UH Manoa studying Climate Change in Antarctica

BACK TO SOUTH AMERICA

2009-03-17T12:59:00.000-07:00

We are almost home or, better put, in Punta Arenas, Chile, after almost 4 days of crossing the Drake passage. I must say it was not the most pleasant of the crossings. A couple of nights ago most of us could not sleep at all with the ship shaking and bouncing against the waves. It was the worst night of the whole cruise and certainly this was the roughest crossing among all the three cruises we had down here in the past year.

If you look at the map below you can see that we are only a few ten miles from the tip of South America and a few hundred miles from Punta Arenas. People aboard are starting to get excited to get ashore again, go for a drink at O’li Joes or simply walk around and go for a dinner somewhere. We are scheduled to arrive in PA at 5:00 pm today but will only be allowed onshore after clearing customs with the Chilean Officers.

The map above also shows the whole Ship track during our FOODBANCS-3 cruise. It was quite a long way down to 68 degrees south at our furthest station G and back, passing through all those tiny islands, sounds and channels at the tip of the Antarctic peninsula, close to James Ross Island in the Weddell Sea and to the King George Islands in the North. It was definitely another memorable trip! We come back home again with hundreds of amazing pictures and new experiences from this still extreme and remote place that is the Antarctic continent.

This afternoon after a meeting in the lounge for instructions about traveling affairs and hotel accommodations in PA we had a break for a team picture with all our science groups from University of Hawaii and North Carolina State University and from our extremely helpful friends from Raytheon Polar services. That must be the last opportunity when we are all together since this is the end of our journey. Yes, FOODBANC-3 project is over. Or at least the fieldwork part is over. Now we have tons of samples to bring back to our labs to start a massive routine of analyzing and interpreting data. We hope to be back once in a while and share with you some our preliminary results. Some of those answers about how marine communities are responding to climate warming will be found in here. Stay tuned! ALOHA! And see you all back in Hawaii.

A SUNNY DAY IN ANTARCTICA

2009-03-13T17:05:00.000-07:00

Good morning everyone!
All right! All the science work is over and only packing and shiping plans are ahead of us now. After another scary experience at Station B, where we almost lost the Blake trawl when it fouled on a rock outcrop on the seafloor, we headed to Palmer station for night of rest in sheltered waters. We also, of course, had to get ready for our traditional cruise celebration party with the folks at the base. Another night of fun and joy. We deserved it after three weeks of intense work aboard the Lawrence Gould.

The next morning, we headed off to James Ross Island to retrieve the field camp of our paleontologist colleagues. The mission was somewhat delayed by the extreme low tide that made it difficult for the Zodiac inflatable boats to approach close to shore. However, 4.5 hour later we had packed up the camp, still within the programmed schedule. But we could not leave before our now traditional soccer match took place. Guillermo, our Chilean able seamen, showed us why South Americans love this sport, showing us some tricks and scoring most of the goals. An odd event occurred during the match when our beloved PI’s competed for the ball. Result: Craig
wearing his modest running shoes got himself a 2.5-inch bloody gash after Dave, our PI from NCSU, caught him in the shin with a steel boot. Not on purpose of course. Yuuhhf! That must hurt! Yes, soccer is a tough sport indeed! Craig played on and is doing fine.

As we steamed north and passed through a narrow passage south of Vega Channel, we had an amazingly beautiful night with icebergs and “bergy bits” crowding the ship. It was a real challenge for the ship pilot to drive through the bergs without hitting them. It was actually impossible and many bergs were bumped and shoved aside, with many chunks of ice tumbling onto the back deck. There was a full moon ¾ above the horizon that sometimes could be confused with the giant and potent front lights of the ship, illuminating the best leads through the ice. Half way down the channel, we forced to turn back because the channel was clogged more and more and we had slowed down to only 1.5 knots! But there all roads lead to Rome, a poet once said. So I guess the same for us here. We were a bit delayed but made it by going around the other side of Jame Ross Island.

The next morning (as presaged by the gorgeous starry sky the night before) was the most beautiful of the whole cruise. When we arrived at Cockburn, a tiny island near the larger James Ross, we almost could not believe how clear the skies were, and the waters as calm as an empty swimming pool.

The light was perfect for photography. And here they are, just for your delight! The paleontologist group and a few lucky guests were allowed onshore for the last opportunity to find those rare mammal fossils. We also show here some of their best shots of the day.

Today is Friday the thirteenth and, coincidence or not, we have to deal once again with a MedEvac (Medical Evacuation) operation. As you might remember, if you have been following us from the beginning of our adventures, we almost had to quit our science work half way through
because of a medical emergency at Palmer Station. However, that person was safely evacuated by airplane from Palmer to Frei Station (Chilean Antarctic base), and then back to Punta Arenas in Chile. Therefore, we did not have to head north on a rescue mission. But this time, a person aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer (the other US Antarctic Research Vessel and Ice Breaker) needing urgent medical assistance. The Palmer has just started its science expedition steaming south, so now it is our duty to bring this person safely back to Chile. He is doing fine but will definitely be better off when specific and proper medical treatment will be available back in Chile.

That is just an example of how things can go bad when working in such an isolated place as Antarctica, far from advanced medical facilities. Communication and collaboration is essential among all the research groups of all nationalities. This makes Antarctica a unique place to work.

I guess this is all for now. We will catch up with you guys later with news from our crossing of the Drake Passage. Rough seas of 16-18 feet are predicting, although we no wind, heavy fog and a long swell rolling in from the west. We had hope our washing machine days were over with a
smooth crossing ahead, but that looks unlikely! ALOHA for now!

Drifting

2009-03-09T19:19:00.000-07:00

Hi there my friends! We are sorry we did not make any contact earlier at the end of last week, but the awful weather has been putting us down for quite a while. We finished all the work at station AA and we are close to being done with station B as well, with only a few Otter trawls left.
However, a 2 to 3-day break in our science work operations took place due to extremely rough weather conditions. The winds have been blowing at an unpleasant 45-55 Knots for quite a while and the huge waves outside insist on keeping us from sleeping or being motivated to do anything. It seems like we are inside a washing machine that’s spinning at maximum speed. A few of our science crowd members have taken shelter in their bunk beds for quite a while just waiting for the calming of the waters outside so they can come out again.

This morning we had a small weather window during which the winds dropped to 15-20 knots, allowing us to recover a drifter particle trap that Andrew McDonnell deployed a few days earlier when we arrived at Station B. Andrew hitched a ride with us on this cruise in the FOODBANCS2 project series to conduct a few experiments in conjunction with Dr. DeMaster and to deploy a set of oceanographic instruments to study some water column processes in the Antarctic ocean. He is a PhD student at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts supervised by Ken Buesseler, an expert in carbon flux in the oceans. Among his experiments, he deploys an in-situ water pump to filter massive amounts of seawater at pre-determined depths and also a video-plankton recorder (VPR), which identifies particles and zooplankton in the water column from the euphotic zone (upper well light surface waters) to the twilight zone at deeper ocean depths.

We have simply been “hanging out” for last two days to remain near Andrew’s trap because the rough weather made all the operations on the back deck unsafe. Meanwhile on the bridge the captain, first and second mates have been steering the ship what they call ‘weather patterns’ which consists transiting back and forth, upwind and then downwind, along a five mile line to remain near the drifter.

We are almost done with our science work and are hoping for better weather to come. The forecast is not so great for tomorrow, so we might have to cope with the bouncing for a little while more. These are the days that I miss Hawaii the most. All the sun, surfing and the experience of a solid and firm ground. But better stop dreaming for now; Craig is calling me on the radio: “…station B, here we are again”. So let’s try to do some work.

See you later! Aloha!

Station AA

2009-03-05T15:18:00.000-08:00

Hi folks! We are back with a brief message about the last couple of days.
The weather has been helping a lot, with calm seas and ‘warm’ temperatures of 1 degree Celsius above zero.

You will find bellow a few more samples of the sea creatures we collected from the bottom of the ocean at the Antarctic Peninsula shelf. These were collected with the Otter trawl. Here, at the northern stations (AA and later on at B) of our transect, we use the Otter trawl instead of the
Blake trawl since we have smaller amounts or barely any rocks on the sea floor. The Otter trawl works better in the muddy bottoms we find here, and efficiently collects a great diversity of life forms from the sea bottom.

Take a look at those; while some people might think they are scary others will simply just fall in love with!

We finished our work at station AA and have 14 hours of transit to station B where the science work for the last FOODBANCS-2 cruise will be finished. After that we have to stop at Palmer station and later on recover the field camp base at James Ross Island. We come back soon with news from station B.

A NEW START AT STATION ‘E’

2009-03-02T17:15:00.000-08:00

As promised we are back with revelations about our last challenges at station G and also with news from our fantastic success at station E.

So let’s first start from the exact point we left you guys last time. It was 7:00 am when the first epi-benthic sled sample came on board at station G. The whole deployment took about 2.5 hours to be completed since we have to wire out three times as much cable as the actual water depth. We are surveying roughly at 600 m deep in the Antarctic shelf so we need at least 1800 m of cable to drag the epi-benthic sled over the sea bottom.

Anyhow, there were some bets put off in the white board in the O-1 deck about the success or fail of our first sled tow. A few people were not very trustful in the proper functioning of the sled, betting the small and delicate collector net inside the sled frame would come back to surface torn apart. I put my bets on a complete successful deployment, which turned out to be the actual outcome. The result was then tons of species to sort, with potentially new records to science; but not only that, I got also 18 free beers, since together with Victor and Joseph we were the ones who bet in a 100 % success recovery. Plus I know how Dave (one of our PI’s from North Carolina State University) is very good at ‘maneuvering’ all the gear over the sea floor, using all the information available about the ship speed, the tension on the cable, and of course a good communication with the our pilots on the bridge.

The epi-benthic sled represents a historical mark in the deep-se benthic studies, since his first developers completely changed our view about life in the deep-ocean. After sled samples were collected for the first time in the late 60’s, the deep-sea was mostly viewed as a hostile environment that could not bear a great deal of biological diversity. Darkness, extreme cold temperatures and hydrostatic pressure were thought to be great barriers for life to develop. However, after the sled samples were sorted and hundreds and hundreds of new invertebrate species were found, this general idea about a diversity-poor deep ocean floor started to vanish.

And here we show you a little sample about why the deep-sea is today considered one of the most biodiverse biomes in the planet. The sled sample we collected at station G came packed with life, with hundreds of specimens of isopods, amphipods, (little crustaceans) polychaetes(segmented worms) and mollusks. See in the pictures below:

" Professor Thomas Dahlgren of University of Gotemburg and myself: sorting the animals at the microscope room"

“Annelid worm from the family Nepthydae”

“Annelid worm from the family Hesyonidae”

“Annelid worm from the family Paraonid”

“Annelid worms from the families Sigalionidae and Polynoidae”

We had another 12-hour transit from station G to E, further north, stopping shortly at station F for a yo-yo camera and also an epi-benthic sled tow. It took us less then 2 complete days to finish all the work at E; much faster then the previous two stations, which took us 4 days in
each to complete all the sampling. Extremely good news is that our camera system is now operating with a new bottom switch contact system and taking very good pictures of the sea floor.

“Sample of a sea floor photograph take at station G”

That’s it for now. We will come back later with our next adventures further north at stations B and AA. ALOHA folks!

BAD LUCK AT STATION G

2009-02-27T12:19:00.000-08:00

Hi there folks!

We are reporting now from 68o 08.4’ South and 71o 2.01’ West at the southern end of our sampling transect. It is now 4:30 am and the weather has calmed down for the last 12 hours after almost a day and a half of high seas and 30-35 knot winds. It was hard to sleep last night (I mean yesterday since I sleep during the day and work during the night) because of the 18-feet waves bouncing against the ship and turning our beds into frenetic cradles. Anyway, we were finally able to deploy the megacore after a whole day of only fishing with the Blake trawl.
It has been busy and only between gear deployments can I write a few words about what has been happening in the past few days, and also about some unfortunate events we have had at station G. But, before I start telling you about all the happenings of station G, I must say we are starting to get physically tired. After almost two complete sampling stations and a full adaptation to our 12-hour shift schedules, a few cramped muscles and soar backs are found among our relentless oceanography group. A busy shift doing invertebrate dissections or an almost 12-hour period enclosed inside the freezing aquarium room slicing cores for ATP (to measure sediment microbial biomass and activity) can give the toughest athlete a hard time on the joints and back. But we all get used to it after a while and all we need is some time for stretching.

Well, here goes the first setback: we lost our precious box core yesterday! When I woke up two nights ago and went for the midrats (meal served at 11:30 at night) in the galley, the murmur around every table was about the box core and its unfortunate fate. Everyone was shocked and frustrated with the episode since this piece of equipment is important to many of the project’s objectives. The heavy (0.5 ton) box-core did not come back to the surface at all. Jack, the marine tech in the back deck, was a bit surprised not see a box full of mud attached to the wire when it was pulled out of the water through the aft A-frame. People in the E-lab monitoring the computers and the tensiometer noticed pulses of high tension on the wire right after the box-core left the bottom when it was about 1.5 meters off the seafloor. We all suspect that a big rock was the culprit. The box core caught under a big rock when it was pulling out of the sediment causing a lot of tension in the cable and inevitably resulting in the wire breaking. After a few hours of dealing with the loss, the PI’s were already figuring out ways to replace the box core
samples with adapted samples from the megacore. A few incubation experiments will now be conducted using the smaller megacore tubes with a few adaptations that may actually allow them to work. In terms of describing the benthic invertebrate biodiversity of this section of the
Antarctic peninsula, we have probably already collected enough large box core samples from the past two (summer and winter) cruises.

Another drawback was of course the weather that I already mentioned, putting us a little behind of the schedule. But also the bottom camera gave us a hard time insisting on alfunctioning while operating in the yo-yo mode. We spent almost 6 hours with the camera on-deck, ready to deploy, with the electronic technicians working hard to figure out what wasn’t working properly. First it was the bottom contact switch that is supposed to trigger every time the camera is a certain distance away from the sea floor.. Next it was the strobe light that was not firing and then it was the battery inside the camera housing receiving an alternating voltage. Well, we have decided to take a break for now, we still have the epibenthic sled to deploy that may itself represent another challenge and we cannot afford to lose more time since we need to move on to the other stations.

A bright star in the middle of the storm was, at least, the successful recovery of our sediment trap. The trap was deployed during our last summer cruise (Feb 2008) with the aim of collecting sinking particles from the water column that will tell us a lot about seasonal changes in the food-supply for the organisms we are studying in the deep-sea bed of the Antarctic shelf. The trap has a set of 21 jars attached to a large collector funnel that rotates at pre-set time intervals to capture the differences (quantity and quality) in the ‘rain’ of organic particles over time from the surface ocean. The trap was moored about 150 m above the sea bottom and came back to the surface yesterday with help of a line of glass floats and an acoustic release system that dropped the weight holding the trap mooring at the seafloor.

We will be back with news of our next sampling station and I promise I will also tell you what the outcome was for the epibenthic sled sample. It is the first time we are deploying it during this FOODBANCS-2 project. We expect to collect animals that were not previously collected with all the other gear.

See you later…Aloha!

AT WORK: STATIONS B, F and G

2009-02-24T12:54:00.000-08:00

We arrived at station B around 3 p.m of last Thursday where our sampling activities started. The scheduled activities were to recover the time-lapse camera free-vehicle system and to deploy a couple of box cores and one megacore sample cast. All successfully accomplished!
The retrieval of the mooring line with the camera tripod attached to it was successful and relatively fast. It took less than 2.5 hours to locate (using the transponder and strobe light attached to the top of the mooring mast) and to put the heavy (0.5 ton) free-vehicle assembly back on the ship’s back deck. The anxiety to see the results of this seven-month experiment was evident in most of our team member’s expressions. Soon after the camera was retrieved, Craig and most of the crew were back in the E-lab to download the pictures from the camera and quickly back up all the data files into hard drives avoiding the loss of such precious scientific research material. A quick scan of all the pictures revealed that the mission was successfully accomplished. High-resolution photographs were taken at 12 hour intervals revealing megafaunal behavior on the sea-floor over the food-poor Antarctic winter. However, a failure in the system was noticed after the 4-month period from the start of the deployment. For some reason that is still baffling all the electronic technicians aboard, the camera stopped shooting after November 30 leading to a two-month gap in the dataset. Not too bad considering we have captured of the most important four months of the the intended 7-month seasonal period.

Since the camera is now not operating in a satisfactory way to conduct the yo-yo surveying transects, we had to change our programmatic plans of going to station AA and rather steam further south to retrieve our second camera tripod, deployed last winter at station G. Once we recover an operating camera, we can continue performing the photographic transects in which we collect bottom photographs at an average 20-second intervals and along kilometer long transects across the seafloor.

But before going all the way south to Station G we had first to stop at Station F since sediment incubation experiments were still not completed and Rebecca, our colleague from North Carolina State University, had to finish experiments from Station B before arriving at G, to make room in
the cold van (an actual shiping container adapted to be a cold room with temperatures set to ideal conditions for deep-sea animals). (Look at our site map at the top right side of the blog page menu bar, which indicates the position of all 5 oceanographic stations we are surveying in the
Western Antarctic Peninsula).

Last night we retrieved the first Blake trawl, which kept our colleagues busy for quite a while in the aquarium room sorting the catch and separating the animals for tissue dissections.. The Blake trawl scrapes along the seafloor and came up full of mud and our dear friend Protoelpidia (kindly named ‘Sea Pig’ due to its surprising resemblance to the terrestrial mammal), tubiculous polychaetes, and isopods.
We had a busy night also with the megacoring activity going on in parallel on the back deck, which also kept a few members of our group occupied for many hours slicing sediment cores to collect macro-invertebrates and sedimentary microbial biomass.
We will be back with news from our next activities onboard the R/V L.M. Gould and the outcomes of our sampling stations E, F, B and AA.

PALMER STATION

2009-02-19T08:07:00.000-08:00

We arrived at the US Antarctic station Palmer at 6:30 this morning. The skies are cloudy but the weather is far from being an Antarctic nightmare. The ship will be docked the whole day unloading cargo to re-supply the station. In the meantime we are all enjoying a little window of connection with the real world again through the internet. Here we have full internet access unlike, in the ship where only limited email is available. So it is time to check the news, write to our relatives and friends, and have the freedom to send good quality pictures, which by the way we have tons. It is also an opportunity to walk around the station, meet the ground-based US Antarctic research staff and greet those we met in the last summer expedition, February 2008. And of course we have to go for the traditional walk on Palmer glacier that is right behind the station. There are great views from the top of the glacier and by the end of the hike we should be able to reach Bonaparte Point where the elephant seals take their sunbath.

At night we have a full-schedule at the station, starting eight-o-clock after dinner our PI’s will be giving another science lecture for Palmer station folks that are interested in the research we are conducting around the Peninsula. After that we will all meet at the bar where the traditional “Ship-and-base crowd meet” party takes place. Cool!!

While transiting south yesterday we had gorgeous scenery with the sun shining most of the time. The passage through the Gerllak strait rewarded us not only with beautiful views but also with the company of tens of humpback whales. They were all over the place and we had an awesome time enjoying some of the Antarctic wildlife. We stayed for a couple of hours on the bridge with binoculars ready for any new appearance. In the summer time humpback whales return to the Antarctic Ocean to their feeding grounds after spending most of the austral winter in the tropics breeding.

A day ago we did not have much to celebrate since we had to accomplish a rescue operation. We received the bad news that the paleontologists at Livingston Island were hit by severe 60-knot wind gusts that blew away most of their tents making unsafe to continue with their expedition. They even had to gain refuge from the wind and the cold in a small cave during the worst weather conditions. Yes, Antarctic scientific research is not always the most straightforward and safe activity to pursue. We are often subject to weather conditions that make it unsafe to proceed with any outdoors’ activity.

We arrived at Livingston the night before but we had to wait for the winds to die down a bit and for the daylight to help us make a safer and more efficient rescue operation. We could see in the facial expressions of the Livingston scientists that they were all extremely disappointed in the failure of their mission. It took us only 3 hours to take down the campsite and load the zodiacs with all the gear and supplies.

Today is another day and we have to start thinking about what is coming ahead of us. After we leave Palmer tomorrow morning we head to station B where we will recover one of the two camera systems we deployed last winter cruise. This is when the real FOODBANCS work will start. Hasta Luego, Aloha!

ANTARCTICA, WE ARE HERE AGAIN

2009-02-17T11:47:00.000-08:00

Our first sight of land was Smith Island, an amazingly high island with steep mountain ridges plunging to the coast. Blue skies and calm sea conditions welcomed our arrival in Antarctica, allowing us to stroll on deck, stretch our legs, and snap a few pictures.

Our first stop and step on land was the next morning on Livingstone Island where we set up the first research field camp. It took us the whole day to transport the three weeks of supplies on inflatable zodiac boats, and carry up the beach to the filed camp site. The field camp of seven tents and a hut will be home for three weeks for seven geologists hunting for mammal fossils. The island was full of wildlife. There were lots of noisy elephant seals hanging around close to where the tents were setup. I wonder how the paleontologists will sleep at night with all those weird, loud digestive noises. The smell wasn’t so great either! Only a few penguins were hanging around along the shore and in a small pond. The pond was formed from melted ice and the surrounding soil was covered with a bright green moss.

Finally, it was back to the ship for some deserved rest, warm soup for dinner and a good night's of sleep. We needed to recover from this long day of carrying heavy equipment and supplies. The supplies included water, food, gas tanks, Scott tents, plywood for lab and dinning spaces, etc.

Today, our second stop on Antarctic soil was on James Ross Island on the east side of the Antarctic Peninsula in the Weddell Sea. We navigated last night through the Antarctic sound, a relatively narrow passage that connects the West to the East side of the Antarctic Peninsula. “The passage was full of drifting icebergs and the navigation through it was a little tricky,” said Rick the second mate when I visited him this morning on the bridge. Around 4:40 am I jumped from my bunk after suddenly hearing a loud, grinding noise of ice on metal. I thought, “either something hit us or we hit something”. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that it was just an iceberg that scraped along the side of the ship. I stood by my cabin’s porthole for a few minutes in search of our culprit. However, I could only see small icebergs drifting by the ship as we moved along and no sign of anything massive enough to make the surprising sound and
vibrations. I thought: “…well, since the alarms didn’t go off that must mean we are fine and we aren’t going to sink….”

Another full day of onshore operations followed for us all. Setting up the Ross Island research camp base was a little harder than the day before. For some reason it seemed to me that they had twice the amount of supplies as the people staying at Livingston (and we even had the help of an ATV for hauling really heavy gear). The spot chosen to setup the camp was a wide, flat area covered by powdered rocks and pebbles with great views of enormous glaciers and a beautiful bay. It was another great day spent on Antarctic soil surrounded by an ever more amazing landscape. The temperatures were typical of a summer day, oscillating from 23 F (-5 C) to 32 F (0 C) and cooling a little with the blowing winds.
We even had some time off at the end of the workday for playing soccer and frisbee. Now, only 32 hours of steaming separate us from the US Antarctic station, Palmer Station. From there, after resupplying Palmer, we head to our first oceanographic station, B, where our real work will finally begin. See you soon!

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!

2009-02-17T11:42:00.000-08:00

Hello there! Today we woke up with a few surprises from our crew from North Carolina State University. As usual, and same as for the past two cruises, they always bring aboard funny and inventive paraphernalia to prevent our routines onboard from falling into a boring and tedious schedule (I mean when action in the back deck is not taking place of course). When we woke up this morning the whole ship had been decorated for Valentines Day. All the lab spaces, the galley, and the lounge had received special care from Alyssa, Kim, Brian, Rebecca and Linda. We even got some thematic tattoos expressing our deepest feelings for our beloved soul mates that stayed onshore many miles away.

In the middle of this celebration we also had some time to start preparing the real science action that will take place about a week from now. The enthusiastic science group from Hawaii spent a few hours labeling sample jars, plastic bags, cryo-vials, etc., that we will be using to collect or precious water, sediment, and invertebrate tissue samples.

Today there is another scheduled scientific presentation in the conference lounge. The resenters are from University of Washington and will be talking a little about their planned research in James Ross Island. Last night the ship was rocking a little too hard during the science presentation and a few people from the audience had to retreat to their bunks to get some rest and avoid feeling seasick. Tonight, at about 9:00 pm, is the programmatic arrival at Livingstone Island where tomorrow morning we will be setting the first field camp. We are all excited about
our first day on Antarctic soil. Stay tuned!!

PLANNING THE FIRST ACTION

2009-02-13T15:47:00.000-08:00

The principal investigators, Raytheon field camp staff, the captain and a
few observers got together this morning to plan our first science
operations in Antarctica. Surrounded by charts in the conference desk in
the lounge, the first sketches of our landing plan on Antarctic soil
started to be drawn. Getting a ride with us on the ship are two other
groups of scientists: geologists and paleontologists that will be setting
temporary study camp sites in James Ross Island in the Weddell Sea and
Livingston Island on the South Shetland Islands. (See red dots in the map
below for site position). The paleontologists in particular are interested
in looking at fossil records of mammals that have lived in Antarctica
millions of years ago. Currently, there are no terrestrial mammals living
in Antarctica as you likely know (remember polar bears only occur in the
Arctic). They want to find some missing gaps of speciation events that
took place a long ago and that explain some of the biogeographical
distribution patterns of mammals currently living in South America and
Australia, continents that were once connected as one single giant land
mass, together with Antarctica.

We are all excited to help with the field camp operations. We will be on
shore for two whole days bringing supplies from the ship using Zodiac
boats. Some people will be in the water passing cargo from the Zodiac to
people onshore and others will bring the supplies to the areas selected
for building the camp sites. Our ocean based field sampling along the West
Antarctic Peninsula does not start until the end of next week, after all
of the land based field teams have been successfully left at their
temporary homes on the ice.
So far the weather is still cooperating and the Drake passage has been
smooth so far. We hope it stays like that until we have crossed it
completely. Stay tuned for the next few days to find out when we spot the
Antarctic continent from our ship’s portholes. Hasta luego!

LEAVING PORT

2009-02-11T09:06:00.000-08:00

It is time to leave! We had a meeting at 12:30 pm to set the last details and check if everything we need is onboard. People have been checking the weather forecast all the time because it seems that we are going to have a bad crossing of the Drake Passage. A cruise ship a couple days ago had to cancel its trip to Antarctica because the winds were blowing too hard and they would have gotten into trouble if they had tried to cross the Drake. We saw several disappointed tourists coming down to the harbor exit: so back to Europe is my guess.
It is last minute shopping time for our group. Chocolate, coffee, candies and everything else that you might possible be missing for the next 5 weeks need to be purchased on Punta Arena’s grocery stores.
It is freezing outside the vessel and many people have given up their last few hours onshore to be in the warm and cozy lounge room on the ship.
Alright, so this is the last time I will update the blog. From now on our friend Tara Hicks at the University of Hawaii will be publishing our postings since we do not have access to internet onboard. I will be sending her pictures and text from an email service onboard that only allows us a few messages per day. If you are interested in sending us a message or any questions please write to expeditions@soest.hawaii.edu. Hope you enjoy this jorney with us!! ALOHA

HI THERE!

2009-02-10T11:52:00.000-08:00

As promised, we are back for new adventures with the FOODBANCS project in the Southern Ocean. For those accessing this blog for the first time, this space is dedicated to our outreach program documenting experiences and results and of this National Science Foundation funded project studying climate warming effects on marine ecosystems in the Southern Ocean. We just came back from a week-long hike in the Torres Del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia. This trip was a short warm up before our next expedition to one of the most inhospitable ecosystems on Earth: Antarctica! We were 9 people from 6 different countries, the United States, England, Wales, Brazil, Croatia and France, all seeking our last land-based experiences before leaving for our 5-week expedition on the open sea. Below you will find a brief summary of amazing trek through Torres Del Paine, which started on February 02 and just ended a day ago. You can follow our track inside the Chilean National Park in the map below. We did the famous W-trail hike starting on the East side of the park crossing all the way to the West. The trail is surrounded by gorgeous scenery from humongous rock formations, glaciers, azure-blue pristine lakes to extensive grasslands. It was a total of 70 Km of hiking and backpacking alternating strenuous 20-km long hikes with heavy backpacks to short 7-km day hikes with only basic supplies such was water and warm clothing. Now, with only a few unhealed blisters left, we share with you all the most amazing pictures taken during this great trip.

1st day (02/02/09): Torres to Chileno’s camping

We took a bus from Punta Arenas early in the morning heading to Porto Natales and then to the entrance of the National Park. It took us 6 hours to get there. We traveled along an amazingly dry landscape filled with parched grasses and populated only with guanacos (small llamas) and sheep. At the entrance of the park we paid the 10,000 pesos entrance fee and started the hike up to the Chileno camping site. After arriving, we set up our tents for the night, planning to head to the campsite Torres in the next morning. The camp site was crowded since it is the starting point of most of the hiking trails. It was hard to find enough spots to set our five tents together. After a hot shower for some and a warm cup of tea for other, it was bedtime.

2nd day (02/03/09): Day hike to Las Torres

The Las Torres camping site was only 1.5 hours from the Chileno’s camp site; however, we were in one of the steepest parts of the whole W-trail so it was not the easiest hike. Still, it was an easier hike compared to what was still ahead of us. The Torres camping site was very comfortable with a small stream passing right up the middle of it and plenty of space for our tents. After we set up our tents, again it was time for a quick lunch before doing our first day hike (without heavy backpacks) all the way to ‘Las Torres’, the beautiful rock towers that give the park its name.
After an almost vertical climb through what seemed more like a granite quarry, we reached the top. Great reward! In front of the towers was a beautiful grayish lake the carved from glistening granite walls. It took a while before the sun came out behind the clouds so we had better lighting for pictures.

Pavica, our Croatian team member used the opportunity to send a ingenious postcard to her mom, who is turning 60 today (February 10). Happy birthday Mrs. Srsen !!

3rd day (02/04/09): From Las Torres to Los Cuernos

Judging from the map, this hike did not seem to be the hardest one. No
steep terrains, no curvy tracks in the woods, and no sliding rocks.
However, it was actually the longest one: 22 Km would separate Las Torres
from Los Cuernos. It took us around 6.5 hours to hike around Lake
Nordenskjol, reaching its North and central portion by the camping site
Los Cuernos. The hike amused us all with more magnificent landscape;
nevertheless, during this hike we realized that to finish the whole
W-trail we would have to put in more energy than we were previously
expecting. The first blisters started to pop up on our brave colleague’s
feet and the first signs of fatigue started to show by the end of the day.
We stopped for lunch for about an hour by a beautiful river with crystal
clear. At this time our friends that had split into smaller groups with
different hiking paces got together, once again, for a nice rest. Some of
us even found time to take a short nap.

Once we were finally back on the trail heading to Los Cuernos more amazing
scenery confronted us. We stopped at one big cliff and the view of the
lake from up there made us feel like tinny little ants in a huge backyard.
Some of us expressed gratitude by stopping for a short moment of
meditation: but upside-down!

A couple of hours more and we finally received our reward for the day: Los
Cuernos. The two thick rocky towers got even more beautiful when the
sunset made the skies turn into a mixture of red-orangish aquarelle.

The Los Curenos camping site was voted by most of our team as the nicest
one, right by the lake and with plenty of space to put our tents cozily
near one another.

Our brave hikers...

Craig

Melissa
Rhian
Fabio

Laura

Christian

Angelo

Victor

Pavica

Group picture

WE ARE BACK!!

2009-01-27T17:25:00.000-08:00

Christian's sail boat: goodbye Hawaii

After almost 6 months of anxious wait we are again preparing to leave the warm temperatures of Hawaii to freeze our nose tips on the gelid Antarctic Peninsula. This will be our last expedition to the Antarctic continent as part of the FOODBANCS project and we all expect it will be the most exciting. It will be another 5 weeks at sea aboard of the US Antarctic research vessel Lawrence Gould.

This past weekend our scientific party from University of Hawaii had the last opportunity to enjoy the sun and the beach. Surfing at the North shore and wine tasting at the Ala Moana harbour aboard Christian's sail boat were the activities selected by our group as the best way to say goodbye to Hawaii. Some will not be back until the end of March.

We are flying to Punta Arenas in Chile where our adventures start all over again. This time we will be stopping in Patagonia Chilena for a one-week hike in the famous W-trail inside the Torres del Paine National Park. It would be a warm up before the real deal in the Antarctic Ocean.

We will likely be posting some pictures and stories about our visit to Torres del Paine as well. National Geographic ranks this place as top-5 most beautiful places in the world. So we are hoping to see gorgeous sceneries and wildlife. Stay tuned for good adventures and new stories from our brave team of oceanographers!! See you soon! Aloha!!

Pipeline: a perfect Saturday!

TIME TO GO HOME

2008-08-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

NBP08-08 Weekly Science Report – 3 August 2008

"The third and final week of our winter cruise for the FOODBANCS2 Project (in which we are studying the effects of sea-ice loss due to climate change on pelagic-benthic coupling) has been extremely productive and successful. After completing sampling at our fourth primary station (AA, west of Deception Island at 63o 3’S, 61o 36’W) we had a 14 hour transit to Station B, west of Anvers Island (at 64o 48’S, 65o 21’W). There we experienced the first rough weather of the cruise (24 hours of winds at 30-45 knots, and seas of 12-16 feet), but still completed our full station sampling program within 52 hours (6 megacores, 1 box core, 2 otter trawls, 2 tucker trawls, on Blake trawl, two yoyo camera tow, 1 kasten core, one plankton two and one CTD). We also deployed our final time-lapse camera mooring, placing the digital camera on the seafloor at 600 m depths, where is will photograph 3 square meters of seafloor every 12 hours for the next seven months. Because of unexpectedly calm weather (winds below 10 knots for most of the first two weeks on station) and extraordinary hard work from all science, Raytheon and ECO personnel, we were able to complete work at the primary stations along our latitudinal transect (ranging from 63 to 68 S) 36 h early. This allowed us to make a brief visit to Potter Cove on King George Island, and to extend our latitudinal transect to the north, by adding Station N (for “North”) west of Elephant Island at 61 12.0’S, 56 14.6’W. Locating a suitable 600-m deep site for Station N was more difficult than anticipated because the first site we selected, based on mulibeam and Kudsen sonar surveys, was revealed by a camera tow to be paved with cobbles and peppered with boulder-sized drop stones. After additional unsuccessful surveying near King George Island, we located sediment covered continental shelf at 600-m depths 30 miles west of Elephant Island at 61 12.0’S, 56 14.6’W. Neptune allowed is to sample this site for about 16 hours during which we conducted a camera tow, and collected three megacores, 1 box core, 1 Kasten core, a CTD and a Blake trawl. The wind then accelerated to 30-40 knots from the south, bringing high seas and low temperatures (with a wind chill of -35 C), shutting down sampling operations until we had to begin our transit north to Punta Arenas at 0200 h on August 1st. Our transit across the Drake Passage was very smooth, although we hit a bit of rough weather and high head winds (up to 55 knots) along the Atlantic coast of Argentina. We expect to arrive in port in Punta Arenas on time at 0800 h on August 4th.

In summary, our cruise was extraordinarily successful; we have completed our full sampling program from 68 to 63 S along the Antarctic Peninsula, and extended the latitudinal range of our data to Station N at 61 S, providing us with a transect ranging >400 miles from south to north. We conducted a total of 114 field operations (cores, trawls, CTDs, net and camera tows, etc.), averaging 9 operations per day while on station. We also completed 28 core incubations to examine benthic chemical fluxes and labeled phytodetritus uptake by infaunal benthos at all of our primary stations. This remarkable success most be ascribed to excellent weather conditions during most of the cruise, and the remarkable energy, enthusiasm and skill of Raytheon, ECO and scientific personnel.

We thus approach Punta Arenas fatigued but in excellent spirits, having experienced the many faces of the Antarctic Peninsula, from moonlit nights in the sea ice in Marguerite Bay, to gales on the edge of Drake near Elephant Island. We look forward to processing our samples when we get ashore to explore how annual sea-ice duration and climate change along our latitudinal transect influence pelagic-benthic coupling in this remarkable marine ecosystem."

Craig R. Smith, Chief Scientist

It is Christmas time down here!!

2008-08-08T14:48:00.000-07:00

posted by Roy Arezzo and F. De Leo

Like so many other special moments at sea with the FOODBANCS2 team, today’s events are difficult to articulate in words. I leave you with a short passage and a few select images.

Neptune and his family of gardians. Sentence: "guilty!"

A time honored sailing tradition involves celebrating the crossing of a significant coordinate at sea. Last summer I was awarded a lovely Golden Dragon certificate for crossing the 180° date line in the Bering Sea. I was hoping for the something similar for earning my Red Nose – getting your kicks over latitude 66°, the Antarctic Circle. I received a certificate and much more than I bargained for.

Arthur receiving his final sentence: "Gulity of coarse".

I was suspicion when I saw that the large trash pail labeled “save for bulk carbon analysis” was being filled with excess mud from the Box core. Later, some of us received emails summoning those new to the Antarctic Circle to Neptune’s court. I later learned that at no time did I have King Neptune’s permission to enter the circle, thus with the bulk of the science work done, today was our trial. We appeared in the galley before King Neptune’s family, complete with a grown man in a diaper and a jury of minions. We were charged with a host of atrocities, including handling Neptune’s fine creatures without permission. I, of course, pleaded not-guilty which angered the motley crew of sea jurors. We were then asked to entertain the King to reduce our sentences, and I showered him with gifts of candied ginger and “lost” CTD data sheets to new avail. He wanted more. We performed a short skit about life on the boat which culminated with the shaving of young Christian’s head. “Shockingly”, we were all found guilty and sentenced to wait in the cold room until sentencing.

Dan: "finally blessed by Neptune"

We were then blindfolded and lead to the back deck for a mud and firehouse shower ceremony, where King Neptune finally gave in and welcomed us to his sea domain. A great time was had by all and we followed it up with a “Christmas in July” party up in the conference room and homemade ice cream. Despite the hard work this cruise, everyone has remained supportive and in good spirits. The ceremony punctuated the excitement of the last couple of weeks and symbolizes the importance of visiting this fragile faraway place that needs to remain unspoiled.

Roy: "rinsed with Neptune's holy water"

The "Christmas in July" party sealed this memorable cruise. Thanks everyone! Secret Santa was a nice event bringing funny and unexpected presents. Our Christmas three was decorated with nice hand made ornaments. The price winner one: The Aloha hat (sea picture below). We leave you with some images of people's expressions during our deserved leasure time.

In the O3 conference room: Santa brought us presents and joy.

Christian sit in Santa's lap. His last chance to bargain a good present.

Another Santa? Or one of our PI's using a fake identity?

Pavica: the fairy of the lost penguins wearing the ALOHA hat!

Liz Galley and Pavica: Santa also brought us entertainment and poetry!

The 'Iron Man': this piece of art made the golden run of the night.
Steave, one of the engine room guys welded pieces of scrap metals
to build this nice and funny little man. Rebeca was the lucky one who brought it home.

Greg amused with his new soap bubble maker.

Rhian and Stian: chicken babies anf funny earings.

Oh, we almost forgot! There was still time for the super final of the fooseball tournament. Paulo and Craig were finally proclaimed champions! And the trophy: a special edition of a survivour suit torn in half. Nice!!

Last match

Front view of the champions.

And back. It reads: "High seas pack ice fooseball champions"

They deserved it!

Station N

2008-08-06T13:18:00.000-07:00

posted by Roy Arezzo

There were votes for Q and R, but despite the shift in coordinates to an area east of Elephant Island, Station N (for north) remained the label for the new station. I was out on deck before my watch to catch the remote underwater video system (sometimes referred to as the SCUD for its sleek design) being retrieved from the sea after surveying a kilometer of the seafloor at Station N. The video revealed a flat muddy bottom, and the search for an appropriate area to sample was over.

Julie: our experience in the back deck - here deploying the SCUD

We spent the entire day working on the regiment of sampling methods. It looked like it would all end well but by the evening the weather had turned and the winds built up fast, dropping the wind chill below -35o C. The rough seas had compromised the Megacore’s contact with the bottom and we added weight to the sliding core rack. After the third deployment we obtained our best samples, over 20 centimeters of sediment with a layer of clear “top water” preserved on top. The top water is as important as the sediments since it contains the interface with the sediment’s surface and includes the microbial communities and labile organic material. We were hoping for another Megacore deployment, but it was deemed unsafe and time was short so we ended with a Blake trawl. I stayed on deck after the end of my shift to enjoy the last night of science action and watch the Blake trawl come in. Although it was not a very large sample size, our northern Blake trawl catch appeared to be very diverse with many different types of arthropods, worms, and anemones. While we were processing the trawl samples we started our transit back to Chile.

Visible top water for a flux chamber experiment from a Box core sample.

Five centimeter core sample from the Megacore for biodiversity studies with worm tubes protruding from the surface layer.

This being our last day of sampling, I lay in my rack reflecting on the last few weeks. Fatigue limited my thought processes, resulting in a disjointed assortment of random observations: I am easily startled by the hand warmer that goes on without warning when using the head near the labs. The moment before your hard hat blows off your head, your hands are always busy. The night shift folks, who have their first meal at midnight (Midnight Rations, AKA Mid-Rats), have a choice of breakfast or lunch food. The kiwis stopped appearing about 9 days ago and now we have run out of fresh carrots. Before you can realize he is missing, someone always asks “where’s Fabio?”. More importantly, I have seen that the benthic fauna is diverse and complex. There is much life in the cold wet mud of the deep.

It is all gone by so fast and now we are left with paper work, packing, off loading, and maybe some time for more analysis and celebrations - more on that later.

Searching

2008-08-05T12:59:00.000-07:00

posted by Roy Arezzo - 61o 50’S, 56o 35’W

Today was all transit and we are still looking for an appropriate sample site. Before I went to sleep the winds were over 40 knots and the wind chill had plummeted to -30o C. The entire back deck is coated in ice from the waves crashing over the rail and freezing. The equipment will need to be freed from the ice before we begin sampling. Unfortunately it is not clear when that will be.

Angelo starts the job.

Paulo and Arthur finish it.

Station N, for north, emerged as the wining label for the new station. When we arrived in the vicinity of Station N, the ship zigzagged north to survey the bottom. We found what was we thought was a suitable transect area from multi-beam sonar information, and sent down a video camera to confirm our observations. From the video images we learned the area was too rocky for our study. It is possible that the currents between the islands are sweeping the sediment east, exposing more rock. We are continuing northeast, towards Elephant Island, to an area Dr. Rhian Waller had been in May, 2008, collecting deep water corals. The good news is we have spent many hours collecting good information about the seafloor bottom, the bad news that we are still looking for a soft flat bottom on the continental shelf to do some more sampling.

Bathymetric sonar is a navigational aid that ships typically use to measure depth. Dr. Dave explained how to assess the make up of the seafloor by viewing the bathymetric sonar image on the monitor. If a thin distinct bottom profile line is visible on the screen it is probable that the sonar is reflecting off a hard surface like stone. With a softer bottom of sediment, the sonar penetrates deeper into the seabed. This shows up on the sonar screen as textured, thick band. We are able to get a more detailed picture of the seafloor by looking at multi-beam sonar data. The NBP has the capacity to use multi-beam but we are not running it on this cruise. The Ratheon Polar Services home office in Denver was able to send some older images to us for the regions we expressed interest in. This technology uses a series of sonar beams to get a wide swatch of the area below the ship; the resulting data is processed through special software that generates contoured seafloor maps.

All the work is falling on the Principal Investigators and the mates in the bridge as they chart possible locations for us to explore. The rest of us are on hold, waiting to be on station.

We are still basking in the excitement of the trip to King George Island yesterday, and the importance of the excursion is still sinking in. Looking at the sea from the land seems to emphasize the connection between them. The Antarctic food web is more complex than I had ever imagined: benthic, pelagic and shoreline communities all rely on each other for sustenance. Looking beyond the scenic views and thinking about why we are out here in the first place reignites my interest to study and conserve this fragile ecosystem, which can be impacted by places so far away.

Antarctic Soil at Last!

2008-08-04T13:07:00.000-07:00

We ended up going to neither Deception nor Elephant Islands as previously discussed. Our deserved and appreciated stop on Antarctic soil was in Potter Cove on King George Island. After the sampling madness at our last station B, the hoped for visit to the Antarctic continent became reality.
The gossip from a few days before somehow became reality. Lucky us! We did not make it to Deception Island since we passed by there around 6:00 am, in complete darkness and 35-knot winds which would have precluded zodiac boat operations. . “Ok, let’s steam a bit to the north and stop in King George Island” says Craig. “We will arrive there around noon so we will have some daylight hours to stretch our legs and do some sightseeing and a bit of exploring too." Uh oh! Time for gearing up! Mustang suits? That’s my call! They are the nice and warm orange suits that make you distinguishable from the whitish-snowy background from miles away. That was the main outfit chosen by our group. Some brought their backpacks with some snacks (cookies, orange juice, cereal bars, etc) and, of course, their digital cameras.

Potter Cove, on King George Island, is home to the Argentinean research base Jubanay as well as a few abandoned whaling stations, which were active in early-mid of 1900’s. Whalers hunted around the Antarctic Peninsula and use these islands for shelter and base camps. It is not rare to find huge whale skeletons lying almost intact on some of the Island beaches, scary ghosts of a period when whale hunting was a legal activity. We hope it stays that way, at least down here in Antarctic waters.

We filled two of our inflatable Zodiacs to accommodate our team of 31 avid explorers. Quite a few of them were first-time Antarctic travelers and some anxiety could be seen in some of their facial expressions. As we approached the landing spot in the west side of the bay we saw a bunch of Gentoo penguins concentrated in one corner. “Nice, we will be able to bring home those fantastic pictures very close to our buddies”. Besides, it was a quite unusual but pleasant sensation to sit in the snow for a while and to watch a few of them approaching you as if they are trying to scan you for that weird new smell or simply due to the brightness of that orange appearance. It was also incredibly to witness the penguins awkwardly waddle into the water and instantly transform into the most agile swimmers, zipping around and leaping from the water as fast as dolphins!

After spending some time with the penguins we decided to hike up the hill in a small gorge near our landing spot. It was quite steep as you can see in one of the pictures but almost everyone made all the way to the top. At the top was a great view of the whole Bay and then time for our group team photograph.

After sightseeing for a while and people sharing their amusement about the great views and already planning their hiking trails for our next trip in February, the background silence was suddenly interrupted: “Uh oh!!!” A loud and continuous scream was heard from not too far away. That was the signal for our sliding show to begin. One after another, we started to run downhill and jump butt first into the snow hoping to gain enough velocity, then losing grip with the ground and sliding downhill like human avalanches. Awesome! We were finally having our playground time after three weeks of intense work. We looked like children in kindergarten. We even had time for a few group slides. Check out the pictures.

After the snow sliding session we stopped for a few more pictures of our Gentoo friends and stepped once again into our inflatable boats now for a nice ride around the bay. Stian and Jack, our super trained pilots, taught the newer MT’s Joe and Eric how to drive in ice while giving us more sightseeing and also a wildlife entertainment show. While we were trying to break through brash ice near the Argentinean base, a leopard seal came up to our boats, checking to see if we would make a nice meal. Some of us, of course, were a bit scared since this animal has been known to attack zodiacs and kill drown a diver. Not this time though. The leopard seal kept checking on us for a while as if it was playing hide-and-seek, emerging and submerging under an ice flow. It would come nearby, swim below our boat and ended up near the stern were is nibbled at the propeller. This moment made the video makers’ dreams come true, and we have a couple of nice video clips to show for it.

That was a great day and we are thankful to everyone onboard who made it happen: the PI’s, all the Marine Technicians, the ship's crew, etc. It will certainly be a day to be remembered by everyone.

We had a nice break the night before to celebrate Christian’s 21th birthday. Welcome to adulthood, Christian!! We toasted with chocolate milk spiked with vanilla extract to add a little punch. Christian now is a big boy and deserves to celebrate this rite of passage! Cheering, their mugs full of wisdom’s liquid, our gang yelled: “Take another shot Christian, that’s on the Chief Scientist’s tab!!” Ahahaha!!! That was course a bit funny since we are not allowed to drink any alcoholic beverages aboard the ship. I guess the vanilla-flavored chocolate milk tasted like cognac for everyone …”Happy Birthday Christian”

Some people in the boat also would like to share some important dates with their family and friends:

Craig sends love and wishes a great birthday (July 30th) to his beautiful wife Melissa

Linda sends her husband a kiss for they 4-year anniversary (August the 1st)

Fabio wishes his mom a happy birthday (July 27th) and also send his best wishes for his cousin Andre who is getting married with the beautiful Ethiene (July the 26th): “Save a piece of the cake for me!!”

We are now steaming north back towards home, or more accurately, to Punta Arenas in Chile where we will pack samples in freezer boxes to ship them home and store all our equipment to get ready for the next cruise. We are looking forward to setting foot on land again, and will all be making a beeline for the coffee shops and stores as soon as we arrive. See you soon!

A Hectic Night!

2008-07-31T13:01:00.000-07:00

Finally assembling the camera tripod

Hi People. We are back! And the news is good. Even under still shaky conditions we were able to finish our sampling at Station B. After foul-weather standby throughout the day shift, the winds dropped to around 15 knots and the megacore-deploying machine started to work once again.
One, two, three, four, five, six…hurtling over the fantail one after another, like a production line. Dave wisely asked one of our information techs to average the wind speeds for the last few hours to check if there was a drop or increasing trend. Ok, “good news” says Jen. We should act quickly! We have a few hours to act before those low-pressure systems come close to us again and increase the wind speeds. Lets go!! And while Dave orchestrated the megacoring crowd, Craig conducted his symphony of night workers in tuning up Da Tripod, our last programmed mission. The yoyo camera needed to be reconfigured for deployment on the tripod and the mooring array needed substantial setup before its final assembly and ultimate destiny: to lie at the bottom of the Antarctic ocean for 7 months.

Strobe in position and tested: “check!” Camera with all the programmed settings, photo interval times, F-stop, focal distance, shutter speed, pixel resolution: “all checked!” Sea battery charged and well secured: “check!” Acoustic releases tested overboard and pinging like a Levi Strauss violin: “check!” Nice, “… and the time has come” says Craig. “Let’s do it while the seas are still calm and the winds are not so strong…”. At that point a couple of megacores were still left to deploy; however, we could not waste such a good opportunity. It was a great and successful deployment once again! Thanks everyone!!

Artistic picture shot by the Da Tripod camera while still on back deck. It seems to be working just fine!

On that night a group effort developed on back deck; both the day and night shift worked together, relentlessly loading the empty tubes into the megacore and running with our sediment samples back to the wet lab for slicing, preserving, labeling and storing. There were 6 Megacore samples in an 8-hour time interval; not counting the time we spent deploying the camera tripod. The day-shift people were exhausted at some point around 6:00 am. Most of them had been awake for more then 20 hours and a few gave in to exhaustion and went to bed around that time. But all the effort was worth it! The FOODBANCS2 primary goals are accomplished. Everything we do now is a bonus, but the sensation of accomplished work is stamped in our
colleague’s faces and smiles. Rewarding!

Brian commands the megacore adventure. The last one!

So now what!? Now we have a 30-hour steam to our mysterious and new extra station up North. “Station Q”? No one actually knows where and what exactly will happen at station Q in terms of science. With exception of course, of our secretive PI’s, keeping the last mission inside a top-secret sealed envelope. Everyone is guessing and betting about what will be our next act! There is still hope for a quick stop at Deception Island for sightseeing and a quick hike uphill. Maybe before we arrive at “Station Q”, who knows?! We are now peering every minute through our portholes, seeking landmarks: cliffs, bays and even penguins; dark spots in the middle of the whitish and grayish seascape that has surrounded us for the last week. Keep looking people! Ohh look, I think I saw land!!

Signs of land

Stuck at Station B

2008-07-28T17:55:00.000-07:00

You often hear people saying: “save the best for last” but it seems that it is not the case for us, unluckily. The calm sea and wind conditions have abandoned us, right before we were about to finish our work. We arrived at station B more then 24 hours ago and still are not able to deploy a single megacore in the water. At a slow pace we have performed a couple of camera (yo-yo) tows, deployed the CTD, and performed several bottom trawls, the last being the only gear that can still function in these sea conditions. Wind speeds are approaching 45 knots and waves are quite often inundating the back deck. It is amazing to look out of the hydro lab’s porthole and see the waves hitting the ship wall and over flooding the starboard deck. Some people are starting to feel seasick and having to invoke pills, patches and sea bands for the first time on the cruise. We still have about 7 megacores to deploy and after that we are pretty much done; we then just have to pack everything and steam north back to Punta Arenas…but not until the wind drops! Oh, and I almost forgot: we still have the superstar Da Tripod 2 the mission to be deployed. Cool!

This morning we even tried to get closer to Palmer station on Anver’s Island to get protection from the main winds and also to make a dream come true for those aboard who never stepped on Antarctic soil. No deal! The winds were too strong and the small inflatable boats (Zodiacs) can carry people only under safe sea conditions (wind speeds lower than 20 knots), which was definitely not the case. Winds were close to 40 knots. So now we are basically floating around station B waiting for sea conditions to get better so we can wrap up our sampling for this winter cruise and go home.

In the meantime we still have some science activity going on inside the ship. People are still finishing dissecting those cute invertebrates, our beloved sea cucumbers, sea urchins, worms, etc, inside the scary and freezing cold room. Brrrrr!! Liz and Pavica are some of our best invertebrate surgeons aboard and quite often have spent almost the entire 12-hour shift inside of that not-so-pleasant environment. After the bottom trawl is brought up to the deck and our avid team carefully sorts the catch, the dissectors slog away in the freezing temperatures of a 4 m2-area cold room with no windows, dissecting animal after animal to collect our samples. Guts, gonads, tentacles, gut contents (mud poop!! yick!!) spread all over the dissection board. Disgusting for some, but a pure taste of happiness and contentment for others!! In any case, the purpose behind this is a noble one: to find out how ocean warming and a reduction in sea ice cover will affect the Antarctic ecosystem. Thank you my dear friendly invertebrates. Rest in peace and Neptune bless your souls! And I really mean it!

Well it appears we are needed urgently on deck now! They are calling up on the radio. Maybe this is the call for a new start. Maybe it is another mega core going over? Nice, lets finish this station!

We will be back soon with news from the back deck. Aloha!!

Squeezing Energy out of our Mustang Suits

2008-07-27T23:52:00.000-07:00

Sorry my friends! It has been a while since we last updated our web log. We’d like to thank Roy Arezzo, the high school teacher from New York embarked on this adventure with us, for sharing his posts and experiences with our friends back in Hawaii. His descriptions have helped us to reveal how amazing it is to live aboard a research vessel for a month-long period, far from our normal routines, our families and our friends. Anyway, it was a hectic sampling schedule that prevented us from sitting in front of the computer and sharing what has happened in the past few days. The science work has been overwhelming enough to keep our minds and bodies focused on collecting and processing samples of animals, water and mud!

We fell like an empty potato bag afterour 12-hr shift.

Ufhhhh!! Station AA finished! Only station B left to go. The last 28-hrs were probably the most work intensive of the whole cruise. We could probably make the Guinness Book of World Records for our fast sampling accomplishments, if such a record did indeed exist. It took us only 3 shifts (36 hours) to complete our sampling at station AA (7 megacores, 4 box cores, 1 Kasten core, 2 yo-yo camera tows, 2 CTD’s, 1 Blake trawl, 1 Otter trawl, 1 Plankton net town and several Tucker trawl tows, which were insisting on giving Linda and Dave a hard time). The work has been really well coordinated by the shift team leaders, i.e. our great Pi’s Dave DeMaster and Craig Smith. Dave is the workaholic in our shift (morning shift). If you think there is nothing left to do, Dave is there, either crawling on his knees polishing and preparing a new set of megacore tubes in their shafts to be deployed in a couple of hours or coaxing the box core spade into place for the next shift. He is definitely in love with those inanimate creatures made of stainless steel! Dare you lose one of those precious box core screws, then you will be in trouble! He walks back and forward from the back deck to the forward dry lab (where we can track all gear deployment information from 5 colorful and informative computer screens). “Roger…kasten core is on deck”… “Roger…box core is going over…”… “Back deck calling bridge…the bottom trawl was successful again…over”

Megacore: one of Dave's favorites.

Tucker trawl: it gives Dave a hard time, but even so he loves it!!

What about our chief scientist Craig: what a funny guy! Like Dave, he is deploying and recovering the gear, walking around the main deck keeping people from falling sleep during their shift, and assigning tasks to everyone. He is always making jokes, keeping our group motivated for the hard work. But no jokes around him are allowed when he is on the radio speaking with the bridge or back deck to send equipment over the side of the ship. He is really serious and concentrated at that point. And what about his meticulous way of working with his gear: Funny! Especially with his fancy and expensive digital camera toys! That is amusing to watch, but at the same time we learn a lot from that behavior since we start paying attention to the details that make high-quality science possible in a challenging environment like Antarctica. He always wants to make sure that everything is double-checked, triple –checked or even quadruple-checked before deploying the camera, but all these precautions sometimes are not enough to prevent bad things from happening. That is the way scientific fieldwork goes.

“Angelino, do you really think this strobewill fire? We need to be really sure you know!!”

"Make sure all the nuts and bolts aretightened hard enough. But not too hard, please do not damage my littlechild!!"

Let’s not hide the truth: we are all really tired!! Not surprisingly, our esteemed colleagues are beginning to show their fatigued state of being. Some are also showing the first signs of moodiness, a symptom that they are missing home and the safety and security of firm ground. This is all perfectly normal for people that have been at sea for a while. No disagreements will last more than a couple of hours though. And if they last more than that, we are sure that during our last night in Punta Arenas, the salsa dancing in one of the famous night clubs will break the ice and seal the peace among our ship-board family again.

Little Linda after a madness shift. She stillhas energy to upload the scientific pictures into the public drive of the ship.

We are transiting to our Station B, the last of our scheduled 5 stations. However, since we have been working really hard and have had calm seas, itseems that we are ahead of schedule. There has been some gossip about another sampling station (some extra work…ohhhh NOOO!!!). But it is ok; we are strong Vikings at sea prepared for extra work! Ahahahaha!! Some other version of the gossip however says we might stop somewhere close toeither the Deception Island or Elephant Island for a quick leg stretch and scenic views. Cool!! Since we have not been able to step on Antarctic soil during this winter cruise, everyone is excited about the possibility. Let’s keep our fingers crossed! But if more work comes, lets get it on!!! Aloha!!

Fabio and Linda wonder about being on Antarctic soil again! Hopefully!

Lab Spaces: July 20, 2008

2008-07-25T17:58:00.000-07:00

Roy Arezzo
New York Harbor School, Brooklyn, New York

Daily Log 11: Lab Spaces
Sunday, July 20, 2008

The big story on the NBP is the changing ice as we transit north. We are back into the pancake ice, similar to what we saw on our way south, and although we are certainly not heading out of winter by any stretch it did feel warmer today. It is amazing how -1° C could feel just fine with low wind and proper gear. We enlisted the fire hose to clear away Station F mud and ice to start our mud slinging with a fresh deck. Here at Station E the Megacore also agreed with warmer temperatures and we were able to load and unload it outside without taking apart the moving parts and blasting it with the hair dryer.

I am starting to get the layout of the ship, but I am surprised at how many spots I have missed over the past 10 days at sea. Today I realized that Aquarium lab fish tank configuration had changed and the spare tank was missing. It turns out that it was moved and rigged for an experiment that I knew nothing about, in a place I had not been.

There is now an aquarium set up in the dark of the cold room to monitor feeding behavior in our bottom-dwelling animals. Three separate species of “sea cucumber” from our Box core samples are being fed enriched algae labeled with carbon-13. Scientists from North Carolina State University will later test the animal’s gut and tissues and determine where the carbon-13 ends up. We are interested in how much feeding they do and how quickly the algae are converted into body tissue which will help us understand metabolic rates and growth.

Rhian Waller working in her coral samples: 'Nasty' chemicals required.

As for laboratory facilities on this research vessel, scientists occupy about 10 different spaces on any given day. Most of the laboratory spaces are on the main deck along with the galley and access to the back deck.

Almost all the deployment activities happen off the back deck area which is L shaped, and constructed with additional winches and an A frame both at the stern and the starboard side. The Marine Technicians who run the deck operations have a shop/office off of the back deck and as you move forward through the ship the first space for science is called the Aquarium lab.
Since the floor of this space has a grating and is designed to drain we do much of our dirty work in this space and it has a built in trunk-sized chamber that circulates water to store live organisms. We make good use of the Aquarium lab bench-tops to prepare our cores samples for
experimentation and the seawater hoses to wash away the mud from our equipment. To the port and forward of the aquarium lab are the Hydro Lab and the Wet lab. The Hydro lab is where we take water samples to process for nutrients and it houses some of the analysis instruments. The Wet lab is a mixed use space where samples are processes and some of the camera equipment we deploy gets stored and worked on. Forward of the wet lab is the Baltic room which is home to the CTD (conductivity, temperature and depth sensors) water sampler. This room is equipped with a separate winch and a starboard bay door so the CTD can be stored indoors and deployed regularly from a separate space allowing us to do back to back deployments more fluidly.

The Hydro Lab

As you move forward you come to two cold environmental rooms that look like walk-in freezers but have bench tops for lab work. Antarctic samples often have to remain cold (around 0° C) for experimentation. We use one of these spaces for dissection. The bio lab is typical laboratory space with bench tops and fume hoods and across from the bio lab is the aft dry lab which is
where we store a lot of our lab materials. The dry lab has a good assortment of bench tops and counters with cabinets and serves as a good multi-use space. The forward dry lab is essentially a computer room and serves as a command center for the scientists to watch the monitors and
communicate with the bridge. Across the hall is the Electronics Lab which also has computers for general use and office space for the IT folks and the electronics technicians. There is a microscope room on the first deck but we mostly use the microscope mounted in the dry lab to check out our plankton.

Greg, our Electronic technician working in fixing some of our gear.

Freezer: Where our dissector colleagues make complex surgery in the deep-sea creatures.

Dry lab: were we try to work 'clean' with no mud mess.

Since I find myself both in the lab and on deck often, I have started using the mud room near the wet lab to get in and out of gear. When equipment is on its way up to the surface, I often feel like a fireman as I rush into the mud room and jump into my safety wear. I am equipped with steel toe fireman boots and water proof overalls to throw over my regular thermals and work clothes. On top, I wear the standard mustang float coat with reflective markings, fleece coat, a hat, neck gator, water proof gloves and a hard hat. There is the full jumpsuit mustang suit option but I find a bit too warm and difficult to get in and out of so I opt for the two-piece. Proper attire is mandatory on deck.

Calling Houston! First Mission Accomplished!

2008-07-21T00:02:00.000-07:00

We wrapped up our sampling operations at our first station around 1:00 am early this morning, and our now leaving station G behind. Everyone is already feeling the intensity of the 12-hour work shifts attacking their backs and joints, and there are still 4 stations ahead of us! We have a short 12-hour steam to the north to reach station F, our next target. (If you are lost with all those letters, please take a look at the map of our cruise track where you will find our stations positioned along the west Antarctic Peninsula – the map is on the webpage of the FOODBANCS project, linked in the top right of the blog page).

All our sampling operations at our first working station were successfully completed in 2.7 days. We have sent down to the sea-bottom mega cores, box cores, kasten cores, Blake and Tucker trawls, and our super bottom yo-yo camera. The most anticipated event of this station, however, was the deployment of the Da Tripod, our time-lapse camera mooring that will stay on the bottom of the Western Antarctic Peninsula shelf for a 8-month period taking a digital picture every 12 hours. Almost everyone was on deck to witness the launching operation. Even some people from the morning shift showed up on deck wearing their pajamas to watch the deployment. Big event!! Everything went perfectly. Now we just wait for the recovery on our next cruise in February-March of 2009.

We are all delighted by the calm seas and the gorgeous sunsets and sunrises we have been witnessing in the last few days. The 5-min breaks between our gear deployments gives us time to grab cameras and act like photographers from National Geographic or the Discovery Channel. The lighting is always perfect for good shots due to the low angles of the sun. Remember, we only have 4.5 hours of sunlight during the whole day! The result is impressing! See below a few of these samples.

The title of one of the last blog postings “PARKED IN THE ICE”, is a literal description of our current state at sea. The ship seems to be docked in the ice while we run around with our samples and experiments.That makes our lives much easier. It is a dream for every oceanographer! No shaking, no bouncing, no seasickness (meaning vomiting overboard after every meal - arrrrguhhhh!!). Well, the only real challenge is the freezing temperature that has been hovering around 12 degrees F (- 11 degrees C), with wind-chill as low as – 9 degrees F (- 23 degrees C), which insists on freezing our nose and fingertips. O well, nothing is perfect. Not to worry, we are tough sailors!

Another highlight of station G was the bottom trawling. The Blake trawl came up full of various creatures straight from the darkness of the deep sea bed, 600 m below the ocean surface. There were a few bottom fishes, octopuses, sea stars, solitary corals, anemones and sea urchins, but the main charismatic organisms were the sea cucumbers (holothurians). Protelpidia and Peniagone are the scientific names given to the main stars of this amazing life forms that burst from the inhospitable deep Antarctic ocean. More than 40 lb (~ 18 Kg) of those animals were collected in a single trawl. You can see in the pictures below that our avid research team was busy sorting the amazing catch for long hours during the night. And we also had time to play around with some of the sea cucumbers in an aquarium filled with sediment and cold seawater, mimicking their natural environment. We were able to see some of their feeding behaviors, ingesting the food particles mixed with the muddy substrate. One of the goals of our project is to track what these animals are eating during different seasons of the year and relating it to the sea- ice duration in the surface ocean. While studying their feeding strategies in low and high sea-ice conditions, we can make predictions on how climate warming will affect the functioning of these benthic ecosystems and how species will respond loss of sea ice.

Keep following us in the next adventures. Station F, our next stop, will be our last chance to be surrounded by the calmness of the sea ice. As we move north, the absence of ice and the not so good weather forecast make us wonder whether our glory days are about to end. Feel free to send questions or messages to one or more of our research team members. We would love to hear from you! Aloha!

Parked in the Ice - July 17, 2008

2008-07-18T12:40:00.000-07:00

Folks are working around the clock now and with ice not as consistently thick as first reported we look to be ahead of schedule and should be on our first station site (station G of 5 station on our transect) between 5 and 6 AM. The ice in the south is still thicker than the pancake ice we
rolled through earlier and it is pretty loud against the hull as heard from the galley at meal time. The sound at times resembles a passing train. Despite the noise it is spectacular to witness.

The last thing we saw tonight after 1 AM was PI, Craig Smith and team Brazil working on the bottom camera, referred affectionately to as the Yoyo Camera. The NBP technicians and scientists worked together to create a new frame for the camera set up welded in Punta Arenas and rigged on the ship. It is quite the feat to rig this high tech gear at sea but with a full
machine shop, the experience and skill of the scientists and the crew it seems like we can make anything happen. Despite all the gear and talent much goes wrong and folks spend hours taking apart and refitting the equipment.

The yoyo camera will be pulled near the bottom at each study site to take real time digital images of sea floor. As it moves it will be dropped down and retracted along the bottom, which is where I assume the name came from. There is a trigger that sets off a strobe and the 35mm camera lens when it makes contact with the bottom taking a high resolution digital image of
four square meter area. From the cable we can control how many times it makes contact and distance of the area we photograph. By creating a grid of the images, the data can be used for both qualitative and quantitative analysis of the seafloor. In addition to seeing what is on the bottom in order to give us a whole picture about the sediment we pull up in our
coring instuments we can collect data on species diversity, detritus coverage and feeding rates.

Dr. Smith rigs the name frame of the bottom camera

There are 26 deployments of the nine main instruments we sample scheduled for the first two days at our Station G, the furthest point south on the cruise. There are plans to core the bottom, check the water quality, collect images and trawl for plankton and larger organisms. There was much science talk today about order of operations once we are on station but the highlight for all was clear skies and the first sight of Antarctica near Adelaide Island.

Sunset was around 2:30 PM and I was on the bridge and surroundings decks for the entire photo shoot. I was very excited to be witness to 360 degrees of amazing views. If a picture is worth a thousand words I should stop here and let my images say the rest.

BOW: Pancake ice of the bow of the NATHANIEL B. PALMER

STARBOARD: Sunset off the starboard side

STERN: Ice, Broken

PORT: First views of the Antarctic Peninsula under the moon drenched in sunset

Smooth Crossing - July 14, 2008

2008-07-16T16:17:00.000-07:00

In the last couple of days we have had a smooth passage through the almost freezing waters of the Southern Ocean. The Drake Passage seems to have spared us from shaking and bouncing around, preventing the inexperienced as well as the experienced sailors from having serious seasickness. We have had a few bad snowstorms in the last couple of nights causing waves to swash on the back deck of Nathaniel Palmer. Fortunately, the NBP is a stable icebreaker, so most of us felt safe in our computer office spaces working to prepare our sampling log sheets. One can actually imagine that if we were in a different boat, many would have had lost the battle against keeping food down. Thanks Dr. Palmer!

Meanwhile, the helicopter deck was not the place for basketball today. However, after dinner a few people were up for the ultimate challenge at the foosball table. Althought there were four Brazilians , it seems that their soccer skills did not transfer to the mini foosballers. That is, except for Paulo Sumida, professor at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, who together with Prof. Craig Smith defeated nearly all their opponents. The remaining Brazilian crowd, Angelo, Fabio and Arthur are engaged in daily training for a revenge match very soon.

Our coordinates now are 62 degrees 04.233’ S and 67 degrees 33.157’ W. The temperature outside is 29.5 degrees F (– 1.4 degrees C ) but the wind chill is 5.4 degrees F (– 14.8 degrees C). We still have one and a half days to reach the southernmost station of our transect, station G, where all the fun starts.We have already been split into two work shifts and people from the nightshift (midnight to noon) have started to acclimate to their new schedule for the next three weeks, sleeping during the day and waking up late at night. We are all excited about getting to work and already psychologically preparing ourselves for freezing our noses and finger tips in the backdeck. Get ready for excitement and adventures coming up soon!! Aloha!

July 12, 2008 - Steaming South

2008-07-14T17:53:00.000-07:00

Roy Arezzo
New York Harbor School, Brooklyn, New York
FOODBANCS2, Antarctic Peninsula
NATHANIEL B. PALMER
Daily Log 3: Steaming South
Saturday, July 12, 2008

A slow morning is always welcome. We are still transiting south and there is some down time between prep-work. There are certain amenities aboard to make ship life more at home. In addition to the gym and the galley there is nice lounge on the second deck with a library of videos, cushy recliners, acoustic guitars and board games. The conference room on the third deck has a comfortable work space, lots of books, and computer stations. Our cabins are small but cozy. The bridge has magnificent 360 degree views and is and a welcoming crew. For the ballers in town there is the “helo hanger” which in addition to a basketball rim is equipped with a foosball table next to the chemical storage container. The only thing not stored in the helo hanger is the helicopter since we do not have one aboard. It turns out that any game involving a round ball is generally a bad idea on a moving boat. This does not stop the science team of the NBP. Any chance to get physical with a round ball is met with gusto and tonight the PHD team of Paulo and Craig ate up competition for over 10 matches until Roy and Dan (UH coral reef guy) put a stop to their winning streak with a few close wins.

I have been going out on deck each day for air. As we extend deeper into the Drake Passage the seas have risen. There is much snow, ice and wind out there now and we are not permitted on decks without checking in with the bridge first.

Headed south through the rough waters of the Drake Passage

We are fortunate to have an international crew aboard the NBP. There are scientists from the U.S, U.K, Croatia and Brazil all bringing a wealth of experience to the project. Today I tagged along with team Brazil for a little chemistry. We mixed stock solutions to prepare for experiments aimed at assessing the biomass of organisms we recover from the sea floor. We mostly created alkaline buffers and diluted acids to be used for critter ATP analysis; one way of measuring the total amount of organisms housed in the muddy bottom.

The scientists from Brazil come to us by way of the Oceanographic Institute at the University of Sao Paulo. Dr. Paulo Sumida worked on the first FOODBANCS Project in 1999 – 2001 with Dr. Craig Smith. Paulo grew up in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where despite being landlocked 80 kilometers from the coast he dreamed of joining Jacques Cousteau missions to the deep sea. He studied biology in a local university and was granted a scholarship to study marine science abroad at the University of Southampton in England. His advisor, Paul Tyler, a friend of Craig Smith introduced the two of them at a conference. When Paulo was finished with his degree he was invited to University of Hawaii (UH) to do his post-doctorate work on the FOODBANCS Project with Craig Smith. He is a now a professor back in Sao Paulo where his research focuses on deep sea science. His lab continues to collaborate with the research out of Hawaii and some of his students work at both sites.

Arthur Guth has his Masters of Science in biology and works in Paulo’s lab as a biology technician. In addition to being my cabin-mate, he has a great love of marine science. Back in Brazil where he lives with his family he enjoys photography and scuba diving. Arthur has a brilliant camera and has been very generous in sharing his photos. He is helping out with trawls and dissections this cruise and looks forward to studying new organisms since this is first time in Antarctic waters.

Angelo Bernardino is a doctorate student in Paulo’s lab back in Brazil but is currently working at UH as a visiting research scholar on the FOODBANCS2 project through a joint collaboration between the two universities. Angelo has always been interested in diving and spent a lot of time by the water back in Brazil. He became familiar with FOODBANCS when he was permitted to use the images from the first project of the sea floor for his master’s degree thesis. Although his current research is mostly focused on comparing benthic communities of various nutrient inputs, such as sunken wood, kelp and whale falls, his expertise in underwater photography has him leading the team on the time lapse camera system.
Fabio DeLeo, our blog-master, is a graduate student who earned a masters degree in biological oceanography at the University of Sao Paulo where he also became familiar with Craig Smith’s work through Paulo. He grew up spending time on the water with his family and he has a strong interest in fish populations and fisheries science. His thesis work is in benthic communities found in submarine canyons in waters off the continental shelves of New Zealand, Hawaii and California. These canyons range in depth form 300 to 1500 meters and he hypothesizes that in many benthic systems, coastal nutrient inputs to these canyons supply much of the nutrition for fisheries important to humans for food. Fabio will be called upon on many tasks throughout the cruise and he currently is working with Angelo to get the camera ready for the depths.

From Left to Bottom Right: Fabio, Angelo, Arthur and Paulo work on the camera frame

Today the tech team aboard assisted me with downloading some of the video footage I shot of our crew preparing for the voyage. Unfortunately, I am having trouble figuring out their software so anyone familiar with Final Cut software who happens to be around 63o S drop in and give me a hand.

July 11, 2008 - Security Check

2008-07-14T16:58:00.000-07:00

Yesterday all the scientists on board had a security briefing. Being in an isolated place such as this research vessel, surrounded only by the blue, near-freezing Southern Ocean, requires special attention of all of us. We need to be prepared if an emergency situation occurs, such as a fire, people falling in the water (‘man overboard’), or in an extreme case, abandoning the ship if it is sinking. Abandoning the ship is the last thing we all would like to see happen. But if deemed necessary, we need to be prepared and trained for it. The chief mate Sebastian explained the importance of the survival suits, which are giant orange rubber suites that make us look like Gumbi. We put them on if we need to leave the ship by jumping into the water . In the pictures you can see our top models Rhian Waller (Univ. of Hawaii) and Brian Pointer (North Carolina State University) struggling to get into the survival suits.

We also had to practice our ‘emergency plan’ for boarding the life boat. This small boat fits 40 people and contains food and water for 4 days. This time span also represents the most likely time interval for being rescued by another vessel; after four days it is much less likely that the boat would be found. Listening to all those statistics make us even more cautious with safety procedures aboard the ship. We must all be very careful with the flammable chemicals, of which there are lots on board.

LOOSENING THE MUSCLES
After all the security meetings and briefings in the afternoon, people had free time to loosen their minds and bodies. Some of them went to the gym, others went to the Lounge room to watch a movie, and others found some space to play basketball in the empty helicopter hanger. Yes! It is true! We do have space for that on the ship. Craig Smith, Dave Demaster and their
students went for a match on the O3 deck from 8:00 pm until 10:0 pm. Time long enough for an ankles turned a finger jammed but no serious injuries. Take care guys; we need those bodies ready to rock in a few days when real work starts!!

THE SCIENCE STARTS
Today at 3:00 pm, our first scientific meeting is scheduled in the Conference room. The Principal Investigators Craig Smith and Dave DeMaster will assign people into two 12-hour watches and give them their main tasks during the watch. We will be working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

July 10, 2008 - The Last Day in Port

2008-07-14T16:50:00.001-07:00

Today is our last day In port. The ship leaves at noon but everyone is expected to be aboard at 10:00 am. Last night we moved from our hotels to the icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer after everyone went shopping for things that we will not likely find on board (candies, chocolates, etc). It was also our last opportunity to check the Internet for news. It will be almost a month without internet connection to the real word. Only limited-email communication will be available. The web blog, you are logged right now is updated by a computer technician at University of Hawaii. We just send our texts and images and she uploads them in the web. Thanks Tara Hicks for doing this for us!!

Yesterday we finished loading the ship and started working on a few last minute tasks such as assembling the float lines for the camera mooring and making a few adjustments to the camera system. We weighed the camera tripod (lowered by the winch) under the water so we could calculate the number of floats we need for the exact buoyancy of the whole mooring line.

Everyone is getting excited about steaming down south. The temperature in Punta Arenas is still below the freezing point ( 28 degrees F, -1 degrees C) and we are all wondering how it will be after a couple of days at sea getting closer to the Antarctic continent.

The other US Antarctic vessel, RV Lawrence Gould, arrived in port from Antarctica a couple of days ago. The scientist and crew aboard had a rough the crossing of the Drake Passage. They had winds blowing at 50 knots and waves higher then 23 feet bouncing the ship around. We hope our crossing of the Drake Passage (named after Sir Francis Drake!) will be a bit smoother!
Keep posted for news of our crossing of the Drake, which some sailors say is the roughest body of water in the world. Aloha!!

GETTING TO WORK

2008-07-07T07:49:00.001-07:00

Our workspace: the warehouse on port

Liz and Angelo doing 'the job'

After a long night’s sleep, went down to the warehouse by the docks, where all our gear was shipped from Hawaii months ago. First, we checked to see if everything had arrived, and then we began work assembling the gear for our expedition, in particular the time-lapse camera tripods. These tripods will support digital cameras taking pictures of the seafloor at a depth of 500 m for seven months. The tripods are made of an aluminum frame bolted together will stainless steel bolts. To avoid corrosion during seven months in the ocean, the stainless bolts need to be carefully isolated from the aluminum frame of the tripod with plastic washers and electrical tape. This makes the tripod assembly a very slow, painstaking task. Liz and Angelo are the tripod masters, having spent hours twisting and taping bolts.

UNPACKING AND REPACKING

2008-07-07T07:49:00.000-07:00

The Hawaiian outfit

The 'Antarctic explore's outift'

Today was the beginning of our long journey. After 40 hours of traveling, the first researchers from UH Manoa arrived in Punta Arenas, Chile, where the thermometers read 28 o F (– 2o C). The whole city, located in Chilean Patagonia, is covered by a powder of snow. After we unpacked our luggage and moved into our cozy little hostel on shore, we took the first step in transition to Antarctic explorers – we changed our outfits!

You really know you’re going somewhere extreme when you need special clothing to survive. All researchers working in Antarctica are issued a full set of “extreme cold weather” clothing – for the Hawaiian team, this was a dramatic change (see photos). From aloha shirts and board shorts we switched to heavy down parkas, goggles, insulated coveralls and thermal boots. Craig and Fabio posed for a ‘before’ and ‘after’ shot to give you an idea of the change. The heavy clothes will protect us from temperatures below zero F (- 17o C) and wind-chill factors far lower while we work in deck on the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer.

WHY STUDY THE EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE?

2008-06-13T14:35:00.000-07:00

Why do we care about global warming? Why should we know about it?

The Hawaiian community should be aware of the potential effects of climate change to the Island's life, culture and economy. It is already known that the climate warming is not merely a natural cyclic event. Human activities are in fact accelerating this process. We in Hawaii live in an isolated place that depends heavily on imported energy and supplies from the Mainland. We all should work to reduce our carbon footprints and seek sustainable practices in our daily lives ranging from recycling our waste to deciding about the next vehicle we will buy.

We at the Oceanography Department at UH are trying to address some of the potential effects of climate change on marine communities, including rapidly warming antarctic ecosystems. If you are interested in this topic follow us on this adventure through the Antarctic seas, where some of the answers for our planet's future might be hidden under the icy (but warming!) waters!