I met up with the team of researchers from the US Geological Survey who had been performing polar bear captures out of Barrow already for two weeks. That evening, after looking over our gear and getting caught up, I went over to see friends who recently moved to Barrow from Wyoming. It was great to hear about their new life in the area; moving from the mountains to the tundra is certainly a big change.

The next day I began flying in the helicopter for captures. We started in Barrow, fueled up in Deadhorse, and ended the day in Kaktovik, near the Canadian border – we covered almost the entire northern coast of Alaska. Since then we have been based out of Kaktovik, and we have had good weather and have been flying a lot.

It is great to be back out on the sea ice. Although I am out of place here, I really love this environment. In this picture we landed on a small pan of ice about twenty miles from shore; the pan was surrounded by pressure ridges and rubble from ice sheets smashing into each other.

The captures have been going well. We caught the largest bear I have seen, an adult male who weighed 1,147 lbs (I am not sure what the largest bear caught in the southern Beaufort has weighed). His neck was several times the size of my waist, and I could not fit both hands around his snout. It took several people to position him for measurements. We have caught several bears which were sampled in 2009, giving us excellent data on changes over time in the same individual.

We have also caught a lot of cubs-of-the-year, or COYs, including this litter of three. Cubs are born around January 1st. Litters of three are fairly uncommon for polar bears in Alaska, and usually include one cub that is noticeably smaller than the others – in this picture, the cub in the middle only weighed 12 lbs, nearly 10 lbs less than the other two.

I have continued with my coursework and working on sample analysis back on campus. A full-time technician on the project has perfected several of the analyses we will perform on samples of muscle tissue, and we have had stable isotope analyses performed on breath samples.

This spring I traveled to Argentina to present preliminary polar bear data, visit field sites to discuss possibilities for research projects, and catch up with a friend from graduate school who is working there. It may seem odd to jump from polar bears in the Arctic to grazing animals high in the Andes mountains, but animals face similar challenges in both places – there is a season of good food availability followed by a season of poor availability and difficult weather, and the systems are fairly simple, with just a couple large-bodied animals dominating the landscape. I hope to return someday.

I gave a presentation on the polar bear project at the Universidad de La Plata, a national university near Buenos Aires. Many undergraduates attended, most studying Zoology and Ecology. I also presented at a provincial ecological research center and a national park.

These vicunas – grazing animals very similar to alpacas and llamas – live in the rocky environment of Nacional Parque San Guillermo in Argentina, at 10,000 to 14,000 feet. For a brief period during the summer lush grass is available in a few areas near water, but for most of the year, they forage on sparse vegetation. Their main predators are mountain lions, the same species that is found in North America.

The Arctic sea ice has had a very interesting winter. The sea ice extent was substantially below average for much of the winter and appeared to reach its maximum extent in early March, which is normal timing. However, cold weather over the Bering Sea and Barents Sea then caused the ice to resume growth, causing the sea ice extent to increase again and not reach its maximum until March 31st, the latest date since satellite measurements began in 1979 (interestingly, temperatures remained above average near the north pole). Ice extent is now very close to the 1979-2000 average.

Extent of sea ice in the Arctic, during this winter. The blue line shows the unusual growth of extent until the end of March. Image is reproduced from http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/.

Although the sea ice extent is near normal for this time of the year, it is still below average. The ice which formed in March is thin, first-year ice which is very vulnerable to melt – although the extent is near average now, once warm temperatures return in the summer, much of this ice will melt. The proportion of ice which is greater than two years old and very thick continues to decline, contributing to the long-term trend of reduced extent. There is a good discussion of the current sea ice conditions at http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/.

I am headed back to the field soon for our final intensive field season. It is still winter on the north slope; it is currently 1 degree (Fahrenheit) in Barrow, which will be my first stop.

One afternoon a young adult female polar bear wandered by the ship. She appeared out of the blowing snow and walked past the stern, fairly close to the ship. An hour later she reappeared and approached the ship, walking up the fantail until she was directly below the railing. Scientists and personnel from the ship were pressed at the railing above, and she just seemed to be curious, sniffing the wind and looking back at us, occasionally pawing the broken ice at the ship’s waterline.

This young adult female bear walked past the ship, eventually coming right up to the ship.

The polar bear, standing just below us at the stern of the ship.

The railing of the fantail where folks are standing is about 5 meters, 15 feet, above the ice where the bear was standing, at the aft end of the ship, the fantail. It was a wonderful chance for people to see this bear up close.

The wind finally dropped below 20 knots for a day and we flew for the bear – only to encounter heavy fog that prevented us from finding her. We located another bear that was a lower priority and we successfully captured her, yielding good data. The next day the fog dissipated and we flew for our priority bear again, but she had moved over 30 miles and we could not locate her until we received a satellite transmission at the end of the day. We remained in the area because this bear was one of the two top priority recaptures remaining, and we successfully located her twice, but both times she was traveling in large areas of broken ice which were unsafe for captures. The temperatures remained warm throughout this period, rarely dropping below 25 degrees; the water temperature remained warm as well, and sea ice simply was not forming very fast.

Poor ice near one of our priority bears.

This is a frustrating aspect of field work: success relies heavily on weather, and the bad luck of encountering stretches of poor weather can put an entire field season on hold. The only thing that can be done is planning. We planned a long field season to provide multiple opportunities to recapture each bear, and we planned on capturing secondary target bears as necessary. Thus, even though strong winds and fog really reduced our flight opportunities and poor ice reduced our capture opportunities, we had successful recaptures of target bears and we were able to process new bears as well.

The poor ice conditions we have encountered are remarkable. Air and water temperatures remained very warm throughout October, slowing the formation of new ice as winter begins. The current distribution of sea ice in the Beaufort is much more typical of late summer than early winter – we have not had to break heavy ice at all in the last 10 days. It is inaccurate to state that this warm October has been caused by climate change; climate refers to long-term patterns of average conditions, not day-to-day weather. Even in a world with an enhanced greenhouse gas effect, some autumns will be colder than normal and others will be warmer than normal. However, climate change is changing what is considered “normal.” As the earth’s climate warms, particularly in the Arctic, the type of weather we are experiencing may become common.

Graph from National Snow and Ice Data Center. Extent of sea ice over the entire Arctic is currently low compared to the 1979-2000 average, in fact, it is nearly as low as the same date in 2007, when the extent fell to a record low.

Today we disembarked from the ship, using helicopters to ferry people and luggage back into Barrow. Although the trip ended on a frustrating note, overall, it was a very exciting success. Every piece of data we gathered is unique – almost nothing is known about polar bears during this time of year, particularly bears out here on the pack ice far out at sea. I cannot wait to return to Laramie and receive data from our shore-based capture crew, which recaptured bears on the coast during the last several weeks. Before any in-depth analyses, it will be informative simply to compare data sets from the bears on ice to the bears on the coast, to see if differences are striking.

We last saw this 10 month old cub, a male, and his mother on April 25th. All of the re-sampling for both bears went well.

Despite some patchy fog, we had calm winds and sunshine for most of the capture operations. Once we are out of view of the ship, the ice just stretches out to the horizon. This is about as high as the sun gets, even in the middle of the day. On this day the sun rose around 1030am and set around 715pm.

After the recapture we were able to download data from the collar and several of the data loggers, including travel path of the bear, activity patterns, and body temperature. After spending the spring off the coast near Prudhoe Bay, this female and her cub walked about two hundred miles (just an estimate – we will have to calculate this precisely later) northwest, then spent much of September in the northern Chukchi Sea. We get so much valuable information from just one bear that as soon as preliminary data on the travel path, activity, and temperature are downloaded, it is easy to put off other work and immediately begin exploring the data. It is very exciting to consider why the bears traveled as they did by matching up patterns in the different sets of information.

After the recapture of the female and her cub we began moving the ship slightly south for another bear. As we cruised a strong wind picked up out of the east, blowing across several hundred miles of open water and generating big swells before reaching our position at the edge of the pack ice. The ice became thinner and more inconsistent, and was broken into small pans maybe 5-10 meters across. The big swells were tamped slightly by the ice, but for the most part they rolled right on under the ice, heaving it up and down. Standing on the bow and watching the ice move was like watching an enormous tapestry waving in the wind.

By the time we neared the bear’s last position around dinner last night even the thin newly-forming ice had broken up and we were mostly traveling in open water. The wind was a steady 30 knots and the swells were 2-4 meters, occasionally up to 5 meters (these were swells about 6-12 feet, up to 15 feet!). The ship’s hull was designed for breaking ice, which sacrifices some stability in swells; as a result, we were really rolling. I had to keep a hand on a rail walking around the ship, especially going up and down ladders – twice I knocked my head against a hatch going up a ladder as the ship swayed yesterday. Two of our lab chairs are on wheels – if no one was sitting in them we had to tie them to the counter, otherwise they would roll across the lab and run into people. The waves were too large to allow the ship to drift for the night, nor was there good ice nearby in which to hove to for the night. We had to decide to keep the ship traveling in a large circle for the night, or to move on. Since there was almost no chance of finding our bear on ice safe enough for capture operations, we decided we would turn north again towards a different bear and hopefully away from the worst of the weather.

After dinner the announcement came on “Weather Decks now secure to all traffic”, meaning that no personnel were allowed outside because of the weather. I spent the evening on the bridge, watching the bow rise up and crash down through waves. The ship is 399 feet long and 89.5 feet wide at the widest. The rocking seemed to happen in slow motion. The nose would rise and the wave trough would suddenly fall away, followed by a moment of lightweightedness as the ship fell downwards before the next swell rose up, and then the descent would stop suddenly as the nose crashed back into the water and whitewater shot out in all directions. Several of the swells put whitewater just barely over the bow onto the front deck (the fos’cle). No one knew for sure, but it seemed we were pitching somewhere around 15 degrees, maybe higher. A couple folks on the bridge told stories of taking rolls around 50 degrees during really bad weather – that kind of roll is difficult to imagine.

It was difficult to sleep because of the rolling of the ship, but by late morning the weather had subsided. By afternoon today the swells had come down quite a bit, allowing us to begin taking a direct route to our next bear rather than trying to skirt the weather. We are now headed south, towards the pack ice that runs parallel to the Alaskan coast. We have a cluster of bears to recapture in that area and we hope to fly for the first of the group tomorrow.

Several nights ago as we were breaking thin ice a family group of polar bears was spotted. An announcement was made and the ship slowed, allowing personnel an opportunity to see the bears as we cruised past. It was an adult female and two cubs, both about 10 months old. It was interesting to see them – they may have come from Alaska or Russia, or even Greenland or Canada; they may go to land next summer, or they may spend their entire lives out here on the ice.

*I am not sure if anyone has left comments on recent posts, but if so, my apologies for not responding; I can email these dispatches to the Exploratorium but there is almost no internet connectivity on the ship and I cannot actually go online to see the website myself.

The cub trailing behind was very interested in the ship and wanted to walk over and examine it – the mother corralled it and the family group continued on.

Open water is appearing as the sea ice breaks up and begins melting. I took this photo from our helicopter yesterday, about twenty miles north of the Arctic coastline.

Polar bears mate in the spring. Females undergo delayed implantation; the fertilized egg does not implant into the wall of the uterus and begin development until autumn. Delayed implantation is unusual, but a surprisingly large number of mammal species do it. Despite much research, there is no consensus on the function of delayed implantation. Pregnant female polar bears dig dens in snow (and in some parts of the Arctic, into earth) in the fall then spend the winter in the den. They give birth to young sometime in December-January then the entire family emerges from the den in the spring.

This little bear is known as a C.O.Y. for “cub of the year.” Most of the COYs we have caught weigh around thirty pounds, and are still nursing. Usually, they will remain with their mothers until they are just over 2 years old, when they become independent. At this capture we have anesthetized both the mother and, with a very light dose, the cub; that is why the tip of his tongue is sticking out.

This is a one year-old that is still with its mother; it weighs 220 lbs. Around this time next year, it should become independent.

Research published in 2007 found that the subunit of polar bears in western Hudson Bay was a declining population. There are many mechanisms that can lead to population decline; in western Hudson Bay, survival of very young and very old polar bears has fallen over about the last 20 years, in concert with an advancing date of sea ice breakup in the spring. It is unknown exactly how sea ice decline affects polar bears, although it is likely that poorer ice conditions reduces the ability of bears to hunt. A goal of our project is to track changes in the physiology of polar bears during the summer, with particular attention to how changes may be affected by declining sea ice. This will help us understand why the western Hudson Bay population is declining, and how other subunits may be affected.

As the warm weather continues, we also have clear skies and good visibility, so we have been getting out for a lot of captures. Very long days – typically we fly out in the morning, perform captures throughout the day, then finish up lab work around midnight – but we are getting a lot of great data.

PUNTA ARENAS, CHILE– Late last night we arrived at Punta Arenas, Chile. This marks the end of our Iceberg 3 cruise. We have finished analyzing the samples, re-calibrating instruments and we are now ready to start packing. We leave in 4 days; in the interim we will do an inventory of supplies, clean instruments, enter data and pack to be ready to leave on the 19th. Some of us are going back home, others will travel for a few days in the South of Chile or as far north as Ecuador.

Earlier today we met to share our findings during the cruise and plan data analysis and publication of results. Each of us gave a 5 minute (sometimes extending to 15 minute) presentation. It was impressive to see how much we had learned. We have now data that shows the changes in physics, chemistry and biology in the wake of an iceberg, we have improved the comparison of areas affected and not affected by the presence of an iceberg and we can tell how different the iceberg imprint in surface waters is at different times of the year in the North West Weddell Sea (summer, fall and winter). We have accomplished our goal of testing the release of iron to surface waters and the response of phytoplankton and bacteria. This was done not only by measurements in the ocean at different distances from icebergs but also through experiments with iron additions.

These photos show some of the wide variety of icebergs we saw in the northwest Weddell Sea. Notice the blue ice in this iceberg.

The black stripes in this “dirty” iceberg are caused by sediments trapped in the ice.

It was decided we will meet next month in Monterey, California. At that time we expect to have a more in-depth analysis of data that will allow us to synthesize findings in a more comprehensive way. Science carried out in interdisciplinary groups is based not only on results from the individual researchers but also on how well we can combine our findings to describe the iceberg system.

Until the next one!

AGAP-SOUTH CAMP, ANTARCTICA– On January 6th, we sat around after dinner discussing how miraculous it was that nothing had gone wrong. This clearly was the cosmic queue for everything to go wrong in the next 27 hours.

First, the inverter blew. The inverter supplies power for the scientific equipment in the plane. Without it, the gravimeter has no blinking lights and collects no data. This flight holds the current record for the shortest flight out of AGAP-south. Beth Burton noticed the lack of power and quickly turned SJB around.

A KBA mechanic works on the left engine of SJB. The plane has been getting a lot of attention lately.

The very next flight, we lost the plane’s tip tanks. In addition to fuel stored near the belly of the plane, there are also gas tanks in the wings. These tip tanks add about 15 minutes of flying capability to any flight out of AGAP and were essential to meeting some of our distant science targets. It was particularly frightening that these pumps malfunctioned when we were considering flying the Recovery Lake lines, which require the use of the plane’s normal tank, the auxillary tank we installed back in McMurdo and the tip tanks.

Finally, in a third stroke of bad luck, we lost the onboard GPS. Without information from our Global Positioning System, we can collect data but we have no idea where we are along the survey line. We know the data represents the Earth… but where on Earth?

Thinking bad things come in 3’s might lead one to believe these would be the end of our troubles but the worst was yet to come. Next the “command center” of the radar system went out. It is as if you were using your home computer and suddenly, you could not see your hard drive anymore. You wouldn’t be able to save new documents, or play your favorite game. It is a situation best described by “Lights on but no one’s home”. Our science team discovered this problem just after I had gotten up for my “night shift” duties. Nick was able to replace the command center and we were still able to fly that day.

Later, in the radar processing, we saw strong vertical offset of the ice sheets internal layers and the bed that lies below. Nick and I set out to investigate this problem by examining an individual radar file from Flight 35, which seemed to be when the problem started. In the end, it turned out that after replacing the radar’s command center, the settings for channel 1 of the radar had been reset but the others (channel 2, 3 and 4) were not set correctly. This was a happy answer to the problem since it meant that we could rescue the data from flights 35-40 if we used channel 1. Not having worked as long or as hard on this project as either Nick, Michael or the PIs at times I feel like the hired help or the free loader who came along because she wanted to be in East Antarctic Field Camp with a population of 31. When I contributed to figuring out why the radar was malfunctioning, that increased my feeling of self worth. I had a moment in which I felt instrumental to ensuring the data quality… not just the making of copies.

A typical radar data product. The bright red line is the surface of mountains under the ice.

This is what the radar looked like after the radar’s command center broke. Fortunately we found the source of this problem and will later be able to recover this data.

Despite all the unfortunate events, the survey has gone well and, I have to say it has gone by fast. It’s hard to believe that we only need 4 more days of good weather to complete our science objectives. It’s hard to put your faith in good weather to make plans for going home but we don’t have much choice. Here’s hoping for clear skies!

A clear day at AGAP-South. This is just the kind of weather we need to complete the survey.

AGAP-SOUTH CAMP, ANTARCTICA– Once we began flying at AGAP, we quickly got into a routine of collecting data, downloading, archiving and running a quality control procedure. We are operating 24 hours a day in two teams. There is almost always someone at the computer copying or reviewing data. Though there have been days that have been flawless, our peak performance of 4 flights per days has been interrupted by weather, which was particularly bad around the New Year.

Life at AGAP revolves around the forecast… which is not always the actual weather. The weather determines if we’ll be allowed to get off the ground and which direction we can point our airplane, SJB. Assuming the weather cooperates, a day in the science tent follows a certain rhythm, paced by the arrival and departure of SJB.

The GAMSEIS science team posed for a group photo before departing AGAP-South.

The day begins with the rising of our day shift operators, Nick and Michael. They pop into the science tent eager to know how things went the night before. The flight plan for that morning has usually been selected a day or two in advance. On the morning of the flight, it is relayed to the pilots and our flight operator, the scientist who makes sure all our equipment is up and running before and during the flight.

Thirty minutes before we leave the ground, our base stations have to be on. Base stations collect a similar type of data as equipment on the plane, but are in a fixed position just outside our science tent. We have base stations for the GPS and magnetic data. The GPS base station is required so we know where the plane is relative to camp. The magnetic base station is needed to capture how the magnetic field is varying in time, while SJB’s onboard system captures how the magnetic field varies in space. The Earth’s magnetic field varies in time in part because of currents in the liquid part of the core of the Earth (i.e. the liquid outer core). The magnetic field varies in space because of different rock types under the ice. By collecting data at the base station and onboard SJB, we are able to separate the changes in time, which we are not studying, from the changes in space which relate to the rocks we see on the radar lines.

Pondering GPS data in the Science Tent.

While SJB is in the air, we are in the office making copies of the data. This is particularly time consuming for the radar data because of its volume. Copying the radar drives takes so long that we have one computer and one person, Chris, designated to the task. After the radar copy is complete, a sampling of the data is plotted and reviewed. Meanwhile, similar procedures are executed on the magnetic, GPS and laser data from the previous night’s flight. Although not an exciting aspect of the work, the QC (quality control) step is essential. It is during this step we identify survey lines that might need to be reflown and also get a sense of how well our system is working.

Working in the science tent again… This actually a different day! Note the eery similarities.

When the plane returns, it is greeted by a flurry of activity. The camp staff are ready to refuel, Chris or Nick will take blank hard drives out to the airplane and swap them for the ones containing the radar data for the flight, Stefan and Dan check on the status of the gravimeter. The flight operator brings in written logs and data on memory cards to archive and copy. The plane only sits unattended in between the day and night shift, while the whole camp is having dinner or on bad weather days.

The pace of the survey makes the days go by quickly. I keep forgetting that the GAMSEIS team is done with their work and gone already! I still expect them to come back from an installation and be sitting in the galley at dinner. With 4 flights a day, we are just barely keeping up with the in-flux of data, which is good because you need something to do in this place or you’ll feel trapped. Fortunately, I never feel trapped when surrounded by science!

A sun dog over our camp.

So at the end and after another set of long Skidoo rides to prep the GPS stations for next winter and pick up the passive seismometers, the Basler came and picked us and our gear up and whisked us off to McMurdo. And after a few days of returning equipment and shipping other equipment home, we left for Christchurch, which is where I am writing this update.

Now that the Antarctica portion of the journey is over, you would think that the drama and excitement is over. However, with science, that’s not the case! Because our instrumentation is so sensitive, and we have collected so much data, it is often hard to know immediately what your data will yield – that’s why we have the rest of the year to toil in front of a computer screen! Our group is just now on the verge of making our little discoveries, because all the data must now be processed and interpreted, which is the fun part! It’s the scientific intrigue that brings people by the hundreds down South and the discoveries that come from that which makes all the bodily abuse worth it. The Antarctic continent has infinite mysteries still left to discover and we can only chip away at them one long and brutal field season at a time.

Professor Slawek Tulaczyk examines the data while still in camp.