Last station

At 2:45pm we sampled our last station of the cruise! The captain set the time for departure based on his estimate on the transit time back to Punta Arenas. This depends on the location of our last sampling, the latest satellite images with the sea ice conditions, and the weather forecast for the Drake Passage (right now it looks neither particularly good, nor bad). The time kept creeping forward, so Kevin had to cram in as many of the last minute sampling as possible and almost everyone is happy. The last sampling of sediments didn’t make it before the departure which resulted in one unhappy scientist. But 19 other scientist are happy and relieved everything went really well and they can take a breather. We got some pretty interesting results of this area that is well studied in the Antarctic summer, but not this early during the season.

This cruise has gone so fast, it is unbelievable it is almost over. This was the shortest cruise I have ever been on and it was surprisingly stressful to not have much time for layover days in case stuff didn’t work (which always happens in Antarctica). But thanks to the hard work of everyone on the ship we did almost everything we planned. Everyone was amazing and we worked together really well.

This is also a little bit of time of reflection on what an amazing place Antarctica is to come to and study how the ecosystem works. Also, the NB Palmer is a special ship that I have now spent almost 200 days on over four different trips. This ship and the people have a very special place in my life and I hope very much to come back. Because you never know how the future will look and what proposals will get funded every trip may be the last one, so time to soak in some more sea ice images and hopefully a few more penguin sightings. But first some sleep!

Our cruise track 3 days ago. We ended up finishing the red rectangle, so we now have 3 ½ transects from the ocean towards the western Antarctic Peninsula.