Antarctica, Halley and penguins

So finally I make it to Antarctica! We mooored up on Thursday night, at Creek 4, a cove 15 km from Halley base. A tent was set up for me up on the ice cliffs to run an experiment from and since then I have been walking the mile round trip from ship to ice camp every three hours to sample air and emissions from the snow. I have thoroughly enjoyed walking across the ice shelf, seeing the occasional penguin and marvelling at the skies, the cliffs in the background and the differences in weather, which are quite pronounced at the coast. Yesterday morning thick black clouds hung over the ocean to the north and clear blue skies over the continent to the south. Having been on the ship for over 4 weeks it’s nice to get some exercise outdoors too!

We returned from our visit to Halley yesterday to find a group of emporor penguins watching the ships activities. I sat at the end of the mooring lines to take a photograph and they decided to leave, walking down the line towards me. I was soon surrounded by penguins who were close enough to touch, what an amazing experience.

Photograph courtesy Kjersti Daae

Photograph courtesy Kjersti Daae

We’ve picked up about 30 people from Halley, some have just worked the summer season, whereas for others this will be their first time off the icy continent for 16 months. It’s nice to have some new faces on board and last night we played games and drank punch until the early hours of the morning. Getting up a few hours later to pack up my equipment at the tent and carry everything back to the ship in strong icy winds and blowing snow was possibly the least enjoyable way I could have imagined spending my Sunday morning, but it cleared the hangover at least. This afternoon I’m having a little time off, my new roommate Kjersti is teaching me how to knit and speak Norweigen.

Earlier in the week I was taken out in the fast rescue boat to collect pieces of ice and make cores on promisng looking ice floes. The captain himself was in the driving seat on one occasion, I think he enjoyed tearing around in a small boat for a change, and I had a go at driving, it’s quite difficult as the boat takes a while to respond – you end up steering too much and before you know it you’re going in totally the wrong direction. I had also had a go at steering the ship which was great fun, for such a huge vessell she’s suprisingly responsive, meandering round ice floes was a little nerve wracking, the captain took over when we got to thicker ice! 

Photograph courtesy Patrick Robinson

Breathtaking....

This evening there's a full moon on one side of the ship and the sun is glancing the horizon on the other. The sky is a pastel watercolour of lilacs and blues and the waves in the wake of the ship move slowly as the surface of the ocean is covered in a layer of greasy black ice. The purples, pinks and blues make the ocean irridescent, reflecting the seldom seen moon, and creating a blue glow from the white ice. The effect is very unreal, but even a skilled artist or graphic designer could not create a scene so alive with colour and surreal. My camera and I can only hope to convey some of the beauty of the scene, I'm so lucky to be here. As I dashed outside just now to photograph two penguins on a nearby floe, one raised a wing, as if pointing out to the other the reflection of the moon :)

Spectacular scenery, wildlife and - finally! - functioning equipment

This morning I was considering alternative careers, I haven't been able to write for a few days as things have been going badly and I've been so disheartened with working so hard and not getting anywhere, but then all of sudden a seal was spotted so the ship was stopped and I was able to get out onto the ice and make some cores. The cores went well, a few passing emperor penguins stopped to see what the fuss was about and life suddenly doesn't seem so bad....and then following a pep talk by Claire at UEA, success with the instrument this afternoon, everything's now running well, hurrah! 

Brain making a core whilst the penguins have a look at the ship

The Weddell seals aren't too difficult to tag, Patrick can get pretty close before they can be bothered to move, when they do they look so unelegant with their big slimy bodies humping acros the ice. But up close they're quite beautiful, their eyes are enormous and they look so bewildered by the approaching scientists!

The ship parked up by a big ice floe. We are lifted out of the ship and on to the ice in a basket, which is pretty cool :)

Now we've crossed the Antarctic Circle it's constantly light, and the colours across the ice at night when the sun is low in the sky are beautiful

The ice cliffs of Antarctica at night, I can't do it justice with my camera, despite being outside taking photos until my frozen finger was unable to take any more  

You can just about make out the rainbow (or is that an icebow when it's ice crystals in the air causing the light to diffract?) which looked like it was coming out of the iceberg

I have a very strange perception of time, as I have no need to know what day of the week it is. It feels simultaneously like I've been on this ship for months, and that time is flying by and I'll soon not have enough time left to do the experiments I want to. Spirits  are still high amongst the science team as most things progress well, and the crew are as friendly and helpful as ever (as long as I remember to shut the watertight doors!) 

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!