Spending a week in New Zealand was great. Christchurch really has a good variety of restaurants to choose from and it was nice to be able to take a shower every day instead of our 2 per week. You also tend to forget how nice humidity is! The South Pole is so cold and dry that it wreaks havoc on the sinuses and skin. Aside from enjoying some showers and food, I was able to meet up with a friend from high school and college in Queenstown. Queenstown is probably one of the most beautiful towns I’ve seen. It’s set right next to The Remarkables mountain range which provides a gorgeous backdrop. I was even able to get a round of golf in at the spectacular Jack’s Point golf course! The R&R definitely did its job and I came back to the Pole feeling refreshed and ready to endure the winter.

When I got back to the Pole, I’m sure my partner at ARO (Atmospheric Research Observatory) was happy. He did not arrive early enough in the summer to take advantage of R&R so he was left to take care of things on his own while I was soaking it up in New Zealand. He must have been busy while I was gone because things looked great when I got back!

A view of Akaroa Harbor.

A paraglider suspended over Queenstown.

A beautiful round of golf in Queenstown!

Another great view from the golf course.

About a week after I returned from R&R I was getting ready to head out to ARO when I sat down and my teeth kind of bumped together. It ended up knocking off a piece of tooth that was repaired last spring. Luckily I was able to grab a quick flight to McMurdo and see the dentist only days before she was leaving the ice! It really would have been annoying having to deal with a broken front tooth for 8 months through the winter. She did a great job on repairing it though and actually looks better than the previous repair job.

It turns out that this broken tooth was a blessing in disguise. On my flight back to McMurdo, I was able to capture some spectacular video of the Transantarctic Mountains. We also went over the Dry Valleys, out over the open water, and then ended with a great fly-by of McMurdo. Well worth the dental work!

A view out of the LC-130 window as we enter the Trans-Antarctic Mountains.

A glacier spilling down through a valley.

Another glacier carving it’s way.

Beautiful blue sky over some peaks and valleys.

The Dry Valleys.

Some broken off sea ice in the Ross Sea.

Mt Erebus.

McMurdo Station Fly-by.

Now as we approach mid-February, people are leaving by the bundles. A little less than 2 weeks ago we had about 250 people on station. Now we are down to about 125. There are 2 more major passenger flights out of here in which we will lose about 80 more people leaving us with about 48 people for the winter. It’s strange having all the open space in the galley during meal times. And it’s only going increase the next several days. Tomorrow is the last day for any outgoing mail, and Monday, February 15th, we have our last flights! The sun is very noticeably lower in the sky and temperatures the past week have been much colder. Today is the coldest day since I arrived here last October at -40F. Hard to believe it’s just about here but it is. Winter!

Flight path for our second science flight to Terra Nova Bay. The Pegasus ice runway, where the Aerosondes take-off and land, is at the bottom of the image. Terra Nova Bay is at the top of the image and is approximately 350 km north of Pegasus.

Close-up of the flight path over Terra Nova Bay. The yellow pushpin symbols mark locations where we had the Aerosonde spirals up and down between 150 and 1500 m altitude to measure the vertical structure of the atmosphere.

The purpose of this mission was to observe the low level winds and temperatures in the atmosphere, with the goal of relating these to the processes happening at the surface of the sea ice and ocean. To help us relate the atmospheric processes to the surface processes we took aerial photographs as we flew over Terra Nova Bay. Seeing the surface state will be very useful as we try to understand the meteorological data we’ve collected.

The flight arrived at Terra Nova Bay around sunset, so we didn’t have much time to take aerial photos before it became dark, but the photos we did get are stunning and raise some interesting questions that we’ll be trying to answer as we analyze the data we’ve collected. One of the big questions is how there was almost no open water despite winds blowing offshore at over 50 mph.

The edge of the continent – the Nansen Ice Shelf (left) and Terra Nova Bay with a thin coat of sea ice and maybe just a little bit of open water (right).

All of the aerial photographs shown here were taken from an altitude of 150 m and each image covers a horizontal distance of approximately 150 meters.

All of the photographs were taken on the first leg of the flight (the leftmost blue line) in the flight path shown above.

The violent mixing caused by the strong winds creates some stunning patterns in the sea ice. In this photo thin slivers of sea ice are rafted onto adjacent sea ice in a process known as “finger rafting”.

One of the common features we observed in the aerial photographs was bands of thicker ice (the brighter white ice in the image) oriented in the direction of the wind. In this photo the wind is coming from the top left corner of the image and is blowing at 50 mph. You can also see some areas of thin ice or open water (the darkest areas) where waves are present.

Another surprising feature seen in the photographs was the presence of ocean waves traveling under the sea ice surface as seen in this photograph. Given the very small amount of open water that we observed it is surprising that any waves were generated at all, since waves are created when winds blow across the surface of the water.

Patterns in the sea ice.

You can see areas of open water (or very thin ice) (darkest spots), areas of thin ice (dark grey) and areas of thicker ice (brightest areas) in this image.

We are planning to switch to daytime flights this week, since the days are getting long enough to allow us to launch at first light and fly until dusk and still have 14 or 15 hour missions. Of course the time between sunrise and sunset is just at 12 hours right now, as it is everywhere on Earth on 21 September. What will allow us to fly 14 or 15 hour flights and still take-off and land in daylight is the fact that the length of twilight before sunrise and after sunset is very long here. We’re hoping to get lots more images of the polynya during these daytime flights.

About 10 years ago New Zealand decided that the Antarctic toothfish, known to the rest of the world as Chilean sea bass, should be extracted from the Ross Sea. It’s the last place left on Earth where the ocean fish have not been depleted. After five years of “experimental fishing” by NZ, a full-fledged fishery was launched. This now includes about a dozen countries and 21 fishing vessels. Despite their charter to protect the living resources of Antarctica’s seas, CCAMLR instituted no procedures for monitoring the impact of the fishery on the ecosystem. So we’ve taken it upon ourselves to come up with some procedures by which this can be done.

Adult Chilean sea bass (on snow) and subadult (held by person) caught through a hole in the fast ice of McMurdo Sound.

Antarctic silverfish, which both Chilean sea bass and Weddell seals eat in the Ross Sea.

Weddell seals eat a lot of toothfish and the best-known population of these seals, and perhaps the best-studied pinnipeds population in the World, is in southern McMurdo Sound, in the vicinity of Cape Royds. Thus, with the seal folks from Montana State University, we submitted a procedure to CCAMLR last summer to monitor the seal population using aerial photography. The idea is that as more Chilean sea bass are taken from the Ross Sea, the seal population should change. Seal numbers would either decline because there are fewer sea bass to eat or increase because with fewer sea bass there would be more silverfish for the seals to eat (the fish and the seals also compete for Antarctic silverfish).

Weddell seal mom and pup, Erebus Bay, McMurdo Sound

Weddell seal with toothfish (Chilean sea bass) that it captured, and which it is beginning to consume.

CCAMLR accepted our aerial protocol but then told us we had to demonstrate its utility in the field. This led to our aerial flight. To say the least, with aerial photography having been used to count seals in the Arctic for decades, our counts from the air were close in number to those counted on foot two days previously. We’ll now submit a report to CCAMLR and hopefully the fishing industry will take the responsibility to begin at least one measure to keep track on how their fishing may affect the ecosystem of the Ross Sea.

Weddell seals spread along a tide crack in Erebus Bay; view from 1000 ft.