will follow us
in two weeks. Since some of the scientists will transfer from our boat to
the other ship, we will have a ‘rendez vous’ on the Antarctic ice.
That’ll be a chance for us to get our C14, and for another guy to get the
filters that disappeared from a broken crate. Pretty handy, such a back-up!


Of course we needed to taste our freedom for the last time in Punta Arenas!
So we enjoyed the last fresh food, beer and Pisco Sour. And, for good
luck, you should rub the foot of the statue of Magellan in Punta Arenas. Or
kiss it, the legend isn’t exactly clear on that. Just to be sure Kate and
I did both. It didn’t help us to get our isotopes in time, but hopefully
the rest of the trip will be smooth!

Getting ready to leave...

We are preparing to go down South again to revisit the Amundsen Sea, where we were 2 years ago. One would expect this would encompass frantic packing and stressing about stuff that doesn't fit, but fortunately the packing was done months ago when we shipped our stuff to Punta Arenas, Chile. So now we are left wondering: Did I pack everything? Did I pack those forceps that are absolutely essential??? Luckily, everything is on packing lists (even the forceps!), so stress levels are manageable. Now we wait for the algae!

The ice in Antarctica starts to break open/ melt in early November. This allows the light to penetrate the water, where the algae are waiting in a soup of nutrients that accumulated over the winter. Thus, all ingredients are present for happy algae. The accumulation of nutrients is rather stable from year to year, however, the light is the variable factor since it is dependent on cloud cover and ice cover. Lots of ice and cloud may delay the start of the algae bloom by several weeks.

Since we want as many algae as possible for our experiments, we are keeping a close watch on the algae and ice conditions in the Amundsen Sea. As you can see on the image of 15 Nov 2010, there is still lots of grey ice and few algae (the blue is a low concentration of chlorophyll in the water). The black parts are open water, but because of cloud cover we can't see if there are any algae. What we would like to see is on the picture of 13 Jan last year. Lots of algae (red=good) and not much ice cover. Fortunately, an algae bloom can develop within 2 weeks and we won't be in our research area until 16 Dec, so we still have some time. Until that time we're stuck watching the algae grow.