At Site U1359, Hole U1359B,
Position: 64º 54.25’S, 143º 57.63’E
Water Depth: 3100 meters

ABOARD THE JOIDES RESOLUTION, OFF THE COAST OF WILKES LAND, ANTARCTICA– Hi everyone! As we approach our 2000th meter of drilling I thought I would change things up a bit with this blog and send along some photos of the birds we’ve been seeing. The Southern Ocean is the coldest and windiest on Earth, but it also one of the most bountiful. During the 3 or 4 months of long days and short nights, the “farm” operates 24/7. The plants that live in the sunlit waters here are nourished by nutrients that mix upwards from the deep sea and go into overdrive building their cells. It’s easier for nutrients to mix upwards into the sunlit upper waters here simply because the water column is “isothermal”. This means that we see very little variation in the temperature of the sea between the surface and the bottom waters over 3000 meters below us. It is all close to 0 degrees Celsius. This means that it takes very little energy to move dense cold water from the deep upwards because the surface water is also cold and is almost as dense. So the plants have everything they need. The wind and circulation drive the mixing, which brings in the nutrients, and the sun keeps the farm growing nearly 24 hours every day. Plants (mostly single-celled protists called diatoms) grow fast and the small plankton that eat the diatoms grow fast as well. Which brings us to the birds…..

Albatrosses in a storm.

Our ship is constantly surrounded by Albatrosses, Petrels, and Skuas. Sometimes we see more than 100 birds surrounding the ship. They swoop and dive, looking for food in the water, either plankton or small fish, or perhaps they think we are land. We haven’t seen one try to rest on the ship yet. In fact the Albatrosses rarely set down at any time. They fly 1000’s of miles from their breeding colonies and are at sea for months and even years at a time.

Here are some photos of the seabirds we’ve seen so far.

These first two are of Black-browed Albatrosses (Thalassarche melanophrys). They live throughout the Southern Ocean and breed in places like the Falkland Islands and South Georgia. They can live to be as old as 70 years and spend long periods of time at sea, even encircling the globe. They feed on krill and small fish – that in turn eat diatoms and smaller plankton.

Black Browed Albatross

Black Browed Albatross

The most common bird we saw at our drill sites close to the Antarctic continent were the Pintados, also known as Cape Petrels (Daption capense capense). The name Pintado comes from the Spanish word for “painted”. They live throughout the Southern Ocean, mainly eating krill, especially on and near the continental shelf of Antarctica in summer. A 2009 census estimates there are over 2 million Cape Petrels alive today.

Cape Petrel (Pintado)

Cape Petrel (Pintado)

Cape Petrel (Pintado)

We’ve also been surrounded the past few days by Southern Giant Petrels (Macronectes giganteus). These are indeed big birds….females can weigh up to 18 pounds. Sometimes they are called “stinkers” as they can spit a foul-smelling liquid at predators or when they are perturbed.

Southern Giant Petrel

Southern Giant Petrel

I hope you enjoy these photos! I’ll get back to our science and progress next time and I’ll try to knock out least one more video blog. We are VERY busy with work here now but it all very exciting.

A few of our several iceberg choices in Bay of Sails.

Icebergs are moved by wind and currents, and when they come in contact with the seafloor, plough across it leaving a swath of destruction. Cape Evans, on the eastern side of McMurdo Sound, is bathed by plankton-rich water from the open Ross Sea, providing a good food resource to benthic communities during the summer months. But at Bay of Sails, on the western side of the sound, the water has spent a long time circulating in darkness under the thick ice of the permanent Ross Ice Shelf, so it is very oligotrophic, or food-poor. I am interested in the differences between how these two communities recover from iceberg disturbances.

Though the benthic communities locally are not eating well, we are!

To start this effort, we did a reconnaissance helicopter flight. Scottie, our pilot for the day, flew us in beautiful loops and spirals over the dozen icebergs scattered in the bay. We were looking for a berg that was grounded on the seafloor, was in about 50 m water depth, and was close enough to other icebergs that we had alternate target options. Since the bathymetry in this area is poorly known, I had to guess at depths based on distance from shore and iceberg height. I selected a moderate-size, tabular-looking berg about 2 km from shore. It was a good choice, but a better one was about a km further offshore, as we discovered from our initial survey with an extremely high tech weight on a tape measure.

Marco and Henry think a better iceberg is that way.

However, the helo landing site is that way.

Okay, I guess we’ll go home for now.

Parallel with selecting the camp location, we have been packing up camp gear. 335 pounds of food, 330 pounds of water, sleeping bags good to minus 40, tents, fuel for the stove and heaters, sleds, safety supplies, another 1485 pounds of stuff. And then there is the science equipment – drills, electronic gear, the ROV itself, power supplies, batteries and generators, all in all 760 pounds of toys. Then there is the 1000 pounds of people. Not to say we are fat, but several of us are up to three desserts per night. Yow!

How much stuff will fit in one helicopter? 1200 lbs in an A-Star, and 2000 lbs in a Bell212.

All of this is sorted into classifications of Can Freeze, Do Not Freeze, and Keep Frozen (some of the food). Bags and boxes are weighed and tagged. Hazardous material is certified as safe to fly. Much of the Can Freeze camp gear has gone already in an overland (well, over-sea-ice) traverse to a fueling depot about 10 km from Bay of Sails. The helicopters will carry it the rest of the way to us.

Like an n-dimensional puzzle, it all unfolds to a full field camp, dwarfed by the landscape.

My bedroom.

It’s a little nerve-wracking, making sure we remember everything, and enough of it. I have lists, and lists of lists, and I wake up in the middle of the night to make more lists. Remembering to bring all the things we needed to Antarctica was bad enough, but the field camp list must be pared to a minimum yet not leave out anything. We will get a resupply flight after a week, to bring us more water, so we do have that opportunity to fix any bads, but it would be very unproductive, not to say embarrassing, to have forgotten the batteries to the joystick to drive the ROV.

Team SCINI at field camp I: Kamille, Dustin, Isabelle, Francois, Stacy and Bob. Doh, Dustin has forgotten his black Antarctic uniform pants!

Tonight as the sun dips to touch the horizon I think that we have all we need to survive. But I am worried about the engineers getting their stuff packed; they are still out doing tests at 10 pm, 12 hours from when it must be on the helo pad. I am beginning to think that procrastination and engineering must go hand in hand. I think a walk up Ob Hill is in order to reduce my stress!

The view of Erebus and Terror from the top of Ob Hill, colored by a midnight sun.

An Antarctic iceberg on the solstice.

Maria Vernet is a marine scientist from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego who studies plankton off the Antarctic Peninsula of West Antarctica. As one of the project leaders for the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research project, Maria has participated in many of the project’s 14 yearly research cruises.

Maria at the helm of a zodiac (small rubber boat.)

The Antarctic Peninsula, experiencing some of the most dramatic warming anywhere on the globe, is also among earth’s most productive marine ecosystems. During winter 2008, Maria studied the ecology of phytoplankton (microscopic plants) and its role within the marine ecosystem at the Palmer Station Long-Term Ecological Research Network (LTER).

The LTER network includes 26 sites mostly in the US, and includes ecosystems from the poles to the tropics. Scientists study the areas from many angles, combining their research to give a broad view of how ecosystems work.