5:26 my alarm goes off and I wake up to the sound of sea ice
crushing under the ship. Through my little porthole I see a beautiful morning
in the white world of sea ice. I’m lucky enough to have my own cabin this
cruise, so I turn on the TV system that displays the waypoints and all kind of
other information to see what’s going on. We are still 10 nm away from the next
station and we’re going slowly through the ice. At 6 am, I relieve Kate from
her watch and she tells me what has happened during the night. By now everyone
is pretty much in the groove and everything went well. It looks like it will be
a while before we are at the next station, so we have some time. It is a
beautiful morning and Gert is going outside to take some pictures. It is
tempting, but I decide to catch up on a little bit of sleep and go back to bed
for a nap.
8:15 Pring!!!! Gert
gives me a call to let me know that the “CTD is in the water!” The CTD
(conductivity, temperature, density sensors) is our main sampling device. The
sensors display the data in real time on the computer of the CTD station. This
is where everyone hangs out to see what’s going on under the ice. The CTD
detects some fluorescence of phytoplankton pigments down to 70 m depth. We
measure the water column properties all the way to the bottom, which is about
500 m deep here. On the way up, we close big 12 Liter (3 gallon) niskin bottles
with a remotely controlled trigger mechanism to take samples of the water
column. When the CTD is on deck, everyone crowds around it to take their
measurements. For some people this is done within minutes, other will take up
to three hours. A student will do my
measurements, because I will be on deck for the next three hours to help with
other sampling.
9:00-12:00 Together with two technicians and another
scientist we are working on the back deck to get water that is not contaminated
with iron or other metals to the trace metal clean van where Rob is ready to
filter it and measure the very low concentrations of metals in the sea water
(I’ll explain more later).
12:00 Time to warm up and have lunch in the galley
12:30 Coffee time in the aft control room. The controls of a
lot of the winches are here and it’s a nice place to look out over the back
deck and the ice. We make a cup of cappuccino with the espresso machine in the
office of one of the techs and hang out for a bit.
13:00-15:00 Bottle washing with Tom! We do experiments on
board with phytoplankton without contamination from the trace metals from the
ship. So Tom and I dress ourselves in stupid white clean room suits and get in
the trace metal clean van to wash our experiment bottles with acid and ultra
clean water. I label 63 bottles to be ready to start an experiment tomorrow. We
will fill them with water & phytoplankton and add iron to half of them in
order to study the effects of extra iron on phytoplankton growth at different
light levels. The bottles will then be incubated in incubators on deck so the
phytoplankton can grow.
15:00 A cup of tea on the bow! The ice has increased and
we’re going pretty slow now. Outside, on the bow it is amazing to see how the
Palmer crushes through the sea ice. At one point we come to a full stop. After
a while we hear some additional sound from the engines and with four engines we
come roaring back to speed.
15:30 Time for some data analysis on the computer. It is
hard to find time and stay up with all the data we’re collecting. Meanwhile, our
progress through the ice is slowing down and Kevin (our professor and chief
scientist) and I discuss abandoning our sampling line and turning around. This
means the experiment that was planned for tomorrow will have to start tonight,
together with a lot of other measurements. We make a schedule for the night so
that we have enough hands for all measurements and experiments and everybody will
get at least a few hours sleep.
18:00 The cooks Mike and Michael (both from New Orleans) have
prepared a delicious dinner in the galley.
19:00 I’m anxious to see the CTD go in the water, because I
will have to get up at midnight to start the experiment. Time to label some
last vials for the experiment and play on my ukulele while waiting. When the
ships officers manage to make a hole in the ice that is large enough to sample,
we see on the CTD sensors that there is no phytoplankton whatsoever in the
water. This area has been covered with ice since the winter and no light has
penetrated yet to make the phytoplankton grow. We decide not to start an
experiment, which means the schedule for the night is rewritten and I don’t
have to get up at midnight J.
20:00 I help out with the trace metal clean sampling on the
back deck and 2 seals come to check us out and use the hole we made in the ice
to breathe. It is a very cool show!
21:00 Everything goes smoothly on deck and I’m not needed
anymore. Time for a shower and to go up to the bridge to enjoy the beautiful
icescape and hang out with the chief mate Chris. Officers are always happy for
the scientists to come up and hang out and chat a bit. The officers are mainly
the same from last year and we got along really well, so it is fun to catch up
and gossip a bit. It’s a beautiful night, with the mountains of Adelaide Island
on the horizon at ~60 nm away. Two emperor penguins swim around in our sampling
hole, it doesn’t get much better in Antarctica than this!
00:30 A night time abandon ship drill. Every week there is
an abandon ship drill for all scientists and crew and the coast guard requires
a quarterly drill at night. This seems fairly useless as it is still light at
midnight, but who am I to think about these things!
1:00 Time to go to bed. The sampling continues to 4 am,
after which we turn around and head a bit further north for more sampling. This
transit means I get to sleep in, yay!
Sunset two days ago.
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