View of Antarctica from above the South Pole. Notice that the tip of South America is the only bit of land showing in this view. The body of water surrounding Antarctica you see in this image is the Southern Ocean.

This time around the Drake Passage greeted us with up to 50ft waves and up to 100 knot wind gusts (1 knot equals 1 nautical mile per hour), enough to make this boat feel like a small cork bobbing around in an endless ocean. Walking straight is no option, nor is getting much work done. To make sure everything and everyone is safe scientists, crew, and support staff make sure that everything from computers to chairs and the two helicopters we have on board are tided down to the boat. As the ship rolls, sometimes 16 degrees from side to side, waves break over the side and occasionally drown the deck underneath a wall of water. Our ship the NBP is built to withstand this kind of punishment, and she and us continue our trek towards Antarctica.

Water spilling over the side of the ship as it rolls in 50ft seas across the Drake Passage. Compare this image to one taken on a calm day (next photo). It really was a wall of water coming down on us.

A calm day.

Debra, Laura, and Mattias trying on survival wetsuits. These suits (nicknamed ‘gumby suits’) are meant to keep us warm in the event that the boat capsizes.

Birds, which form an important part of the marine food web partly because of their consumption of fish and other marine life, are on the other hand old hats at dealing with the storm, carefully dodging breaking waves and using the strong winds to glide gracefully in the air. As we move South the species composition of birds sighted from the ship changes. Wandering, Black Browed, and Sooty Albatrosses are common near South America. Soon Cape Petrels start to appear, along with Southern Giant Petrels. Down in the Antarctic we’ll hopefully be seeing Antarctic Terns, Petrels, and Wilson’s Storm Petrels, graceful birds named after their affinity for stormy weather that seem to tip toe on the water’s surface.

Wandering albatross gliding over the waves. These are the world’s largest birds, with a wingspan of up to 142 inches (363 cm). That’s almost 12 feet! They spend almost their entire life at sea, riding the strong winds of the Southern Ocean.

As we cross we hope conditions will calm down and look forward to reaching the Weddell Sea, the sea East of the Antarctic Peninsula, and eventually the Larsen Ice Shelf System. On our way we will be recovering a ‘whale bone lander’, a metal frame that has been placed at the bottom of the ocean in 600m of water, and on which bones from different species of whales have been placed. Biological oceanographer Craig Smith from the University of Hawaii is interested in the organisms that colonize bones in the deep sea, including Osedax, the bone-eating worm. More on that in the next dispatch. Our group, which focuses on phytoplankton (microscopic algae) in the water column (between the surface and the ocean bottom) will be starting to sample the surface water to see what lives in the uppermost layer of the ocean. Like the birds, the phytoplankton community changes as we move south, and this can have important consequences for the rest of the food chain.

ABOARD THE RVIB N. B. PALMER, ON THE SOUTHERN OCEAN– Adios Punta Arenas, Chile. Hello Research Vessel and Ice Breaker, Nathaniel B. Palmer (RVIB NBP). We, the crew, support staff and scientists of the NBP Iceberg Cruise III, left port in Punta Arenas on March 6th to begin our 40-day cruise to study the water column around free-floating icebergs. This is our third cruise, after two others on December 2005 and June 2008. We are making our way through the Straits of Magellan, past the Southern tip of Argentina into the Drake Passage, and on into the Weddell Sea where our group in particular will be focusing on the phytoplankton, plants living in the ocean that react to the presence of icebergs.

The RVIB NB Palmer at the dock at Punta Arenas, Chile.

As we sail south we cross different water masses. First, the coast of Argentina with a shallow continental margin, only 50 meters deep east of Tierra del Fuego, with cold sub-Antarctic waters of 8 degrees Celsius or 40 degrees Fahrenheit. A day later we enter into deep waters of several thousand meters, the West Wind Drift that circulates all around Antarctica. We cross the Antarctic Polar Front and in a few hours we find ourselves in cold Antarctic waters, close to freezing temperatures. Continuing on our voyage we cross the Southern Front of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. As we move from water mass to water mass, the ocean continues looking blue to our eyes but the plankton changes.

Picture this: You are on a 4-day road trip (the approximate time that it takes us to reach our iceberg and waters of study from Punta Arenas). You travel through different zones and see different plants and animals during your trip as you travel through coastal foothills, to the valley, and onto the higher mountain alpine zones. The diversity of plants and animals in the ocean goes through similar changes as we go on our 4 day voyage to the Southern Ocean and pass through different water masses, each containing characteristic species.

Dinoflagellates or cells with a cellulose cover, a top and bottom capsule (or theca), and a central groove (or cingulum) with a flagellum are common in oceanic waters.

To study these plankton changes we collect water from the sea water intake on board the ship. Small cells with flagella are abundant in open waters north of the Polar Front. Diatoms, large and with a siliceous cover, are found closer to Antarctica. Diatoms will be part of our studies in the next few weeks, being the preferred food of the Antarctic krill and growing in diverse forms and sizes around and on the icebergs.

Diatoms such as this Thalassiosira species abound in cold Antarctic waters. Thalassiosira means “thalassos” or “sea” from the greek meaning oceanic species.

Stations sampled along a transect from South America to North West Weddell Sea. Columns are: Date, hour, minute, Latitude degrees, latitude minutes, longitude degrees, longitude minutes, sample number.