CRUISES
| |||
Getting There January 25 Getting to Antarctica has never been easy. Of course, it's a lot easier now than it was in 1820 when Nathaniel Palmer first sighted the continent from his ship Hero, or at the turn of 20th century when Amundsen, Scott, Shackleton, and other polar explorers began traveling across the continent in their race for the South Pole. But for those accustomed to the comforts of modern travel, the trip to Antarctica can still be a long, hard haul. For the IVARS crew, the trip begins at the airport in Richmond, Newport News, or Norfolk. From there it's a 3-or-so hour flight to a connecting city such as Dallas, then another 3-hour flight to Los Angeles. Then it's a 12-hour red-eye across the Equator and International dateline to Auckland, New Zealand. After passing through customs in Auckland, it's onto yet another plane for the 2-hour flight to Christchurch, the "gateway to Antarctica" since the days of the early polar explorers. Arriving in Christchurch is a surreal experience. In addition to the 18-hour time difference and lack of sleep, there's the paradox of austral seasonality. Most Antarctic research, including the IVARS cruises, is scheduled for the southern hemisphere summer (Dec-Feb). Of course summer in Antarctica is winter most everywhere else, but summer in Christchurch can be quite pleasant and warm. When we step off the plane it's 72 degrees, sunny, and flowers are blooming everywhere. The trees are in full leaf, smells of summer fill the air, and it will stay light until 10 pm. Quite a shock compared to the ice storm that was raging when we left Virginia 24 hours earlier. The sudden appearance of summer in the middle of our journey from the northern hemisphere winter to the Antarctic ice is a welcome surprise but also a bit disconcerting. It makes packing a bit challenging as well—in addition to all the cold weather gear we need for Antarctica, we also have to make room for shorts and sandals. This paradox is nowhere more apparent than at the Clothing Distribution Centre (CDC) at the U.S. Antarctic Program headquarters in Christchurch. Before we can board our flight to McMurdo Station, we're required to try on the Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear that the CDC staff has issued. So we step from a warm summer day into an air-conditioned warehouse whose floor is covered with orange duffel bags stuffed with giant red parkas, huge fur-covered mittens, bunny boots, balaclavas, neck gaiters, long underwear, fleece jackets, wind pants, snow goggles, wool socks, and every other piece of winter clothing you could possibly imagine. Then we have to try on every piece to make sure it fits-all while looking out the window at rows of blooming petunias. The paradox becomes even more pronounced the next morning when we have to don all this gear for the flight to Antarctica. This requirement seems a bit ludicrous as we pass through New Zealand customs, step outside into yet another warm summer day, and immediately begin sweating in the heat. A few hours later it will make more sense, but first we have to get onto the C-141 "Starlifter" for our 6-hour flight to the ice. The C-141 flight is one of those experiences that's made bearable only because it's novel. An adventurous person would do it once for the experience, but it would take a special breed to do it again eagerly. These polar C-141s were built in the 1960s for hauling military troops and cargo, and both their age and purpose are clearly visible the moment you duck through the door. A member of the Air National Guard herds us down aisles on either side of the fuselage, then belts each of us into a seat of nylon webbing suspended from long aluminum rods. We sit facing each other across a space so narrow that we have to hold our feet splayed sideways like ducks (it doesn't help that we are all wearing bunny boots the size of small snowshoes). After the crew has shoehorned all 71 passengers into their seats, some small talk begins, but it quickly stops the moment the engines rev up. The roar is so loud that we all immediately insert the earplugs we were given earlier, and for the rest of the flight all conversations take place through hand signals, shoulder shrugs, or the occasional shout. As the flight progresses and various body parts begin falling asleep, the seasoned passengers take off their bunny boots and stand up in their seats. It's the only way to get comfortable, and soon most of those who aren't sleeping (and some who are) are standing up. The interior of the plane makes us appreciate all that commercial airliners do to keep their passengers comfortable and secure. In addition to the lack of acoustic insulation and leg room, the most striking differences between the C-141 and a typical commercial airliner are the lack of windows (only four along the passenger compartment), the nature of the restroom "facilities," and the appearance of the mechanical systems. The bathroom on a Boeing 727 might be small and somewhat difficult to use, but it has to beat a funnel welded to a 55-gallon drum that's hidden inside a circular shower curtain for privacy (there is supposedly a real bathroom somewhere onboard, which is reserved for crew and female passengers). And unlike a commercial airliner, which wisely hides its mechanical systems out of sight and out of mind, here all the old and worn widgets are in plain sight. Look up and you see air ducts held together with duct tape and what appear to be shoelaces, miles of wire spliced here and there with electrician's tape, scores of cables and pulleys like you'd see on a carnival ride, and hydraulic lines marked with cryptic warning signs and symbols. But the flight goes smoothly, and 3 days and 25 air hours after leaving Virginia, we touch down on the Ross Ice Shelf. 
McMurdo Station January 26 McMurdo Station is the largest research station in Antarctica and will serve as home port for our IVARS cruise to the Ross Sea. Flights to McMurdo land on a runway atop the seasonal sea ice, or when summer's relative warmth renders that unstable, on the permanent ice shelf. Because our flight is arriving near the end of the austral summer, we land on the shelf. We step from the plane onto a vast, featureless sheet of white beneath a gray sky. Ice-draped mountains ring the horizon, including a glimmer of 12,444-foot Mt. Erebus, the continent's most active volcano. The temperature is 28 degrees, a warm summer day on the Antarctic coast, but the wind is biting. The view, summer chill, and chapped lips of our welcoming party confirm that Antarctica is indeed the world's coldest, driest, windiest, highest, and iciest place. We are immediately herded into yet another strange-looking vehicle called "Ivan the Terra Bus," which drives off across the snow atop its four head-high rubber wheels. It follows a "road" that is marked by earlier tracks and a string of bamboo poles sporting red and green flags. The ice-shelf runway lies 15 kilometers from McMurdo, and it takes about 45 minutes to reach the station. Our first stop, though, is at New Zealand's Scott Base, where we unload a contingent of Kiwis. We then drive onto Ross Island and climb across the Hut Point Peninsula for our first glimpse of McMurdo. At first impression, "Mactown" looks like an all-night interstate truck stop near a military base or oil-field complex on the high plains of Wyoming. All of the normally buried or hidden infrastructure and goods that keep a city running—the sewer, fuel, and electrical lines; building supplies; shipping crates; etc.—are here exposed to view. The architecture runs the gamut from metal-sided warehouses to Quonset huts, with a few wooden chalets mixed in. The landscape is a series of barren reddish-brown volcanic cones and lava flows sloping down to the flat whiteness of the sea ice. On arrival, we file into the "Chalet" for an introductory briefing (the front porch of the Chalet features a bust of Virginia native and polar explorer Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd [of Byrd Hall fame at VIMS]). We then collect our bags and head to "Building 155," which turns out to be a combination dormitory, mess hall, and student union. The exotic nature of this place becomes even more apparent after engaging in conversations and people-watching during dinner. The mess hall is a wild mix of geologists, oceanographers, astronomers, ecologists, biologists, meteorologists, seismologists, iron workers, welders, electricians, plumbers, computer jockeys, truck drivers, backhoe operators, cooks, janitors, pilots (helicopter and C-130 and C-141), ship captains, and cross-country skiers. In fact some of the people seem to dabble in several of these professions at once. There are people from all over the world, and because it's summer and the sun won't set for another few months, they seem to be operating on many different time zones. Some folks look like they just got up, others look like they should go to bed, and many of the recent arrivals look too jet-lagged to know the difference. For new arrivals, the combination of perpetual daylight and jet lag can produce a surrealistic brain haze in which time, hunger, and wakefulness seem to shift and shimmer in new and very odd patterns. Today's first bit of IVARS business is to move the gear from December's cruise aboard the Coast Guard cutter Polar Star onto the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer, which will be our ship for the upcoming cruise. Walker Smith's graduate students Sasha Tozzi and Amy Shields (who have remained at McMurdo since the Polar Star's arrival in late December) have already done much of the leg work, and today the rest of the science crew joins in to transfer the few remaining pieces of equipment and some personal gear onto the Palmer, which is berthed at McMurdo's ice pier. We transfer the gear and baggage into a large mesh net, which is lifted aboard by a ship-mounted crane. About half the IVARS team then boards the Palmer, which quickly moves away from the ice pier into a large patch of open water called the Turning Basin. The move is to make room for the fuel ship, whose arrival is anxiously awaited by everyone in McMurdo, especially those who will spend the winter. This will be the fuel ship's last visit before the sea ice reforms this fall. The team members aboard the Palmer will remain with the ship at sea for the next few days to organize the science gear in the shipboard laboratories. The rest of us will stay onshore to finish some last-minute experiments and help tie up any loose ends. The current plan has us boarding the Palmer and setting sail for the Ross Sea on Friday the 28th. Of course, those plans could change. That's the first lesson of Antarctic travel. 
IVARS Science at McMurdo January 27 The IVARS project involves two short cruises per year: one in mid- to late-December (during the "spring bloom" of phytoplankton in the Ross Sea), and one in mid-February (at the end of the phytoplankton growing season). Between the December and February cruises, most of the IVARS science team returns to the U.S. But for the last few years, Walker Smith's graduate students Amy Shields and Sasha Tozzi have spent the weeks between cruises conducting lab experiments in McMurdo's Crary Science and Engineering Center, the Station's main research building. Setting up shop at McMurdo frees Amy and Sasha from having to ship their heavy water samples half way around the globe, and gives them access to a laboratory facility unavailable at VIMS: a large environmental chamber that can be held at 28° Fahrenheit (-2° Celsius). That's the normal temperature of water in the Ross Sea, which helps explains the lack of local swimming beaches. Working at McMurdo also allows them to collect additional water samples of similar temperature and salinity (from McMurdo Sound) when their experiments require it. Amy and Sasha are conducting the McMurdo experiments as part of their Ph.D. dissertations, and to help answer specific components of the overall research questions posed by the IVARS project. Sasha is most interested in the differing role that iron may play in photosynthesis within single-celled plants called diatoms and in Phaeocystis antarctica, a colonial phytoplankton species. Both organisms play a key role in the ecosystem of the Ross Sea and McMurdo Sound. Amy is studying various aspects of P. antarctica's ecology and life cycle, including the physiological factors that cause it to form colonies, and the ecological factors that influence its relationship with predators (more on this later). Iron's role in photosynthesis is a hot topic in biological oceanography. That's because sprinkling iron onto the ocean surface has been touted as one way to help curb global warming—based on the idea that this iron "fertilizer" can boost the rate at which marine plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and ocean surface during photosynthesis. Because carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas, any reduction in its atmospheric concentration would help to curb global warming. Previous field experiments have validated the "iron hypothesis" by adding iron to areas of polar sea lacking in this element and watching the fertilized patches bloom. These experiments show that diatoms are the group likely to grow the fastest when iron is added to polar waters, even though they are relatively uncommon there. Sasha's lab experiment at McMurdo turns these earlier experiments on their heads. Rather than adding iron, he uses a chemical called DFOB that binds waterborne iron into a form that plants can't use. He adds the chemical to large jugs of Ross Sea seawater that were collected at IVARS sampling stations exhibiting different percentages of diatoms and P. antarctica. He leaves other control jugs alone. All the jugs are kept in an environmental chamber under constant light and at 28° to mimic Ross Sea conditions during summer. Sasha then compares how the two types of phytoplankton respond in the control and experimental jugs. His hypothesis is that Antarctic diatoms have a higher iron requirement then P. antarctica. A higher iron concentration in the diatom cells would give these organisms the ability to adapt more rapidly to changes in light intensity and to use high light intensity more efficiently, thus helping to explain their positive response to the iron-enrichment experiments. P. antarctica's lesser need for iron would allow this species to prosper at the expense of diatoms during periods of low iron availability, such as occurs in the late summer in the open polynya. Changes in the relative proportions of diatoms and P. antarctica within Ross Sea plankton blooms can significantly affect the local ecosystem as well as large-scale biogeochemical cycles. Unlike P. antarctica, diatoms make external "skeletons" of silica, and are heavy enough so that they sink when they die, thus carrying carbon out of the surface ocean and atmosphere. Diatoms are also thought to be more palatable to zooplankton. Some of these zooplankton grazers can package the diatom tissues they eat into relatively heavy fecal pellets that also sink rapidly and carry carbon to the depths. Every particle of carbon in deep-ocean sediments is one less particle in the atmospheric greenhouse. The final test of Sasha's hypothesis awaits the results of data analysis back at VIMS. But in the meantime, Sasha and the rest of the IVARS crew need to get ready for tomorrow, when we are scheduled to board the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer to begin our cruise. 
The Cruise Begins January 28 At 9 am this morning those of us still in McMurdo dragged ourselves and our gear aboard a two-car snow cat for a short drive across the sea ice to the Nathaniel B. Palmer (or NBP as it's usually called in this acronym-crazed place). The drive across the rough and pitted surface of the late-summer sea ice was a bit disconcerting, although we later learned that the ice is still 3-4 meters (9-12 ft.) thick. The ship had prepared for our arrival by lying up against the edge of the ice in the Turning Basin (a large area in McMurdo Sound kept ice free by the two ice-breakers moored there). We pulled up next to the ship and unloaded our gear into a cargo net, which the ship-mounted crane lifted aboard. We then walked the plank across a narrow moat of icy seawater and onto the deck of our new home. Once aboard, we began final preparations for the 4 days of non-stop sampling that will begin tomorrow morning when we are scheduled to reach the first IVARS station. IVARS rookies were given a crash course in water collection and sampling methods by veteran IVARS technician Scott Polk. The training proved the adage that 90% of oceanography is filtering water. For the next 4 days, the IVARS crew will break up into two groups of four: an A.M. group whose members will work from noon to midnight, and a P.M. group that will work from midnight to noon. Our jobs will be to collect and filter water to obtain samples that can be later analyzed for particulate organic carbon and nitrogen, particulate organic phosphate, biogenic silica, chlorophyll, nutrients, bacteria, and preserved samples (more on the significance of these variables in the next few days). We'll collect the water by lowering an instrument called a CTD over the side of the ship. "CTD" refers to the three parameters that the instrument records: Conductivity (a measure of salinity), Temperature, and Depth. The CTD's circular steel frame also holds 24 "Niskin" bottles, which are long, narrow cylinders with movable stoppers on each end. These stoppers are open when we lower the CTD into the water, but can be closed with an electrical signal at pre-determined depths. Our plan is to lower the CTD to about 200 meters with its bottles open, then collect 12 pairs of water samples at different depths as we pull the instrument back up to the surface. Once the CTD is safely back inside its hangar, we jump into action. Each team member first gathers about a liter of water from each of the 12 pairs of water bottles, then rushes them next door into the lab to begin filtering for their specific material or organism. The collection and filtering must be done as quickly as possible to prevent the water from warming up, and to preserve its chemical and biological signatures in as natural a state as possible. Because the water is at 28° Fahrenheit, we'll have to wear wool and rubber gloves throughout to keep our hands from freezing. Filtering is a process of removing materials of interest from seawater by passing the water through small screens with innumerable tiny pores. For our purposes, pore sizes range from 0.6 to 20.0 microns. A micron is one millionth of a meter. Because the pores are so small (to capture the small particles and phytoplankton cells that will be studied), filtering can be a very slow process. Thus our biggest concern is to finish filtering all our bottles before we arrive at the next sampling station. Once filtering is finished, we place the filters into an 80° C freezer or a drying oven (depending on what we're sampling for). We will transport these filters back to VIMS for later analysis. The IVARS research plan is to do one CTD cast at each of the 24 IVARS stations during the next four days. Doing the math shows that we are going to be plenty busy: 24 stations times 12 Niskin bottles at each station times 7 variables measured for each bottle equals 2,016 bottles o' fun! 2,016 bottles of water in the fridge, 2,016 bottles of water, Filter it down, pass it around, 2,015 bottles of water in the fridge... 
The Journey to IVARS Station #1 January 29The first IVARS sampling site lies about 100 miles northwest of McMurdo Station, just outside the point where McMurdo Sound opens into the Ross Sea. To get there, the Palmer must break through about 60 miles of sea ice. The unbroken sea ice averages 3-4 meters (9-12 ft.) thick. We travel through an existing channel that was earlier cut by icebreakers, but the passage is still nearly completely full of car- to house-size chunks of ice that have more or less begun to freeze together again. We were ushered through the first 20 miles of ice by a Russian icebreaker that came to McMurdo under contract to the NSF. The channel is usually kept clear by the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star, but that vessel ruptured the hydraulic seal on its main propeller while breaking ice during the December IVARS cruise. The sea ice is unusually thick this summer due to the presence of iceberg B-15a near the mouth of McMurdo Sound. Breaking through sea ice is neither fast nor quiet. The 308-foot Palmer powers through the ice at about 3 knots, using its 12,720 horsepower main engine, 2 propellers that are each 4 meters (13') in diameter, and bow plates that are 1 1/2" thick and twice as strong as regular steel. The scraping of the ice against the hull generates a constant background rumble that is particularly audible on the lower decks. Contact with the larger bergs makes the whole ship shudder. We occasionally have to stop and back up with the bow thrusters to free the stern propellers of accumulating ice. The channel attracts animals looking for an easy way to reach open water and the food it holds and acts as a entryway into the sea ice for others. Our passage through the ice is thus marked by small groups of Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii) and Adelie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) fleeing the ship's oncoming bulk. Skua birds (Catharacta maccormicki) wheel overhead looking for a meal, and last night our resident whale expert spotted a pod of 8 killer whales (Orcinus orca). The penguins, skuas, and seals are particularly hungry this summer because the prolonged presence of the sea ice has kept them far from the open-water food that they would normally eat. The first order of business last night was our safety briefing. We each got to practice donning our immersion suit, an outfit that makes each of us look like a bright orange, life-sized Gumby. We also practiced manning the lifeboats, and received instructions concerning safe practices while on-deck retrieving moorings and other instruments. No one has any interest in falling overboard into the icy 28° water when we begin sampling later today. This morning we left the sea ice behind and entered the open waters of the Ross Sea. Our ride is now noticeably smoother and faster. We are currently making 9.8 knots toward our first sampling station, which lies at 76° 55' South and 171° 54' East. Particulate organic carbon (POC) and particulate organic nitrogen (PON) are two of parameters that we'll measure at each of the 24 IVARS sampling stations. These particles of carbon and nitrogen are largely the remains of phytoplankton that grew during the spring bloom and subsequently died or were eaten. Thus their concentration in the water gives an estimate of the total number and size of phytoplankton that lived in the area. The size and number of phytoplankton, their "biomass," is a measure of the plants' primary production. This is the total amount of carbon and nitrogen that the plants were able to extract from seawater and incorporate into their tissues through photosynthesis and growth. By comparing POC and PON values from each IVARS station against other measured parameters such as salinity, temperature, and nutrient concentration, we'll better understand the factors that control differences in primary production from place to place and year to year in the Ross Sea. Because the Ross Sea is the most productive of marine ecosystems in Antarctica, gaining a better grasp of primary production here will help throw light on this process in other coastal Antarctic seas. Primary production is also significant on a global scale because it's a key part of the "biological pump," the process by which phytoplankton remove carbon and nitrogen from the surface ocean, incorporate it into their tissues, and potentially carry it to the deep sea when they die or are eaten. Every atom of carbon removed from the air and surface ocean is one less molecule of carbon dioxide in the global greenhouse. Because the Southern Ocean is the world's most critical (and poorly known) component of the marine carbon cycle, an increased understanding of the processes involved in elemental cycling here will help improve global models of man's influence on climate. 
Label, Label, Label January 30 Longtime Yankees catcher Yogi Berra once famously said that "half of baseball is 90% mental." For the IVARS crew, an equivalent malapropism would be that half of filtering water is 90% labeling. Why is labeling so important? First, clear and logical labeling helps facilitate the often hectic and intricate task of shipboard water filtering. Because ship time is so precious, oceanographers attempt to fit as much sampling as possible into each cruise. Data analysis can wait for the laboratory back home. To maximize onboard data collection, we have to work quickly for many long hours, often with little sleep. A well-conceived labeling scheme lets us work more rapidly and efficiently, and helps minimize mental errors caused by drowsiness. Quick work not only multiplies the number of samples we can collect, but also exposes samples to laboratory conditions for a shorter time before they're preserved. The goal of our sampling is to capture a "snapshot" of ocean temperature, biology, and chemistry with each sample. Thus we want to keep the water samples as close as possible to 28° F (their temperature when brought onboard), handle them in the dark to prevent any further photosynthesis by phytoplankton, and wear nitrile gloves to prevent contamination. Once the samples are processed, they are either frozen at 80° C or dried in an oven to help lock in their original characteristics. Accurate labeling also ensures that we can place the samples in their proper context once we've shipped them back to the laboratory at VIMS. Each sample has to be exactly labeled as to its date, cruise number, location (latitude and longitude), station number, depth, data parameter, filter size, and any unusual characteristics (spills do happen, especially on a rolling ship!). To appreciate why accurate labeling is so critical, recall that we collect 12 pairs of Niskin bottles full of seawater from 12 different depths at each of the 24 IVARS stations, sample 7 different parameters for each dozen bottle pairs, and run some samples through as many as 3 different filter sizes. This has been going on now for the first four years of the IVARS project, with two cruises per year. Any particular sample might not be analyzed for weeks or months after its arrival at VIMS, and may well be analyzed by someone other than the person who prepared it. Thus accurate and compete labeling is an absolute must. Many of the big questions of biological oceanography can only be answered by studying innumerable tiny filters and the organisms and compounds they've captured. If those filters aren't properly labeled, the big questions will remain unanswered, or even worse, be confounded by erroneous data. 
The Wired Ship January 31 One can only imagine what early oceanographers would think of a modern research vessel like the Nathaniel B. Palmer. Scientists aboard ships like HMS Challenger, which in 1872 mounted the first true oceanographic research cruise, had to struggle for every single measurement, in weather fair or foul. They determined depths by lowering a weight overboard and measuring how much line paid out until the weight struck the bottom. They gauged the ship's velocity by paying out a knotted line while enroute and counting the number of knots that slipped overboard per unit of time (thus "knots" as a measure of speed). They collected water samples using a primitive Niskin bottle that was triggered by a mechanical "messenger" sent along the down line, and measured water temperature using an inverting mercury thermometer. Oceanographers still face some of the same challenges today, and actually use some instruments that have changed little since the days of the Challenger. But no one aboard the Challenger could have imagined the wealth of ocean, weather, and navigational data available to those aboard the Palmer. Almost every room in the Palmer, including the bridge, wet and dry labs, common areas, staterooms, and bedrooms, features a TV that can be set to display an incredible array of data concerning the ship, the time, the ocean, and the weather. The ship data show the vessel's speed, bearing, position (latitude and longitude) pitch and roll, and gyroscope readings. Video cameras provide continual real-time images of the bow, stern, port and starboard sides, CTD hangar, and winch. We find the CTD images particularly useful, as they allow us to pace our filtering in light of the CTD's location. Temporal data includes displays of local (New Zealand) time, Greenwich Mean Time, time in various other cities, the calendar date, and the Julian date. Ocean data includes salinity, temperature, depth, partial pressure of carbon dioxide, and readings of ice coverage, fluorometry (a measure of primary production), gravity, and seafloor magnetism. Meteorological data includes air temperature (currently 7.4° C), barometric pressure (981.9 mb), relative humidity (83.5%), wind chill (-25.3° C), wind speed (18 kts.) and wind direction (180). Onboard sensors also measure the amount of light available for photosynthesis, and the levels of infrared and ultraviolet radiation. Anyone who likes the Weather Channel would love the Palmer. Many of the controls are automated as well. Thus the CTD is controlled from a computer console in the warmth and safety of the electronics lab. The winches and crane can be operated remotely from the bridge. 
Of course, all these data need to be managed and archived. The Palmer employs two computer technicians, who trade 12-hour shifts through the day. Early oceanographers and sailors would also be amazed (as are we) by our ability to stay in touch with the outside world while at sea. The Palmer sends and receives e-mail at least twice daily, and also provides satellite phone service. The ship provides Internet access when in port. Not that long ago, a sailor's message might take months or even years to reach its destination. Now we are dismayed because we won't be able to watch the Super Bowl live. We will however, be able to get real-time updates. Go, Patriots! The Palmer's science programs are funded by the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs (NSF/OPP). The vessel is owned and operated by Edison Chouest Offshore (ECO) and is chartered by Raytheon Polar Services under contract to the National Science Foundation. 
Photosynthesis at Sea February 1 Photosynthesis is so common that many of us take it for granted. We might value trees and other land plants for their wood, food, shade, or beauty, but we often fail to appreciate that these attributes are really just byproducts of the plants' true business— turning sunlight into energy for their own growth and reproduction. And the photosynthetic byproduct that we think about least (it is after all a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas), is in truth the one that's most important to us. For without the oxygen that plants give off, none of us would have the luxury of appreciating the strength of an oak beam, the taste of maple syrup, or the color of autumn leaves. We appreciate the importance of marine photosynthesis even less. Photosynthesis at sea isn't accomplished by towering redwoods or stately pines, but largely by tiny single-celled plants that we can hardly see, even when we take the trouble to look. Yet scientists estimate the marine plankton generate about half of Earth's oxygen, even though their biomass is orders of magnitude less than that of terrestrial plants. Most of the biomass of land plants lies in their support structures: trunks and branches to expose leaves to the sun, roots to gather water and nutrients and buttress the plant against the wind. Marine plankton require none of that. They are essentially all leaf; tiny floating photochemical factories that use seawater for both support and nurture. And they reproduce much more quickly than land plants. On average, marine plankton produce a new generation every few days, land plants take a decade or two. One of our main goals in IVARS is to better understand how different groups of phytoplankton influence the cycling of carbon and other elements in the Ross Sea. We want to know which phytoplankton groups are here, how they're distributed in space and time, and how their differing photosynthetic activities influence biogeochemical cycles. Measuring the biochemistry and byproducts of photosynthesis is thus a key part of our work. We use several different tests for analyzing the photosynthetic machinery and its products. A recap of photosynthetic chemistry helps explain them. In general, photosynthesis can be described by a chemical equation in which plants use light-sensitive pigments to capture the energy of sunlight. They use this energy to convert water and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates and oxygen: H2O + CO2 + sunlight --pigments--> CH2O + O2 Scientists have identified about 30 different kinds of photosynthetic pigments in marine phytoplankton. In addition to chlorophylls (green pigments), there are xanthophylls (yellow pigments), phycoerythrins (red pigments), and phycocyanins (blue pigments). Because each pigment is most sensitive at a particular intensity and wavelength of light, different groups of phytoplankton use different combinations and proportions of pigments to best harvest the light where they live. In effect, each phytoplankton species or group has a pigment "fingerprint." We take advantage of this fingerprint to identify the types of phytoplankton in the IVARS samples, using a device called an "HPLC" (for High-Pressure Liquid Chromatograph). After capturing phytoplankton cells on a filter, we soak the filter in acetone and shake the resulting solution rapidly using a "sonicator." The shaking ruptures the cell walls, releasing the photosynthetic pigments. We then run these pigments through a column inside the HPLC. Small pigment molecules travel through the column quickly, larger molecules move more slowly. Thus the time required for a pigment to travel through the HPLC can be used to identify its molecular weight and composition. HPLC allows us to identify pigments and plankton quickly, which enables us to study lots of samples and thereby determine how phytoplankton communities differ from place to place and with depth. We also view a few samples with a microscope to identify plankton visually. This method is more exact but slower. Another test uses a device called a fluorometer to measure the amount of chlorophyll in a sample. Because plankton have a relatively fixed ratio between the chlorophyll and carbon in their cells, knowing the chlorophyll concentration allows us to estimate the carbon value. This in turn gives us biomass—the size and number of phytoplankton in an area— which corresponds to the plants' primary productivity. This is the total amount of carbon and nitrogen that the plants were able to extract from seawater and incorporate into their tissues through photosynthesis and growth. By comparing productivity values from each IVARS station against other measured parameters such as taxonomic composition, salinity, temperature, and nutrient concentration, we'll be better able to understand the biological, chemical, and physical factors that control changes in productivity from place to place and year to year in the Ross Sea. 
The Rad Man in the Rad Van February 2 Today began with an interesting mess hall discussion concerning the validity of Groundhog's Day in the Southern Hemisphere. Do groundhogs live below the equator, or do wombats or perhaps capybaras fill the role? If a wombat sees its shadow, does that mean that there will be 6 more weeks of summer? How would an Antarctic groundhog know when to emerge for its "day" when there's been daylight since last December? Does Antarctica even have a summer, in light of yesterday's snow and biting wind? These are the types of imponderables that fill our conversations after a few days at sea. Groundhog's Day is in essence about light, a question of whether the day will dawn sunny and bright or cloudy and grey. Light is also at the heart of IVARS. The annual shift between the constant daylight of the Antarctic "summer" and the constant darkness of the polar winter is the fundamental characteristic of the Ross Sea ecosystem. During winter's dark chill the Sea is largely ice covered, and phytoplankton production shuts down. The formation of sea ice drives salt from the ice into the water below, forming a high-salinity, very dense brine. This brine quickly sinks, setting up a convection cell that pushes deep nutrient-rich water to the surface. As the sun rises into summer and the ice melts, the simultaneous availability of nutrients and light combines to fuel the spring phytoplankton bloom. One of the main goals of IVARS is to study year-to-year changes in the bloom's magnitude, timing, duration, and composition. Dr. Walker Smith, the principal investigator on the IVARS project, focuses his shipboard efforts on one particular aspect of the spring bloom—the rate of phytoplankton photosynthesis during the bloom event. Our other shipboard analyses have dealt mostly with measuring biomass and abundance, questions of how much and how many. Walker's rate measurements are fundamentally different, and require the use of live organisms and radioactive tracers. They also address a shorter time scale. Biomass measurements help reveal seasonal trends. Walker's rate measurements throw light on daily values of carbon "fixation." Phytoplankton "fix" carbon during photosynthesis. This means that they use the energy of sunlight to incorporate inorganic carbon from the environment (in the form of carbon dioxide) into the organic carbon of their tissues: H2O + CO2 + sunlight --pigments--> CH2O + O2 
Walker measures the rate of carbon fixation by first collecting water from different depths with the CTD. He selects the depths based on the percentage of available light, as compared to the surface radiance. He then carries the samples to the "Rad Van" (a shipping crate on the helicopter deck that has been modified into a laboratory for radioisotope analyses) and injects a small amount of 14C into the sample bottles, each of which contains live phytoplankton. He wraps the bottles in different thicknesses of blue plastic, to mimic the light level at the collection depth, and places them in a 50-gallon plexiglass incubation tank. The tank is bathed in ambient seawater at 28° F. The phytoplankton continue photosynthesis in the bottles, fixing carbon all the while. They fix both the regular carbon (12C) that was naturally in the water, and the 14C added by Walker. 14C is a radioactive isotope that breaks down at a known rate. After 24 hours, Walker removes the samples from the incubation tank and filters the phytoplankton from the seawater. He then bathes the filters in a liquid and pours the liquid into a scintillation counter. This device measures the tiny bursts of light that occur when 14C decay particles enter the liquid within the counter's sampling chamber. Because the rate of radioactive decay is constant, the number of decay particles counted corresponds to the amount of 14C that was fixed during the 24 hours of photosynthesis in the incubation tank. The number of decay particles divided by the time gives the rate of photosynthesis. Faster photosynthesis gives more 14C. The rate of photosynthesis can in turn be used to calculate a growth rate. Carbon-uptake experiments like these provide direct and sensitive measurements of photosynthesis and growth rates among plankton from different depths and light levels in the Ross Sea. This information helps distinguish between different phytoplankton groups (diatoms vs. Phaeocystis antarctica) in the area, and provides input for computer models of the global carbon cycle. An increased understanding of the processes involved in carbon cycling in the Ross Sea and Southern Ocean will help improve global models of man's influence on climate. 
A Blue Crab Moored in an Icy Sea February 3 The Ross Sea is the one of the last places you'd expect to find the blue crab Calinectes sapidus. But there is one Calinectes here, as that's the name Walker Smith bestowed on an IVARS mooring in honor of Chesapeake Bay's renowned crustacean. The other IVARS mooring, Xiphias, honors the swordfish Xiphias gladius. Moorings and transect stations serve different purposes—one temporal, one spatial. The 24 stations in the IVARS sampling transects give an in-depth view of a relatively broad swath of the Ross Sea at a single point in time. The IVARS moorings capture data at just two points, but over a relatively long period. Thus the moorings track the spring bloom through time, while the transects provide an early- and late-season snapshot of the bloom's distribution in space (these snapshots can of course be compared from year-to-year to add a temporal dimension). The moorings are deployed each year during the initial IVARS cruise. This season, the IVARS crew released Calinectes on December 21, and Xiphias on December 23. The moorings remained in the water gathering data for 40 and 38 days respectively until we returned to retrieve them a few days ago. Dr. Vern Asper, an IVARS collaborator from the University of Southern Mississippi, spearheads the job of deploying and retrieving the IVARS moorings. He is aided by his graduate student Kevin Martin and other members of the IVARS team and Palmer crew. Each mooring consists of 9 oceanographic sensors strung at 3-5 meter intervals along a 3/8" diameter chain of galvanized steel. The mooring runs from a surface float to a seafloor anchor. At the Calinectes site the seafloor is 600 meters down. The depth at Xiphias is 650 meters. Each mooring is anchored to the seafloor with two railroad wheels having a combined weight of 2,200 pounds. About 40-meters down the rig, an "S-tether" offers flexibility. The tether is a simple yet ingenious device consisting of two 120-meter lengths of rope: a nylon rope connected to the surface chain, and a polypropylene rope connected to the anchor wire. The nylon line is heavier than water and sinks. The polypro line is lighter than water and floats. This difference in buoyancy holds the connected lines in a slack, sinuous curve between the more rigid float and anchor segments of the chain, providing some give against strong currents and wind. Our job during the last few days has been to find the moorings, release them from their anchors, bring them onboard, and begin downloading their sensor data. We were particularly eager to retrieve Calinectes, as it lay in the path of iceberg B15J. Two years ago, sea ice destroyed both IVARS moorings. This year we were luckier, and retrieved the moorings without incident. Retreiving a mooring requires close coordination between scientists and crew. We're guided to the mooring by the Argos satellite system, which records radio signals transmitted by an antenna on the mooring's surface float. Once we've located the mooring and steamed within range, we send a series of coded sound signals into the water. These acoustic pulses trigger a release mechanism securing the mooring to the anchor. The ten glass floats on the mooring are then free to carry it to the surface. The most physically challenging part of retrieving the mooring is bringing it onboard. This can be a difficult and dangerous job on a rolling ship. IVARS scientists don their "float coats," rubber gloves, insulated boots, hard hats, and other cold-weather and safety gear to join the Palmer's similarly clad marine technicians on the ship's cold, wet fantail. Those in the yellow zone nearest the stern must clip into a safety line. The captain uses the ship's thrusters to maneuver the stern close enough for a marine tech to snare the mooring with a lasso. We then winch the mooring onboard. We remove the sensors from the chain one-by-one and quickly carry them inside for a rinse and to begin downloading their data. Sensors on the mooring perform many of the same tests that we've been doing in the lab. There are three fluorometers to measure chlorophyll concentrations; a silicate and nitrate analyzer to measure nutrient levels; a mini-CTD to record temperature, depth, and salinity; and current meters to measure the speed and direction of subsurface flows. These sensors have been recording and storing data for more than a month, and analyzing their data will keep IVARS scientists busy for months and even years to come. 
Measuring Marine Snow February 4 Two days ago we enjoyed an Antarctic snowfall that covered the Palmer with a thin blanket of white. Summer snow is by no means unusual in the Ross Sea, either above or below the waves. In fact, the summertime flurry of "marine snow" is a key component of the Ross Sea carbon cycle, and one of the processes that we've come here to study. Marine snow is the term that oceanographers use to describe aggregates of sinking particles in the water column. The aggregates include the remains of jellyfish, larvaceans, salps, and other large zooplankton; clay minerals; and tiny fragments of calcite and opaline silica from shell-bearing phytoplankton (e.g., coccolithophores and diatoms). From the window of a research sub, marine snow resembles a blizzard of white against a backdrop of dark ocean water—hence the name. Marine snow is ultimately a byproduct of photosynthesis in sunlit surface water. During photosynthesis, phytoplankters use the energy of sunlight to incorporate carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, iron, and other inorganic materials into their tissues. When these phytoplankton die or are eaten by zooplankton, some portion of their remains begins to sink toward the ocean floor. Quantifying the percentage of organic detritus that sinks, and the percentage that is recycled in surface water, is one goal of the IVARS project. If marine snow carries large amounts of carbon to depth, the carbon will be sequestered from the atmospheric greenhouse for thousands of years. If the carbon is recycled near the surface, it can quickly re-enter the surface ocean and atmosphere as carbon dioxide, one of the main greenhouse gases. Thus the fate of marine snow is an important parameter in global climate and global-climate models. The fate of the other marine-snow elements is also important. Recycling of nitrogen, phosphorous, and iron provides nutrients for future generations of phytoplankton. Many factors help determine whether a particular parcel of marine snow will reach the ocean floor or be recycled near the surface. One is the relationship between the parcel's surface area and volume. Surface area is a squared function of length X width. Volume, on the other hand, is a cubed function of length X width X height. So as particle size increases, volume increases more rapidly than surface area. For marine snow particles in seawater, volume equates to mass, and surface area equates to hydrodynamic drag. Thus larger particles have a higher ratio of mass to drag, sink more rapidly, and are more likely to reach the seafloor. That's why the joining of individual marine snow particles into aggregates is such an important process. All else being equal, an aggregate of 10 marine snow particles will sink more rapidly than the same 10 particles individually. The formation of aggregates is promoted by the sticky nature of many marine snow particles, including jellyfish tentacles, larvacean houses, and phytoplankton themselves. Fecal pellets provide another way to package materials into faster-sinking particles. Zooplankters generate fecal pellets by grazing on phytoplankton, digesting the usable materials, and egesting waste materials in relatively large and fast-sinking pellets. The tastiness of phytoplankters is thus another important aspect to consider when studying marine snow. For example, some evidence suggests that diatoms are more palatable to zooplankton than the haptophyte Phaeocystis antarctica, and thus more likely to be eaten and packaged into fecal pellets. IVARS scientists, most notably Dr. Vern Asper, use two different instruments to study marine snow. One is a digital camera that we winch overboard at each of the two IVARS mooring stations. The camera takes about 2 hours to complete its roundtrip to the seafloor (650 m at Xiphias, 600 m at Calinectes), and snaps about 300 pictures of marine snow en route. Each image focuses on a narrow column about 75 centimeters from the lens that is illuminated by a strobe on either side. The pictures resemble images of the night-time sky, with star-bright particles of marine snow highlighted against a background of space-black seawater. Vern uses image-analysis software to count the number of particles in each image. The software can in some cases even identify individual particles based on size and shape. Counting and comparing the abundance of particles in each frame and between multiple profiles provides a good estimate of where the aggregates are, how big they are, and how these features change in time and space. Sediment traps provide another way to study marine snow. Vern attaches one of these large funnels 200 meters down each IVARS mooring, where they remain throughout deployment to capture the background rain of sinking particles. Each funnel discharges downward into a series of 21 small bottles mounted on a rotating carousel. Vern programs the carousel to bring a new bottle beneath the funnel opening every two days. Thus when we retrieve the sediment traps, they hold 21 separate samples, each containing a 2-day collection of settled particles. Comparing the weight of these samples helps quantify the amount of material exported from the surface layer through time. Data from the sediment traps and camera help quantify the amount of organic matter that sinks to depth. By subtracting this quantity from phytoplankton production values in sunlit surface waters, we can estimate 'net growth', the amount of organic material that was fixed by phytoplankton during photosynthesis. All these values can be plugged into global carbon models to help refine them. Because the Southern Ocean is the world's most critical (and poorly known) component of the marine carbon cycle, a more refined understanding of the processes involved in elemental cycling here will help improve global models of man's influence on climate. 
Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue February 5 The second cruise of the 2004-5 IVARS season was originally scheduled for the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star, but that vessel damaged its propeller during the first IVARS cruise in December. We were thus re-routed to join a previously scheduled research leg aboard the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer. One good thing about our borrowed time aboard the Palmer is that it's given us the opportunity to interact with scientists from other institutions working on separate projects. We've gotten to know a great group of people from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Texas A&M University, Cal Tech, Oregon State University, the University of Southern Mississippi, and the University of Wisconsin. We've helped each other collect samples and analyze data, and in the process learned a great deal about each other's research. The non-IVARS projects include a mooring study designed to investigate the movement of Antarctic Bottom Water, a seafloor-mapping study to help reconstruct the tectonic history of the Southern Ocean, and an acoustic study of blue whale vocalization. Dispatches over the next few days will describe these projects. AnSlope Physical processes in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica play a key role in driving the global system of deep-ocean currents. Particularly important are the processes that help form and transport Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW). This body of cold, salty water forms along the Antarctic continental shelf and subsequently cascades down the continental slope. AABW interacts with other water masses to help drive the thermohaline component of the global ocean circulation. The global ocean circulation in turn plays a significant role in worldwide climate and predicted climate change. The AnSlope project, headed by Drs. Arnold Gordon of Lamont-Doherty and Alex Orsi of Texas A&M, is one of two on-going studies to better understand how shelf water moves down the continental slope, thus contributing to Antarctic Bottom Water. (The other study is the ARCHES project in the Weddell Sea.) AnSlope researchers deployed a dozen moorings off Cape Adare in April 2003. They retrieved those moorings last year, consolidated their instruments onto six moorings, and re-deployed those for the final year of the project. Three members of the AnSlope team are aboard the Palmer. Christina Stover is one of Dr. Orsi's graduate students at Texas A&M. She's here to begin downloading and analyzing AnSlope data for her dissertation. Jay Simpkins and Kathryn Brooksforce are mooring technicians affiliated with Oregon State University. They have more than 50 years combined experience in deploying and retrieving ocean equipment and are here to help collect the remaining six AnSlope moorings. The water along Antarctica's continental shelf is cold, salty, and thus very dense. It's chilled by its exposure to the area's frigid air and constant winds, and acquires its elevated salinity through the formation of sea ice, most notably in the Ross and Weddell seas. Ice formation drives salt into the underlying seawater, producing a brine. This process is promoted by the katabatic winds that flow off the Antarctic ice cap, consistently pushing already formed sea ice offshore and subjecting new leads of open water to freezing conditions. Because it's more dense than its surroundings, Antarctic shelf water tends to flow down the continental slope into neighboring basins. The goal of the AnSlope project is to measure the rate of this flow, determine its chemical and physical properties, and find any bathymetric features that might channel or disperse it. The six moorings we're here to recover were deployed in an area previously identified as a likely spot for down-slope flow—the Drygalski Trough of the western Ross Sea. This is a submarine canyon that runs from southwest to northeast across the continental slope just off of Cape Adare. The trough lies just seaward of the Drygalski Ice Tongue, a floating projection of the David Glacier. Each of the moorings holds anywhere from 1 to 5 current meters and mini-CTDs, based on water depth. One of the moorings also employs an ADCP (Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler). The current meters look and function like underwater wind gauges, with a broad tail to align the meter with the current and a rotating turbine to measure the current's velocity. The mini-CTDs collect data on salinity, temperature, and depth, just like the larger model we deployed at the IVARS stations. The ADCP mimics the sonar system used by marine mammals. The unit emits sound pulses that reflect off of waterborne particles, and then listens for the resulting echoes. An on board computer translates the returned signals into a two-dimensional representation of current speed and direction throughout the water column. AnSlope researchers have so far identified two modes by which shelf water descends to the deep ocean. In one mode, a distinct current cascades rapidly down the Drygalski Trough, leaving a strong chemical and physical imprint on Antarctic Bottom Water. A second current flows more slowly and mixes with water from the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Antarctic Bottom Water is the largest contributor to the global pool of oxygen- and nutrient-rich bottom waters, which later rise to ventilate and nourish the world ocean. (The second largest contributor is the North Atlantic Deep Water, which forms by cooling and sinking of the Gulf Stream near Iceland). Some oceanographic models predict significant changes in ocean circulation as global climate warms. Because Antarctic Bottom Water plays such a crucial role in that circulation, a better understanding of its formation will help refine global models. 
Mal de Mer February 6 We've spent the last few days off Cape Adare, a narrow headland that forms the northwestern corner of the Ross Sea. It's a beautiful spot. Small icebergs dot the inky blue sea, and the ice-covered peaks of the Admirality Range loom along the southern horizon. Most striking is 14,642-foot Mt. Minto. The area is rich in seabirds. We've seen the beautifully marked Cape Petrel (Daption capense), the all-white Snow Petrel (Pagodroma nivea), the Light-mantled Sooty Albatross (Phoebetria palpebrata), prions or whalebirds (Pachyptila spp.), and the pesky South Polar Skua (Catharacta maccormicki). We also watched a pair of Adelie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) flee our oncoming ship in a rapid series of dives and jumps. The weather at Cape Adare was almost idyllic—light winds, calm seas, and mostly clear skies, expect for a few hours of snow on the "night" of February 5th (it's still light 24/7). Today, that all changed as we began to move into the open waters of the Southern Ocean. Unfortunately, the barometer started moving just when we did. This afternoon it bottomed out at 967 millibars (23 mb lower than the lowest pressure recorded in Gloucester Point during Hurricane Isabel!). The wind rose as the pressure dropped, and by late afternoon it was blowing at 35-40 knots, with seas of 10-15 feet. The Palmer is a stable ship, and these are calm conditions compared to what it often experiences in the Southern Ocean. Nonetheless, we were feeling a pretty good roll (~ 6 degrees) all afternoon and evening. The roll was most pronounced when our science track brought us parallel to the swells. Soon, the wan faces and surly looks of "mal de mer" began to appear below-decks. Seasickness, and the threat thereof, is a fact of life for those who spend any time at sea. Some are lucky enough to be immune to its effects, others take various steps to prevent or minimize them. Common preventatives include stepping outside into the fresh air (not allowed today due to the wind, roll, and icy decks), gazing at the horizon, drinking a carbonated beverage such as ginger ale, eating salty crackers, sleeping, and taking motion-sickness medicines such as Dramamine. Of course, today's seas might just be a mild taste of what's to come. Our transit to New Zealand will take us across the "Screaming Sixties" and "Furious Fifties," and into the "Roaring Forties." Here's to calm seas ahead! What Lies Beneath February 7 Ping... ping... ping... chirp... chirp... chirp... At first, some of us thought it was a dripping faucet, others a captive bird. But it turns out to be a sound of science aboard the Palmer—the constant background chirping of the vessel's multibeam sonar system. Sonar is simple in theory. Sonar systems work by emitting a sound pulse, or "ping," and measuring how long it takes for the pulse to reflect off the seafloor and back to the ship. Multiplying the time required by the speed of sound in seawater gives the distance traveled. Halving the travel distance gives the depth. You use the same principle to estimate the distance to a thunderstorm by counting the seconds between lightning flash and thunderclap. But sonar systems can be quite complex in practice, especially on a ship. Shipboard sonars must account for the ship's roll, pitch, and yaw; and correlate the sonar readings with the ship's constantly changing position. They must also account for changes in water temperature, as sound travels faster in warm water, slower in cold. Choppy seas and breaking waves can also interfere with sonar readings, as they can cause bubbles to build up on the keel-mounted hydrophones. The bubbles can interfere with both sound emission and reception. Early sonars used a single sound beam to map a narrow track directly beneath the ship. Multibeam sonar is a relatively new technology that uses a directed series of pings to map a wide swath of seafloor bathymetry beneath and to either side of the ship's track. The Palmer's state-of-the-art, multibeam sonar uses 191 separate beams to map a continuous swath of seafloor up to 12 miles wide. Moreover, the system's high-frequency pulses (12 kilohertz) allow detection of seafloor features as small as 10 centimeters across. That's a quantum leap in resolution for seafloor maps of the Ross Sea and Southern Ocean, lightly traveled areas where large parts of the seafloor have never been mapped at all, even by physical soundings. To put this in perspective, consider that the most-detailed map for large parts of the Southern Ocean and Ross Sea is a recent satellite image with a resolution of about 7 kilometers per pixel. The Palmer's sonar can provide 10,000 times more detail. Of course, that detail is only available in areas where the ship has traveled, and the Southern Ocean is a big place. It would take thousands of transits to generate a detailed map of the entire area. Accurate seafloor maps are important for both navigation and science. Tomorrow we'll see how seafloor maps can be combined with magnetic readings to help reconstruct the geologic history of the Southern Ocean. 
Piecing Together the Plate Puzzle February 8 The theory of plate tectonics postulates that Earth's surface is covered by a mosaic of rigid, constantly shifting plates. Reconstructing the movement and position of these plates through time has been a goal of geologists ever since the plate tectonics revolution of the 1960s. Solving the plate-tectonics puzzle provides a needed context for nearly all fields of geology— from mineral exploration to paleoclimatology. But plate reconstruction presents a puzzle of great complexity. Plates lie on a sphere, move relative to one another around independent poles of rotation, and change shape as continents rift apart, new ocean basins form, and old ocean crust subducts into deep-sea trenches. The geologists aboard the Palmer, led by Dr. Steve Cande of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, are working to resolve a long-standing enigma of plate reconstructions in the Southern Ocean— the gap that results when they try to fit the Pacific, Antarctic, and Australian plates together during the early Tertiary (~45-50 million years ago). This was a time of significant change in Southern Ocean tectonics. It coincides with the onset of uplift in the Transantarctic Mountains, deposition of thick layers of potentially oil-bearing sediments in the Ross Sea, the collision of India and Asia, and a shift in the movement of the Pacific Plate that may help explain the bend in the Hawaiian Island chain. Dr. Cande's crew aboard the Palmer includes graduate students Katie Phillips of Scripps, Elisabeth Nadin and Carl Tape of Cal Tech (home of Dr. Cande's collaborator Dr. Joann Stock), and Stuart Schmitt of the University of Wisconsin. Their job while onboard is to analyze data from the ship's multibeam sonar and from a magnetometer that we're towing about 1,000 feet aft (to keep the ship's metallic bulk from interfering with the instrument's sensitive detectors). The magnetometer measures the strength and direction of magnetic signals locked within the rocks of the seafloor. These basaltic rocks becomes magnetized during seafloor spreading, the process in which lavas erupt along a mid-ocean ridge, creating new seafloor as the plates on either side of the spreading center move apart. As these lavas cool and harden, their iron-bearing minerals align with Earth's magnetic field like tiny compasses. Because the Earth's magnetic field periodically reverses and spreading rates vary, the end result of seafloor spreading is a characteristic pattern of magnetic stripes with alternating polarity and differing width, somewhat like a barcode. This barcode is mirrored on either side of each mid-ocean ridge, as spreading carries the newly created seafloor in opposite directions. Radiometric dating of seafloor rocks gives each barcode stripe an age. By comparing their magnetic data to the existing seafloor barcode, the geologists aboard the Palmer can fix the newly mapped seafloor segments in space and time. Combining the magnetic data with the readings from the Palmer's multibeam sonar, which paints a detailed map of seafloor troughs, ridges, and fracture zones, provides a powerful tool for constraining the motion and position of plates in the Southern Ocean. Data from earlier cruises by Dr. Cande and colleagues suggest that the apparent gap between the Australian and Pacific plates in the early Tertiary could be closed by rotation around a previously undetected and long-dead spreading center. That feature finds expression today in the Adare Trough, a linear depression in the seafloor just off Cape Adare at the northwestern corner of the Ross Sea. Rifting along the Adare Trough during the early Tertiary helps explain other evidence for rotation between East and West Antarctica at the time, and implies the existence of a previously unrecognized three-way plate boundary separating the East Antarctic, West Antarctic, and Australian plates. The rifting also helps resolve a debate concerning "hot spots," plumes of lava that rise from Earth's mantle to form island chains like Hawaii. The "stabilists" in this debate argue that hot spots remain stationary while a plate passes overhead. "Dynamicists" hold that hot spots can move. Data from the Adare Trough support the dynamicists' position. The data suggest that changes in the motion of the Pacific Plate cannot entirely account for the sharp bend in the Hawaiian chain, and therefore that the hot spot itself must be moving. Dr. Cande's plan for our current cruise is to gather more detail on the geomagnetism and seafloor features of the Ross Sea and Southern Ocean, including another close look at the Adare Trough. These details will help to further constrain plate motion in the region. 
The Mouse that Roared February 9 The blue whale Balaenoptera musculus is the largest animal to ever inhabit our planet, including dinosaurs. Adults can reach 110 feet and weigh up to 400,000 lbs. Even the babies are huge. At birth, a typical blue whale measures 25 feet long and weighs between 6,000 and 8,000 pounds. The huge size of these animals belies their species name musculus, which means mouse in Latin. Some believe that Linnaeus gave these animals their diminutive name as a sort of taxonomic joke. A blue whale's voice is commensurate with its bulk. Blues possess the loudest voice in the animal kingdom, emitting a low-frequency roar that can travel for hundreds of miles in deep water. Allan Sauter of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography is aboard the Palmer to retrieve two acoustic moorings that were deployed last February to eavesdrop on blue whales in the Southern Ocean. The moorings are part of a multi-year project headed by Scripps researcher Dr. John Hildebrand and funded by the National Science Foundation. One mooring lies just off Cape Adare on the northwestern corner of the Ross Sea, the other in much deeper water about halfway between Antarctica and New Zealand. Hildebrand's project is part of a worldwide effort to better understand the behavior, distribution, abundance, and vocalizations of these once-abundant and now uncommon leviathans. Researchers estimate that 20th-century whaling reduced global blue whale populations by 99 percent. The Southern Ocean once held the world's largest population of blue whales, but logbooks show that whalers took 360,000 blues from the Southern Hemisphere during the whaling era (harvesting of blue whales is now banned on a global basis). Today, the waters around Antarctica are thought to hold only a few hundred of these magnificent creatures, and knowledge about their natural history and ecology in the Southern Ocean is equally sparse. Efforts to learn more about B. musculus in the Southern Ocean combine acoustic data from moorings with visual data from observers who sail aboard selected Southern Ocean research cruises, including previous IVARS legs. Observers use their knowledge of the size, shape, markings, and spout characteristics of different cetaceans to identify and count any individuals they might see en route. The acoustic moorings employ a low-frequency digital recorder to continually record sounds lower than 250 vibrations per second, or hertz. That's in the range of blue whale vocalizations, which typically vary between 20 and 40 hertz, but far below the range of human hearing, which is most acute at higher frequencies up to 20,000 hertz. The sounds recorded by the moorings provide basic data on the number of whales in the area; their movements on annual (migratory), seasonal, and daily time scales; the relative number of males and females in the population (as their calls differ); and the calls' purpose. The purpose of the blue whale's call is not completely clear. Some researchers think the calls are used for long-distance communication, others for imaging features in the environment such as seamounts. In a recent Scripps study in California's Channel Islands, blue whales were observed to repeat a series of "A" and "B" calls to communicate with each other, and a "D" call after feeding (as if to say "Yum!"). (Recordings of these different calls, and the vocalizations of other whales, are available on the web at http://www.cetus.ucsd.edu). Data from California also show that the acoustic frequency of calls has been declining over the last few years, as the blue whale population begins to recover from whaling and individuals once again have the opportunity to reach full adult size. Only the very largest blue whales have the bulk needed to vocalize at the extremely low frequencies that are now starting to be heard. Data from Southern Ocean moorings have begun to help answer some of the basic questions concerning blue whale behavior in this part of the world. The data reveal that the animals stay in the Southern Ocean year round, and that they lag Minke whales in feeding on the spring plankton bloom. (Both minkes and blues are baleen whales that use long comb-like filters to sieve krill and other zooplankton from the water.) But more complete knowledge of blue whale behavior in the Southern Ocean awaits many additional moorings and the patient work of many more observers. 
Crossing the Line February 10 - 60°34'S, 165°03'E Mariners have celebrated "crossings" since the Great Age of Sail. Today, all pollywogs aboard the Palmer helped carry on this august and venerable tradition by graciously welcoming King Neptune and his royal court aboard our humble brig to celebrate its crossing of the Antarctic Circle (66° 30' S) and entrance into climes both more temperate and hospitable. In point of fact, the Palmer actually crossed the Circle two days past, but King Neptune was during that momentous juncture otherwise engaged in consort with a school of lissome mermaids. However, his royal personage did graciously consent to postpone our crossing ceremony until today; giving us, his humble and lowly mariners, a few added hours to relish in eager anticipation of his imminent arrival and our ensuing merriment. King Neptune (known by the Greeks as Poseidon, King of the Sea and offspring of the Titans Cronus and Rhea) is a vainglorious deity who holds our very lives in his powerful hands. We were thence more than willing to oblige him his tardiness. We were less obliging of Mr. Noah Itall, the King's Royal Protocol Officer, Ambassador at Large, and Chief of Happenings and Events, who's scurrilous inattention to detail did directly lead to the unfortunate delay of our long-awaited audience with his Royalness. May sea lice infest both his doublet and jerkin. Oh, what tales we mariners can tell of Rex Poseidon: Monarch and Sovereign of Atlantis and the Seven Seas! We have seen him command the waves to mountainous height, but also bid them to lie as docile as the lamb. We have braved his whirlpools of Charybdis (which he doth animate with but a single thrust of his mighty trident) and withstood his eager cavortations with Scyllaea upon her rocky headland. Aye, some of the more courageous among us have e'en dared to frolic upon the fearsome bergs of unyielding ice that he doth with but a wink cast from glacial height to the frigid arms of the Southern Sea. Other secrets, too wondrous to betell, lie forever buried in the worm-burrowed abyss, clutched tightly to the breasts of those unfortunate wretches who dared incur our great King's fearsome wrath. But enough prattle of days long gone. Today was an occasion of great mirth and jollity that well behooves a troubadour's telling. This morrow, our hearts did hastily beat upon waking, in great eagerness of the day's long-awaited festivities. When after interminable delay Lord Neptune finally rose from the waters of the Southern Sea to embark our vessel, we did lift our humble faces in great wonderment and awe at his eminence. His lovely and buxom Queen Amphitrite did likewise inspire much adoration and desirous yearning in the hearts of the Palmer's long-unrequited crew. The only blemish on the festivities was the hideous countenance of the royal entourage's infant babe Polyphemus, who is rumoured by some to be the issue of a licentious affair 'twixt King Neptune and a nymph who inhabits one of the many springs and fountains of Tierra del Fuego. King Neptune did immediately upon boarding command us to provide entertainment to the Royal Court. It is our wont in such circumstances to make merry with song, dance, the banging of cymbals, and the percussive rhythms of penguinal hip-hop. Today was no different. Our frolics before the Royal Court did incite much gaiety and laughter, followed by applause so thunderous as to rival the exhortations of mighty Zeus himself. But alas, our noble efforts did not fully please his Eminence, nor the remainder of his Royal Party. They did thus (despite our earnest protestations) subject us to villainies so gruesome as to beggar description. Verily, our tongues and the buds thereon doth still revolt in remembrance of the wretched Vegemite that was so hideously inflicted upon our persons. Likewise do our napes still tingle in light of their many dowsings in torrents of icy seawater. Yet by far most calamitous was King Neptune's nefarious command to make passage through the "belly of the whale." Our beings do doth still quiver in vile recall of the wretchedness of this putrid journey. Yet our terrible hardships have not been in vain, as they have helped lift us from the lowly ranks of the land-lubbing pollywog to the exalted status of penguindom. They do also free us from fear of any privations during future crossings of the Circle. As to the remainder of our present voyage, we can only hope that our valiant efforts to please the King and his Court have curried favor, so that he will use his great powers to still our remaining passage to New Zealand. 
Bacteria and Bathymetry February 11 - 60°34'S, 165°03'E The view from the deck of thePalmer has changed little since we left Cape Adare several days ago. All that's visible is an endless plain of wine-dark sea stretching to a featureless horizon beneath a flat grey sky. Aside from a few magnificent albatrosses, the world appears lifeless and monotonous. But beneath the waves the world is full of life and change. Just to our west lie the Macquarie Ridge and Hjort Trough, where within a span of 60 miles the seafloor plummets from the shallow waters of Macquarie Island to a depth of 6,494 meters (21,305 feet). In this inverted Himalaya young and buoyant seafloor is diving into a deep-sea trench along a complex and poorly understood segment of the Australia-Pacific plate boundary. The geologists onboard have brought us here to study the boundary's eastern side, as it holds important clues to better understanding earthquake dynamics in the South Tasman Sea and the history of New Zealand's Alpine fault zone. The world beneath the waves of course hides biological surprises as well. One is the recently discovered profusion of bacteria in the marine environment. Recent advances in microscopy and flow cytometry reveal that millions of these single-celled organisms inhabit every milliliter of seawater. A 2003 study by biologist J. Craig Venter, cartographer of the human genome, shows that these organisms are not only abundant but incredibly diverse—a single sample of seawater from the tropical Atlantic contained 1,800 new microbial species and 1.2 million new genes. One of the goals of the IVARS project is to better understand the role that bacteria play in the Ross Sea ecosystem. Oceanographers didn't fully appreciate the potential ecological significance of bacteria until quite recently. Studies of the Southern Ocean using 1960s technology and instruments suggested that Antarctic waters contained less than 10 bacterial cells per milliliter. But more recent studies, led by the work of VIMS microbiologist Dr. Hugh Ducklow and other researchers, show that bacterial abundances in the Ross Sea can peak at 2 to 3 million cells per milliliter. What are all these bacteria doing? It appears they make their living by eating organic matter produced by plankton during the spring bloom. Bacterial consumption of this material is crucial to the continued functioning of most marine ecosystems, as it serves to recycle these organic components back into an inorganic form that phytoplankton can use. Yet there's a wrinkle to this process in the Ross Sea, where the ratio between bacterial biomass and total plankton biomass is much lower than in other, more temperate ecosystems. Outside Antarctica, the ratio between bacterial biomass and that of other plankton is about 50/50. In the Ross Sea, the ratio is only about 5%. This is despite the fact that peak bacterial abundances in the Ross Sea are roughly equal to those of fertile areas elsewhere in the ocean. Researchers within IVARS and in the microbiology program at VIMS are working to solve this puzzle by quantifying and clarifying the role of bacteria in the Ross Sea food web. The bacteria samples we've collected aboard the Palmer will be sent back to VIMS for analysis as soon as we make port in Lyttleton, New Zealand. They'll be analyzed by Dr. Ducklow's marine technician Helen Quinby using flow cytometry. Some earlier studies hinted that cold temperatures are the main constraint on bacterial growth in the Ross Sea and other polar areas. Ducklow's recent work in the Ross Sea challenges this claim. He suggests instead that bacterial growth in the area is limited by insufficient quantities of dissolved organic carbon. That might seem counterintuitive given that the Ross Sea's annual bloom of the alga Phaeocystis antarctica is one of the largest plankton blooms on the planet. The problem, according to Ducklow, is that most of the carbon from this bloom is in a form that bacteria can't use. That's partly because P. antarctica is not very palatable to zooplankton grazers. Thus the bacteria don't benefit from the grazers' ability to metabolize and rupture algal cells, processes that generate the labile types of dissolved organic carbon that bacteria need for growth. Ducklow also points to the considerable time lag between the onset of the phytoplankton and bacterial blooms in the Ross Sea. Most bloom events can be divided into three consecutive phases: an initial spike in phytoplankton production (which in the Ross Sea roughly coincides with the onset of perpetual summer daylight and melting of sea ice), a consequent increase in zooplankton grazing (with concomitant production of particulate and dissolved organic carbon), and finally an increase in bacteria. In temperate areas, the lag between phytoplankton and bacterial peaks is typically less than 10 days, and often almost nil. In the Ross Sea, the lag is about a month. This may reflect the sluggishness of degradation processes and bacterial growth in the Sea's cold waters. Taken together, Ducklow's data suggest that the low rates of bacterial recycling in the Ross Sea result primarily from a lack of food, and only indirectly from cold temperatures. He estimates that bacteria recycle only about 30% of photosynthetic carbon back into the ecosystem each year. So how does the system continue to function? The phytoplankton obtain the remaining 70% of their nutrient requirements from seasonal upwelling of nutrient-rich water. Moreover, they consume only a portion of the nutrients available due to limitation by iron. Further study of the IVARS bacteria samples will help to test these ideas, and to track how bacteria dynamics in the Ross Sea might change from year to year. 
Penguin Parade February 12: 55°06'S, 163°32'E This evening at about 7 pm the clouds finally started to break up a bit after almost five straight days without sun. The barometer has been holding quite steady since the 10th at around 990 millibars, and the wind is just a whisper at about 3 knots. The upshot of all this meteorological tranquility is a calm sea. There is a moderate ground swell from the north, but the sea surface is almost glassy. And as we just discovered, these are great conditions for penguin watching. During the last hour or so we've seen about 15 "pods" of King penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus), each containing 3-7 birds. Kings are the second largest penguins after their cousins the Emperors (A. forsteri), stretching about 3 feet from head to tail and weighing between 30 and 40 lbs. They are readily identified in these seas by their bright yellow collar and large size. I call the groups of Kings "pods" because watching these creatures in action makes you appreciate that they're almost more marine mammal than bird, more cetacean than avian. (The actual term for a group of penguins at sea is a "raft." On shore it's a "waddle.") The penguins are first visible as a group of indistinct low profiles floating atop the surface. As we move closer the black heads and white necks come into focus, making them resemble a loon or grebe. But as the Palmer approaches even nearer, the avian character of these birds quickly disappears. They swiftly slip beneath the surface, then retreat from the ship in an explosive series of jumps that takes them several feet above the water surface. This "porpoising" is characteristic of the penguin family, and provides their initial resemblance to miniature dolphins. The resemblance is further strengthened by the penguins' coloration—the classic counter-shaded profile of so many marine animals. Their dark backs and light bellies are clearly visible with each leap across the air-water interface. The icing on the cake, though, is where these "birds" are hanging out—150 miles from the nearest piece of land, tiny Macquarie Island. All penguins are completely flightless, so that means these birds have swum at least 150 miles to their present location. For someone who has always associated these creatures with the ice edge, this realization is a wee bit astonishing. The next question is why all these penguins chose to swim to this particular patch of ocean. It might be that they've been present all along, and it's only now that we can see them due to the calm seas. A dark bird with a white chest is, after all, very well camouflaged amidst the dark water and white caps of the normally choppy Southern Ocean. There are at least two possible oceanographic explanations as well. First, we recently crossed the Antarctic Convergence or Polar Front, where cold Antarctic surface waters meet the more temperate waters of the southeastern Pacific. We crossed this boundary a few days ago and smiled as the water warmed from ~0 to 5° C (32 to 41F). The steep gradient in seawater temperature and salinity in this area helps power the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (also known as the West Wind Drift), which transports more water than any other current system in the world ocean. Could the Polar Front or Circumpolar Current be concentrating the squid and fish that serve as the King penguins' favorite food? We've also noticed that we're currently sailing almost directly above the steep edge of the Campbell Plateau, a shallow extension of the New Zealand landmass that rises almost two miles above the deep-ocean floor to its south. Could upwelling from this submarine escarpment perhaps help explain the concentration of food that must surely be drawing the penguins to this otherwise unremarkable spot? We typically think of penguins as comical little men wearing tuxedoes and waddling about on the ice. Tonight we realized that penguins on land or ice are out of their true element. Only when you see them in the water can you truly appreciate the elegance and power of these incredible seabirds. 
The Magnificient Mollymawkes February 13 - 56°17'S, 160°31'E February 13, 1795; 47° 83° "Albertrosses" have been a companion to Southern Ocean seafarers since long before Captain John Boit wrote the preceding entry in his logbook 210 years ago. These magnificent seabirds are true inhabitants of the open ocean. They spend months away from land, drinking seawater and sleeping atop the waves as they wander the southern seas. "Albatross" derives from the Spanish "Alcatraz," or pelican, which in turns derives from the Arabic "al-ghattas" (white-tailed sea eagle). The English name was likely influenced by the Latin word for white ("alba"), in reference to the light tail or belly of most albatross species. Early mariners referred to the smaller species of albatross as "mollymawkes," which means "foolish gull" in Dutch. We have yet to see the largest albatross species, the Wandering Albatross Diomedea exulans or the Royal Albatross D. epomophora. These are the pteranodons of the modern sea, with wings spans of up to 11.5 feet. But the smaller mollymawkes have been our constant companions since we left Antarctica. These include the Black-Browed Albatross (D. melanophris) and the Light-Mantled Sooty Albatross (Phoebetria palpebrata). These birds are known to follow ships for very long distances, so our escort might hold the same birds that first joined us near Cape Adare, although we suspect that it's been periodically joined or replaced by fresh recruits. Although mollymawkes are smaller than the Wandering and Royal albatrosses, they are still very large birds, with wingspans up to 8 feet. They can be distinguished from the large petrels by their ability to glide for extended periods. Tonight we clocked a Black-Browed Albatross for thirty minutes as it soared behind the Palmer, and never once saw it beat its wings. The birds are wonderful acrobats. They exhibit a characteristic flight pattern in which they rise into the wind, coast across it, then dip speedily to leeward and bank to rise once more. They can also glide just above the water surface, even in relatively rough seas, molding their flight path in almost perfect mimicry of the underlying waves. Because they are rarely seen to leave the air during the day, albatrosses are thought to feed at night, most likely on squid, fish, and krill at the ocean surface. This means they eat the same food as penguins, which fossil evidence suggest are their closest relatives. But in almost every other way, albatrosses and penguins are "polar" opposites. The albatross has become a master of the open air, the penguin has mastered open water. Fossil evidence suggests that albatrosses and penguins separated from a common, flying ancestor about 60 million years ago. Fossils of early albatrosses and penguins have only been found in the Southern Hemisphere, most notably in New Zealand and Patagonia. Their continued restriction to the Southern Hemisphere (9 of the 11 albatross species and all penguins are restricted to the austral realm) is explained by their dependence on wind and cold water, respectively. It is difficult for albatrosses to soar across the tropical doldrums to the Northern Hemisphere; penguins cannot swim through the tropics' warm waters or equatorial counter-currents. The nomadic life of the albatross continues even during the breeding and nesting season. Lifetime mates, albatross pairs breed on oceanic islands, where they scratch a shallow, grass- or feather-lined nest for their single egg. Males and females take turns incubating the egg and feeding the chick. While one parent is on the nest, the other glides out to sea to fill its stomach with squid, which it will later regurgitate as an oily broth. These foraging flights can be prolonged. One study recorded a parent bird that traveled 3,200 kilometers (~ 2,000 miles) from its chick. The chicks can thus go for long periods without food and ingest huge amounts of regurgitated oil (up to four pounds) at a single sitting. In human terms that would be like Mom or Dad driving from San Francisco to St. Louis to load the mini-van with a case of Gerber's. Albatrosses have few natural predators. Their nesting islands are relatively predator-free, save for the skuas and sheathbills that occasionally take an egg or unattended chick. Once they've reached adulthood, albatrosses tend to be long-lived, surviving for up to 50 years. Their biggest threat comes from humans. The birds are attracted to the baited hooks of commercial long-line rigs and frequently become hooked at the surface and then drowned as the lines sink to the depth of the target species. This problem is growing as long-liners push further into southern waters, but a new device that quickly guides the long-line rig into deep water may help minimize the bycatch. Let's hope it works. These birds deserve another 60 million years of flying free across the Southern Ocean. 
Beakers & Crew February 14 - 49°45'S, 168°40'E The Captain's orders were that "every officer of the deck" shall alter the ship's course and perform all
maneuvers that may be necessary to aid and facilitate the projects of the Scientific Gentlemen. I expect we will square
away after a whale, or make sail after a runaway shark or chase a devilfish to leeward, and do a great many things that
were never heard of before, nor would be now, were it not for the Scientifics: here's success to them, may they have a
large book to publish when we return. The pairing of scientist and sailor has a long and illustrious history. Joseph Banks and Captain Cook of HMS Endeavour, Charles Darwin and Capt. Fitzroy of HMS Beagle, James Dana and Capt. Wilkes of the USS Vincennes, and Stephen Maturin and Capt. Jack Aubrey of the Patrick O'Brian novels are but a few of these memorable and sometimes contentious pairings. At McMurdo Station and onboard the Palmer, nicknames help draw the distinction between scientist and sailor. Scientists are "beakers," sailors are "crew." Previous IVARS dispatches have focused on the former; this penultimate dispatch honors the latter. For without the able assistance of the ship's crew, we'd of course still be back in McMurdo. The National Science Foundation (NSF) tenders the contract for polar science support every 10 years. In 2000, that contract was won by Raytheon Polar Services of Denver, a subsidiary of the multinational Raytheon Corporation. Raytheon provides science support on the ice and continent, as well as aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer and Laurence M. Gould, the two ships of the U.S. Antarctic Program. Raytheon also supports science aboard the US Coast Guard cutters Polar Star and Polar Sea. The actual sailing of the Palmer and Gould is accomplished by personnel from Edison Chouest Offshore (ECO). ECO, with headquarters in Larose, Louisiana, is responsible for handling, crewing, and maintaining the vessels under a charter agreement with NSF managed by Raytheon. ECO built, owns, and operates both the Palmer and Gould. Logistics play a crucial role in Antarctic research. The head of logistical support aboard the Palmer is Marine Projects Coordinator Herb Baker. Herb works with the chief scientist to assign shifts and tasks to all Raytheon personnel on board; and to label, offload, and ship all science cargo. Herb also decides, along with the Captain, whether sea state, ice conditions, or other factors warrant shutting down operations until conditions improve. Assisting in science logistics are Marine Science Technicians Addie Coyac and Karen Pavich and Marine Technicians Annie Coward and Rick Lichtenhan. Addie and "KP" help operate, troubleshoot, and repair the Palmer's laboratory equipment (e.g., microscopes, fluorometers, liquid scintillation counters, etc. etc.), and are in charge of lab safety, which includes managing hazardous materials and radioactive wastes. They also help us complete the paperwork required to ship equipment and samples back to our home institutions. Annie and Rick are responsible for handling cargo, deploying science gear overboard, operating the Zodiacs, and maintaining and repairing mechanical equipment such as dredges, cores, and nets. They're the ones who stand on the edge of the fantail to pull in a mooring as waves toss and turn the ship. Electronics Technician Brent Evers is responsible for the Palmer's electronics equipment. This includes the oceanographic and atmospheric sensors, closed-circuit TV system, and satellite telephone. Chris Linden's specialty is the Palmer's multibeam sonar system. He provides initial instruction on how to clean up the raw sonar data (the much-loved task of "ping editing"), and keeps the system working while we're at sea. The Palmer's Computer Technicians are Dean Klein and Isaiah Norton. They maintain and repair the ship's computer network, run the E-mail system (which makes them much loved by those wanting to stay in touch with colleagues, family, and friends), and help configure, operate, and repair other shipboard systems such as the underway fluorometer. At the end of our cruise, Dean and Isaiah will compile all the data from the ship's many sensing instruments and burn them onto a CD-ROM for distribution to the beakers. Last but obviously not least are the Palmer's Captain, officers, engineers, able seamen, and kitchen staff. Master and Commander Robert Verret is the ship's captain and ultimate authority. He has more than 10 years of Antarctic sailing under his belt, many in the stormy waters of the Antarctic Peninsula, where he was previously Captain of the R/V Gould. Capt. Verret is assisted by Chief Mate Vladimir Repin (who brings the Russians' vast knowledge of ice breaking aboard), and mates John Souza, Morris Bouzigard, and Rachelle Pagtalunan. Chief Engineer Dave Munroe keeps the ship's four Caterpillar Diesels running smoothly. He's backed up by engineers Robert Morris, Gerald Tompsett, and Carl Largan, and by Oilers Rolly Rogando, Rogelio Pagdanganan, and Elbert Bataller. The Palmer's able seamen keep us shipshape. They maintain and repair the plumbing, electrical, and mechanical systems; fight the rust, salt, and ice; and keep the ship exceedingly clean both inside and out. They are Sam Villanueva, Lorenzo Sandoval, Lauro Garde, Louie Andrada, Fernando Naraga, Ric Tamayo, and Danillo Plaza. Perhaps most beloved of all the crew are stewards Jody Keown, Alejandre Monje Miranda, and Luciano Albornoz. After all, the way to a mariner's heart runs through the stomach. Jody sold her "dairy" (convenience store) in Lyttleton, New Zealand a few years ago to become the Palmer's chef, and with the help of Alejandre and Luciano has kept both beakers and crew happily satiated all through our voyage. Discussions and tastings of various meringues, tarts, cakes, pies, cookies, brownies, scones, crepes, pastries, sweetbreads, muffins, ice creams, flans, puddings, brioches, and madeleines are a popular pastime. Of course Jody serves us nourishment from other food groups as well. Speaking of which, it's now time for lunch. Then it's dinner, midnight rations or "midrats," and breakfast once more. 
Dock Rock February 15, 2005; 43°60'S, 172°72'E We awoke this morning to our first sight of land in two weeks: a distant glimpse to port of New Zealand's Southern Alps. As the day progressed, the presence of inhabited land became more and more obvious. We first began to see large detached fronds of kelp (Macrocystis), then coastal seabirds such as the black-backed gull (Larus dominicanus), followed by pods of Hector's dolphins (Cephalorhynchus hectori), and, much less gratifying, a few pieces of plastic trash. The cloudbank to our north slowly resolved into the cloud-topped headlands of the Banks Peninsula, which we later skirted to reach port in Lyttleton. About halfway around the Peninsula, the water suddenly changed from the dark blue of the open sea to the milky green of the coastal ocean. Lyttleton is a small community that rises steeply from the inner shores of Lyttleton Harbour. Lyttleton and Akaroa harbors provide two spectacular havens from the Banks Peninsula's rugged shores. Each harbor occupies the breached crater of an extinct volcano. The Lyttleton volcano began to form first, about 11 million years ago, followed by the Akaroa volcano about 3 million years later. The volcanoes originally formed islands but later connected with mainland New Zealand as erosion from the Southern Alps raised the Canterbury Plains. Captain James Cook named the peninsula in 1830, in honor of the Endeavour's botanist Joseph Banks. Cook originally named the area Banks Island—one of the few cartographic errors he ever made. From the deck of the Palmer, the mistake is understandable. The peninsula's rugged hills do indeed look like an island against the flat expanse of the water and westward-reaching plains. One of the most noticeable sensations as we enter the calm waters of Lyttleton Harbour is the sudden cessation of the Palmer's roll. After 18 days on a moving ship, the sudden tranquility is a bit disconcerting. The sensation grows more pronounced when we tie up and step ashore. This is "dock rock," the mariners' term for the apparent swaying of solid ground that some feel upon disembarking after a lengthy sea voyage. Because Lyttleton is the port city for Christchurch, the "Gateway to Antarctica" since the earliest polar explorers, it has seen its share of polar history. In the center of the drowned crater that forms Lyttleton Harbour lies Quail Island, where Robert Falcon Scott quarantined and trained dogs, ponies, and mules for his Antarctic expeditions in 1901 and again prior to his ill-fated expedition to the South Pole in 1910. Ernest Shackleton used the island for the same purpose in 1907. As for us, we're both joyful and sad that our brief chapter in the history of Antarctic exploration has come to an end. Here's to next year's IVARS cruise! 
Raisons D’ętre February 16, 2005; Christchurch, New Zealand Why have we spent the last three weeks in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean? Everyone aboard this vessel realizes that research here is expensive. It's expensive to fly us here, expensive to run McMurdo and the other polar stations, expensive to sail the ship, and expensive to deploy our instruments and analyze their data. Antarctica is also half a world away from Virginia. So is research here a worthwhile use of taxpayers' money? To answer these questions I'm going to step out of the pure objectivity and use of plural pronouns that I've tried to maintain during previous dispatches. What follows is my personal opinion, based on factual information whenever it's available. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of VIMS or the College of William and Mary. I believe that research in Antarctica is indeed worthwhile, and that IVARS is an important part of the Antarctic research endeavor. My case is based on three arguments, what I'll call the connective, relative, and intrinsic. The connective argument recognizes that Antarctica and the Southern Ocean are more closely linked to our own backyards than we typically know or appreciate. Links like these are clearer in Antarctica, where the lack of man-made borders accentuates the interconnectedness of things in nature. Antarctica is one and a half times as big as the United States, and winter sea ice doubles its size. In this entire expanse there's not a single property line, city line, county line, state line, or national border to conceal the elemental linkages among water, air, and land. In the context of IVARS, the most pertinent link is the global carbon cycle. The carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that we emit from our cars, homes, and factories don't remain in the air over Virginia or other parts of the developed world. Their concentrations are rising uniformly around the globe, linking the hazy skies of the mid-Atlantic to the clear air of Antarctica and the surface waters of the Southern Ocean. The effects of climate change are also global, and human-induced changes in the climate and ecosystems of Antarctica could boomerang to impact Virginia. The Antarctic Ice Cap holds 70% of the world's fresh water, and would raise sea level by 50-60 meters (160-200 feet) if global warming caused it to melt. Melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is more likely, and would raise sea level about 6 meters (20 ft.). Even a few meters of sea-level rise would significantly affect the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem and Virginia shoreline. Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) flows through the Atlantic Ocean to the latitude of Boston, and is a major component of the global thermohaline circulation that supplies oxygen and nutrients to the marine food webs on which humanity depends. The potential effects of climate change on the formation of AABW remain unknown. IVARS research can help us to better understand, predict, and manage future changes in climate and sea level by providing fundamental input to the ocean component of global carbon models. It can also help determine whether iron fertilization in the Southern Ocean is a feasible approach to mitigating the effects of global warming. Finally, IVARS research throws light on the ground state and variability of the Ross Sea food web, crucial management knowledge as commercial fisheries begin to move into the fertile coastal waters of the Southern Ocean. The relative argument compares the costs and benefits of Antarctic research with those of other government-funded enterprises. The annual budget for the U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP) is around $170 million. That comprises about $40 million in research grants and $130 million for operations and science support. Compare that to many other government expenses and you'll find a great deal. NASA has a total annual budget of $15 billion—much of it to study other parts of our solar system. A typical planetary spacecraft program such as Mars Pathfinder costs about $300 million—thus the oft-repeated adage that we now know more about the surface of Mars than we do about our own seafloor. The annual U.S. military budget is more than $450 billion, and the price tag for a single F-22 Raptor jet (estimated at $140-200 million) roughly equals USAP's total annual spending. The $500,000 federal grant in 2003 to buy buses for Disneyland is more than three times greater than the average annual grant for Antarctic research ($130,000 in 2003). On the private side, the USAP program is of equal magnitude to the New York Yankees' 2004 payroll ($107 million) and Alex Rodriguez's $252 million, 10-year contract with the Texas Rangers. Comparisons like these could go on and on. My point isn't necessarily that any of these other expenses are unjustified, simply that the funds for Antarctic research are equally justifiable. Moreover, the General Accounting Office and Bush Administration have both lauded the National Science Foundation as an example of government efficiency, with each and every proposal to conduct Antarctic research subjected to a rigorous process of peer-review designed to maximize its value to both science and society. Research in Antarctic has revealed the ozone hole, found meteorites that hint of life on Mars, discovered novel anti-freeze proteins with potential applications in agriculture and medicine, clarified the deleterious effects of UV radiation on marine organisms, quantified the continent's mineral and fossil-fuel resources, detected neutrinos that provide clues to the earliest days of the universe, thrown light on potential food resources such as krill, provided long-term ice-core records instrumental to understanding and predicting future climate change, and helped refine and quantify the Earth's carbon budget. Antarctic research also provides the benefit of promoting international cooperation. The 1961 Antarctic Treaty is unprecedented in achieving the utopian idea of preserving an entire continent for scientific research and cooperation among nations. The intrinsic argument recognizes an inherent value in exploring the unknown. Without this innate human quality, Native Americans would have never crossed the Bering Land Bridge, Polynesians would have never colonized New Zealand, Columbus would have never sailed the ocean blue, Orville and Wilbur Wright would have remained bicycle mechanics, Mt. Everest would be unclimbed, and our planet's southernmost continent would still be Terra Australis Incognito. Antarctica and the Southern Ocean comprise almost 20 percent of the Earth’s area and represent our planet's largest remaining frontier. Research here not only promises human benefits seen and unforeseen but helps lift the human spirit. The early explorations of Amundsen, Scott, Shackleton, and Byrd are monuments to human inquisitiveness and perseverance that still motivate today. VIMS' research in Antarctica continues this tradition, and helps bring the Commonwealth international recognition, economic and intellectual capital, and the intangible benefits of exploring the unknown. The first cruise was conducted in December, 2005 – January, 2006 on the RVIB N.B. Palmer (NBP06-01). Data from this cruise are in the process of being analyzed.
The second cruise will take place in November – December, 2006, again on the RVIB N.B. Palmer (NBP06-08). | |||
(This page was last updated
May 19, 2006 16:21
) | |||
