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...

ABOARD THE JOIDES RESOLUTION, OFF THE COAST OF WILKES LAND, ANTARCTICA– Here we see our very first try at drilling a hole in the seafloor 3800 meters below the ship – the first real work of the expedition and the first time any attempt has been made to drill at this spot...

ABOARD THE JOIDES RESOLUTION-- We are getting ready to retrieve the first section of a sediment core ever taken from of this site, Wilkes Land! The whole ship is abuzz with excitement. Everyone is awake to see what we will get...

ABOARD THE JOIDES RESOLUTION, EN ROUTE TO THE WILKES LAND MARGIN, ANTARCTICA-- Welcome to IODP Expedition 318. It's been nine days since we set sail from Wellington, New Zealand...

WAIS DIVIDE, ANTARCTICA-- Our primary goal here at WAIS Divide is to drill and collect ice cores and get it shipped back to the United States. Rarely do we see anything other than clear ice with some scratches and cracks, but around 1600 m deep we retrieved a core with a visible dark band in it. We think that this layer is a tephra layer, or a volcanic ash deposit!...

SOUTH POLE, ANTARCTICA-- Soon after we took off I saw something in the snow from the window and I took a photograph of it. When I zoomed in on the photo I discovered that it was a crashed plane!...

ABOARD THE RVIB N. B. PALMER, ON THE WEDDELL SEA-- As luck or fate would have it, the sea ice around Antarctica seems to be unusually persistent this year, reaching far beyond its usual summer extent, which makes moving forward a slow going process...

WHILLANS ICE STREAM, ANTARCTICA-- The first order of business was to set up camp. First we collected all our gear at our chosen site and pitched our cook tent...

WHILLANS ICE STREAM, ANTARCTICA-- We landed at our field site after a three hour flight from McMurdo Station. Climbing out of the plane we were in a white flat expanse...

ABOARD THE RVIB N. B. PALMER, ON THE SOUTHERN OCEAN-- After leaving Punta Arenas, Chile, on January 4th, 2010, and enjoying the calm waters of the Straits of Magellan and the coast of Argentina on our way to the Weddell Sea we have now reached the dreaded Drake Passage....