Goodbye Mainland | Ice Stories: Dispatches From Polar Scientists

Goodbye Mainland

By Maria Vernet

Saturday, May 31, 2008 ⋅

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PUNTA ARENAS, CHILE– Today we untied lines from the dock at Punta Arenas, Chile and began our voyage to the Weddell Sea, which is located off of the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula.

We are busy unpacking scientific equipment, including chocolate and coffee, and moving into our floating home (the Nathaniel B. Palmer, or NBP) for the next month. The NBP is an oceanographic research vessel capable of supporting marine biology, physical and chemical oceanography, marine geology and geophysics, ice physics, and meteorology projects.

Our new home, the Nathaniel B. Palmer.

She is 308 feet long, has 12,720 Horsepower from four Caterpillar Diesels, and an icebreaking capability rated at three feet of ice at 3 knots.

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Maria Vernet is a marine scientist from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. She has participated in various studies involving phytoplankton ecology and physiology including the effects of ultraviolet radiation on photosynthesis to the grazing by Antarctic krill on coastal phytoplankton. During winter 2008, she studied the ecology of phytoplankton and its role within the marine ecosystem at the Palmer Station Long-Term Ecological Research Network (LTER), and during spring 2009, she investigated the ecology of phytoplankton within the marine ecosystem surrounding floating icebergs. From January 2nd to March 1st, 2010 Maria will be on the icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer in the western Weddell Sea. Here she will collect plankton samples in an area where photosynthesis has occurred only during the last 7 years. During the previous 10,000 years, the area was covered by an ice sheet up to 200 meters thick. The breakup of the ice sheet not only provides sunlight to an area equal to 1.5 million of square kilometers, it gives access to investigate the biological communities in the sea floor and track how they are being altered by the phytoplankton sinking to the bottom.

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