Ice Stories
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First Descents: Exploring Seas Under the Ice Dispatches


Becker Point

BECKER POINT, ANTARCTICA-- Our second field camp was on the continent itself – dirt! I have to say that I prefer camping on the sea ice, but this late in the season, the likelihood of warm days and slushy surfaces would make that a distinctly wet possibility...



Bay of Sails

BAY OF SAILS, ANTARCTICA– One of the main goals of SCINI is to explore new areas. Our first target this year is Bay of Sails. I selected this general location because it is an “iceberg graveyard."



Meet Kamille, Benthic Ecologist

MCMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA-- Kamille Hammerstrom drove Antarctic teams to the airport four times before she finally got to go herself. When she got here...



Meet Dustin, Our Software Engineer

MCMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA-- Dustin Carroll, Software Engineer, tells us about his Antarctic experience and his work with the SCINI project...



Field Camp

MCMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA-- We've just returned from 2 weeks at Bay of Sails, where we were deploying SCINI to look at iceberg scours on the seafloor and the destruction, and recovery, of benthic communities there. All our high-tech science and engineering was supported out of the most primitive of camps...



A Day Out the Window of the Lab

MCMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA-- Our lab is way too busy and crowded to allow this, but the lab with the shared fume hood is not yet occupied, so I was able to set up the camera on a tripod and catch the changing light and activity in front of the station...



Drilling the Sea Ice

MCMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA-- Drilling a hole through 7 m (21 ft) of sea ice is the first step in Antarctic diving....



Tomorrow the Journey Starts

MCMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA-- Last Wednesday the Main Team left Moss Landing, bound for Antarctica. But before leaving, I played one last morning of beach volleyball - as I won't get much beach in my volleyball down south! Here is a short video...



WinFly

MOSS LANDING, CALIFORNIA-- To introduce you to McMurdo Station, Antarctica, let’s get right into the jargon. There are abbreviations and acronyms for everything, and the new language adds to the disorientation of being in a new, strange, and extreme place...



Meet SCINI

MOSS LANDING, CALIFORNIA-- Last austral summer, SCINI engineer (also my husband) Bob Zook and I met up with the Exploratorium's Ice Stories team at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, for a live webcast about the SCINI project...