It is incredibly beautiful here! - Het is hier waanzinnig mooi!

The pictures speak for themselves. We are in the ice en route to the British Antarctic base Rothera and it is slow going, but it is incredibly beautiful! We should be at the Rothera base at 6 am tomorrow morning where part of the scientists will fly back to the US. But the ice does not cooperate and yesterday and today we could not get through. We have access to satellite images of the ice concentrations that give some information about the route to follow, but it is still difficult to navigate. Tonight an airplane on its way to Rothera flew by and told us what he could see from the air. "Sail east, looks good. See you on Rothera" was the message. So that is what we do now.

The sun still sets but it does not get dark anymore.


De foto's zeggen genoeg! We zitten in het ijs voor Rothera en het gaat trager dan we willen, maar het is geweldig mooi! We zouden morgenvroeg om 6 uur bij de Engelse basis van Rothera moeten zijn, waar een gedeelte van de wetenschappers terug naar Amerika vliegt. Maar het ijs werkt niet mee en gisteren en vanochtend kwamen we er niet doorheen. We hebben toegang tot satellite beelden van de ijsconcentraties die wat informatie geven over de te volgen route, maar het is nog steeds moeilijk om daarop te navigeren. Vanavond is er een vliegtuig van de Britten overgevlogen dat naar Rothera ging en die heeft ons verteld wat hij vanuit de lucht zag. "Vlieg naar het oosten, ziet er goed uit, zie je op Rothera" was het bericht. Dus dat doen we nu!

De zon gaat nog wel wat onder, maar het wordt al niet echt meer donker.

What a difference a day makes...

And not always in a good way. Yesterday, the crab team was deploying their crab pots on a sunny evening, with chinstrap penguins porpoising around the ship. Tonight, it is blowing 40 kn and the spray of the waves are hitting the windows of the bridge, which is 5 floors up. So no science at this point, we're doing "weather patterns" to wait until the wind dies down a bit, so we can resume our work. Time to let myself be rocked to sleep...

We're in business!

Wind Speed (kn):        22.1
Wind Direction (True):  338.2
Air Temperature (C):    1.0
Wind Chill (C): -14.5
Sea Temperature (C):    0.5
Heading (deg T):        186.9
Course Made Good (deg): 190.8
Speed (kn):     10.1
Latitude: -61.6813   Longitude: -65.5576
Next Waypoint: camera crab survey site
Distance (nm):  137.5
Travel Time (hrs):      13.3



This morning we passed the Chilean EEZ, or Economic Exclusion Zone. Since we do not have a Chilean observer on board, we cannot do any science in Chilean waters and had to wait until early this morning to turn on our underway water sampling and sensor system. After this the Phantastic team didn’t waste any time and started hooking up equipment. We’re very excited to measure the first concentrations of gasses in the water and study the phytoplankton of the Drake Passage under the microscope and with the fancy new camera/microscope system we have, the Flowcam. Right now it’s still mainly tweaking and everything is looking good so far.
We are not far away from the Antarctic Peninsula, where the crab team will start looking for crabs on the slope of the Antarctic shelftomorrow. They will deploy a towed camera on a sled that can take photos from the sea floor to see if crabs are present. If they see some they will deploy crab traps to try to catch them. Everyone on the ship got to make a guess of how many they will catch and the numbers run from 7 4/5th to 685. We will see in a week!

Above: Casey and Laughlin are inspecting the Mass spec

Below: Hannah and Gert got the Flowcam to take pictures of phytoplankton

Drake's Passage

Drake's Passage

Latitude: -57.8908   Longitude: -64.8968

The Drake Passage is treating us well! 15 kn breeze, 12 ft swell, and sunshine! Time to photograph some birds! And enjoy the sunset while we still have one,

more soon,
Anna

We have set sail!

Wind Speed (kn):        19.1
Wind Direction (True):  232.8
Air Temperature (C):    4.0
Wind Chill (C): 0.0
Sea Temperature (C):    0.0
Heading (deg T):        14.2
Course Made Good (deg): 7.4
Speed (kn):     10.0
Latitude: -52.7921
Longitude: -70.4737




We have set sail!

The adventure has begun! Today, at 8:30 pm, we left the dock of Punta Arenas and we are now steaming in easterly direction through the Strait of Magellan. The port call was very hectic. Our cruise will end in Hobart and the two cruises after that as well, so all cargo for three cruises had to be loaded on the ship. The combination of delays due to government shut down, two Chilean customs strikes, and 55 kn of breeze did not help to make things go smoothly, but we got it done! Thanks to all the hard work of the techs we have all cargo onboard, two lab-vans on the decks, 50 crab pots to go fishing, a sled system with a camera to look for the crabs on the sea floor in real time, five incubators to grow our phytoplankton and so much more! "The other Antarctic icebreaker", the Laurence M. Gould, was also in town and their techs helped us out a lot and waived us goodbye from the docks. Everyone is exhausted and I am very ready for my bed.

We have another 6 hours of smooth sailing ahead of us before we exit the Strait. Then we will steam down the Argentinian coast where we will be somewhat protected. Tomorrow night we will then enter the famous Drake Passage for the Drake Shake. In this area south of Cape Horn, the Pacific and Atlantic oceans meet, and create the highest waves on our planet. Our original sailing time of yesterday would have put us in the Drake at the same time of a very deep low pressure system with 30 ft waves. In metric units that is about 10m high, which does not make it sound any better. Even though we have a pretty big ship, that prospect impressed even the captain. Due to all cargo hectic we are now 24 hrs delayed and we hope that the waves have died down a bit. These deep low pressure systems race around the Southern Ocean pretty fast, so that helps! But tomorrow everyone will run around the ship to make sure everything is secured. We have also planned all our meetings and a safety drill for tomorrow, because after tomorrow everyone will likely be seasick for two days :-(

More soon!

Anna

Back to Antarctica

We're getting ready for another Antarctic adventure! On Nov 18 we'll leave Punta Arenas, Chile, to go back to the Antarctic waters for a research cruise on the "Nathaniel B. Palmer". The voyage will be quite epic: first we will go to the Antarctic Peninsula, where a team of scientists from the Florida Institute of Technology will study if crabs are invading Antarctic waters. They will disembark at Rothera Station, a British research station where the Dutch have research facilities as well. We will then go to our study area in the Ross Sea, where we will sample the water for the phytoplankton species Phaeocystis antarctica. On our previous cruises we have discovered that Phaeocystis may be able to take advantage of climate change in Antarctica. Now, we will study if their genes reveal how they are able to do this. Our journey will end in Hobart, Australia, on Jan 23, when Thijs will hopefully be standing on the dock to welcome us back to the Terra Firma.

Our cruise plans were in limbo for a while because of the impacts of the government shutdown on the US Antarctic Program. As if freezing weather, detection limits, and failing equipment weren't enough to make our lives difficult, the  company that takes care of all logistics shut down all Antarctic operations when they didn't get paid. Fortunately, we got word last week that our program was not affected and our cruise will go ahead as planned.

To give you an idea what the daily views from the vessel are, here is an amazing video made by a Stanford student on a previous cruise, make sure to put the sound on!

http://youtu.be/BNZu1uxNvlo

I'll keep you posted!