We're in fairly thick pack ice today, which is bad news for the guys who want to put out the moorings as they need a stretch of open water, and infuriating for me as, after a leak on my equipment, I must wait until the morning to start sampling again. 

The large iceberg you can see in the background is a piece of the ice shelf which has broken off from the mainland and floated out to sea. This is freshwater ice, formed from years of snowfall on the antarctic continent, which compresses down to form ice. The ice then flows down the continent and out to sea, where it eventually breaks off and will gradually melt. Only 10% of the ice is visible above the water

The brown colour in the sea ice above is a layer of diatoms. When the surface of the pack ice gets flooded with seawater this brings a fresh supply of nutrients to these planktonic organisms, which, along with favourable light levels and protection from predators, leads to a bloom of diatoms in between the ice and snow layers. Let's hope they're emitting lots of iodine compounds!!

My air sampling site at the front of the ship

Cedric working on the moorings

The flotation devices which go on top of the moorings 

I've been upgraded, I now have a room with a view :)

Sailing through the ice

I’m in the middle of the Southern Ocean surrounded by icebergs, it’s spectacular. It’s so peaceful, especially at night out on the deck, or up on the bridge where the nightwatchmen provide an extra pair of eyes for the captain, the only artificial light comes from the instruments and the glow from the headlights shining out over the misty ocean. We are currently cruising round the ice pack that surrounds Antarctica on our way to Halley, it’s foggy and snowing and cold in the breeze. The nights are a beautiful dusky blue as the sun dips below the horizon for only a few hours.

A very disheartening day yesterday, none of my equipment wanted to work properly, I realised I didn’t bring a few crucial items which of course there’s nothing I can do about now. I worked late into the night, it’s difficult to switch off when you can’t get away from your work so the days are very long, but light entertainment came in the form of G&Ts and Scrabble – the word of the night being farmhands:)

Today has been much more successful, the remaining problems were solved, not in time for breaking through some ice floes with huge swathes of brown diatoms pouring from them as we crashed through, but there’ll be plenty more ice I’m sure! My favourite job is climbing the mast at the front of the ship to change air sampling tubes, Kate Winslet eat your heart out! The ocean is much calmer now we’re in the sea ice zone, but the ship will occasionally jolt if we hit a big floe, one of them sent everything crashing across my room in the middle of the night!

The work of other scientists on board seems to be going well, spirits are high, the focus at the moment is on moorings which are oceanographic instruments deployed from the ship into the ocean – they rest on the sea bed making measurements and are recovered a few years later. CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) launches will start soon, here bottles are sent down to various depths in the water so the properties of the water can give information on ocean currents, circulation and stratification. Finally, while others tag Weddell seals, I’ll have chance to get out onto the ice and make some cores.

Cambridge - Signy

We left Cambridge last Sunday - Jess and I, both PhD students at BAS, Bruce, an American physical oceanographer, Helge, a Norwegian engineer and Keith, the chief scientist for the ship. At Brize Norton, a military airfield in Oxford, we met up with some members of the ships crew and flew, via Ascention Island (a small island in the middle of the Atlantic) to the Falklands. The 24 hour journey was made bearable by Helge's stories of sailing round the world in a small boat and the fighter jets that escorted us into the Falklands! That night we went into Stanley, the main port and town of the Falkland Islands, for a meal with the crew, all of whom are lovely, really interested in the science we're hoping to carry out on board and keen to help wherever they can. The ship itself is very impressive, it has a homely feel to it with lots of communal areas for watching TV, a great selection of films, a mess room (canteen - there's a different name for everything on board!) serving really good food, and I've got an en-suite cabin to myself - comparative luxury after sleeping on sofas for the last month!

3 days later, after unpacking, setting up equipment and finding my way round the maze inside the ship, we set sail for Signy, which is one of the sub-antarctic South Orkney Islands. Despite earlier protestations that I didn't have time to be sea sick I spent the first day at sea in bed, feeling disorientated, dizzy and exhausted, and dreaming fitfully of revolving rooms and being inside a hamster wheel! The drugs do work however and since then I've set up the rest of my equipment and, despite some early problems and heart-stopping moments, is now running well and I've started some calibrations. I'm running a GC-MS to measure iodocarbons in air, seawater and ice, a mini-max DOAS to measure IO and denuder tubes to measure molecular and inorganic iodine I'm hoping to produce vertical profiles of iodine compounds in the Antarctic enviroment to determine the meachanism of iodine release in the sea ice zone. Diatom analysis will also be cardied out when I get back to the UK.

My temporary lab

Today we arrived at Signy to drop off Jess and two others catching a ride on the Shackleton. The first view of icebergs today was spectacular, especially as I was working at the front of the ship setting up my air sampling tubes so I had a great view of the approaching land and ice. Signy is about 6.5 km long and 5 km wide and is mostly covered with ice all year round.

The view of Signy from the ship.

Tonight it's burns night so I'm off to play games and drink whisky....or maybe not, ugh!!

An emotional roller coaster!

The Endurance, the ship I was due to travel on to Antarctica sprung a leak before Christmas! I thought my Antarctic dreams were over....until BAS found me a place on one of their ships, hurrah!! I leave on Sunday, this week has been a little hectic - last minute packing, thinking up new experiments and ordering materials - the cruise plan is slightly different on this ship so I've had to adjust my sampling strategy. We sail from the Falkland Islands to Halley, one of the British bases on the Antarctic coast, and back again. I'll be making measurements of iodine compounds in the air and seawater from the ship, when we get to the sea ice I'll make cores in the ice and analyse the biology and chemistry, and when we reach Halley I'll set up a chamber on the ice shelf and measure iodine emissions.

Check out http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/living_and_working/research_ships/rrs_ernest_shackleton/index.php
to see what the ship's like, it's called the Ernest Shackleton, named after one of the early Antarctic explorers. One of Shackleton's trips to Antarctica resulted in the ship getting stuck in sea ice and the crew were stranded for more than a year, hopefully that won't happen to us! Bizarrely Shackleton's ship was also called the Endurance, I don't think it's such a lucky name!