Dirt and liquid water, unusual problems in Antarctica.

As is becoming the norm for us, camp put in did not go smoothly. High winds meant that only our high priority cargo got to us but the rest was delayed for a few days until the winds dropped enough for the helicopters to fly with external loads. So for the first few nights, we all slept in one tent. It was a large tent, so we were pretty comfortable. But I had forgotten to include cooking pots in the high priority cargo, so we had nothing to boil water in until we broke open the survival bags. We felt a little silly opening the survival bags just for pans, but making hot meals was much better than eating yet another bag of gorp.

Maybe if the rest of our tents don’t ever get here we could sleep in an ice cave?

Becker camp. The big multicolored tent was all we had for the first few days.

Of course, the high priority cargo did include enough of our science gear that we could work, so despite the winds we started ROV missions immediately. The ice in the crack, which we had hoped would provide easier access to the ocean, was very hard and not as thin as we might have wished. Drilling took hours every day, and lots of muscle. Combined with the hard ice were pockets of thin crust, which led to wet feet for everyone on the team at one time or another. But, the crack did provide a smooth, and nearly continuous, pathway for hauling our gear.

Everything we need to operate SCINI fits in two sledges.

And those two sledges can be hauled by the support team of 5 people.

After finding such unexpectedly rich communities at Heald Island last year, I was not sure what to expect at this site. Even with that, I was surprised – this time, at how little life there was. Anemones were the dominant taxa, with a smattering of brittle stars, sponges, and these mysterious white sprinkles that, at a diameter of 1 mm, we could not resolve the finer details of. We profiled extensively from 130 to 30 m, where the seafloor contacted the shore ice. At 40 m, there was a thick benthic diatom layer, but nobody consuming the plethora of productivity. And oddly enough, the ice was no thicker than 11 m even off the crack, much thinner than an Ice Shelf should be.

Isabelle on the right and Bob on the left give a sense of scale to the McMurdo Ice Shelf. Heald Island is behind Bob on the left.

So, as is also becoming usual for us, our field time led to more questions than answers. Why is the ice shelf ice so thin here? With the thin ice and consequent high light levels, why are there so few grazers utilizing the high productivity? Are the sprinkles biological, geological or chemical in origin? And finally, what caused the salt outcroppings we found on the slopes near our camp?

Isabelle next to a mysterious salt outcropping. We later read that these are mirabilite chunks that have been pushed around by glacier action.

We were very happy that camp pull out was more efficient than put in, allowing us to return to McMurdo in time for Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday night. Though we did have one triwall slingload self-destruct on the return, nothing was lost. And turkey day dinner was a decadent extravaganza of crab legs and chocolate truffles, in addition to the ALL the traditional Thanksgiving fare. We are so spoiled here. Perhaps the contrast to cold gorp dinners enhanced our appreciation, and the presence of good friends certainly added to our pleasure, but I think the meal was a gourmet a treat as any I have ever had. We owe so much to the wonderful folks here who keep us going in so many ways. I hope that you recognize as much to be thankful for in your lives as we do on the frozen continent.

Packing up the triwall prior to it self-destructing on the flight home. We did let Isabelle out before we sealed it.

The helo ready to take the last of our camp gear. Fortunately this time the last flight (for us people) went off as planned.

Farewell to Becker Point.

View of the skyline of Punta Arenas, Chile.

Packing for a research expedition to Antarctica is a bit different from your average trip. Antarctica is far away from mostly everything, and can be very cold and rough at times. No detail is small enough, including what clothes to wear. Upon arriving in Chile, we were issued Extreme Cold Weather gear to make sure we were equipped to work in any and all conditions we could face. When spending 59 days at sea, the little comforts of life (including being dry and warm) can make a huge difference.

Clothing issue at the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) counter.

While choosing what clothes to wear can seem tricky enough, figuring out what scientific equipment to bring and how to get it to the southernmost tip of South America before loading it on the ship, presents even greater of a challenge. This project brings together scientists studying a wide array of subjects, from oceanography, geology, to glaciology and biology, to try to understand how the ecosystem of the Larsen B ice shelf has changed since its break up in March 2002. And to accomplish these lofty goals, participants have brought a whole slew of instruments to measure everything from sediments, to ice thickness, and algae concentrations. The oceanographic ‘toys’ we’ll be working with include a CTD rosette (named after variables it measures, Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth) to sample water from the surface to thousands of meters deep, a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) to get live video feed of the ocean floor, coring equipment to bring samples from the ocean floor back to the surface and to collect ice cores to look at ice algae, and even helicopters to allow scientists onboard to sample ice and rocks from the continent itself. It takes time to assemble this kind of gear, and we are now stuck waiting for everything to be loaded and organize. It’s amazing how little space there is on a ship the size of a football field!

The ROV (nicknamed Suzee) getting put together and cleaned on the back deck.

We’ll be bringing you updates from Antarctica as often as we can, and will be talking about both the science and life onboard our research vessel. Please post any questions you have on the website, or send them directly to me at mattias.cape.guest@nbp.usap.gov and I’ll try to answer by my next post. I know working in the Antarctic can seem strange and out of reach, but you’d be surprised the many different paths people onboard this ship have taken to get to where they are. You don’t have to be a scientist to experience the Southern Ocean and the Antarctic! None of our work would be possible without the help of the ship’s captain, crew, engineers, and science support staff.

View of the RVIB Nathaniel B. Palmer at night.

Ms. Ellwood, a veteran science teacher, is also an accomplished ice diver working with a science research group in Antarctica’s Dry Valleys. Headed by Dr. Peter Doran from the University of Illinois, they are studying the fresh water lakes of that remote region. The lakes form primarily from glacier runoff, as it rarely snows and never rains in this part of the continent.

This year the team brought down the Endurance, a large robotic camera and data collector, or ‘Bot’ as it is affectionately called. Gathering data in larger amounts and in a shorter time than humans could do from the surface or diving, this sophisticated machine will map the floor, and provide water analysis of these remarkable lakes. You can learn more about their project and see pictures of the Bot here.

Not to be left out of the project, the Rye students designed and built their own robotic camera which had to be able to function in the extreme cold salty water of the Antarctica ocean. Getting the neutral buoyancy just right and using materials that were appropriate in Antarctica’s fragile environment provided many challenges, but all were well met.

“ScubaDoobaDoo” was successfully launched in the ocean and took its first underwater video in the Ross Sea, Antarctica, November 2008. Its performance was outstanding, it was easy to maneuver and the videos were excellent, reported Ms. Ellwood.

The students can be very proud of their accomplishment. The students’ project was funded in part by the school’s PTA.

ScubaDoobaDoo.

ScubaDoobaDoo’s camera in front uses the LED light source next to it. Under the ice in Antarctica it is not only very cold, but very dark. The switch box houses the controls: right and left motors for turning and forward and back motion, the top motor for up and down motion. The video is sent to the DVD player through the 100 foot cable attached to the camera.

ScubaDoobaDoo taking a video of me taking a picture of it.

Close up of one of the motors.

Robin Ellwood getting ready to launch ScubaDoobaDoo in the fish tank, Crary Laboratory, McMurdo.

ScubaDoobaDoo at neutral buoyancy in -1.6 C ocean water. Ready for action.

ScubaDoobaDoo next to the ‘Bot’.

Next to the Bot, ScubaDoobaDoo was overheard saying “When I grow up, I want to be like him.” He is well on his way.

In the video below, see ScubaDoobaDoo perform in one of the large aquarium tanks in McMurdo.

John Weller prepares for a dive in McMurdo Sound.

Alas, on this trip to Antarctica all my underwater exploration has been by proxy through John’s photos and footage, but also through the unique under-ice vehicles SCINI and Endurance. SCINI (Submersible Capable of Under Ice Navigation) is a remote operated vehicle, or ROV, designed and operated by the team of Dr. Stacy Kim and Bob Zook of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. We dropped in on a SCINI demonstration the first week we were in McMurdo, an event Bob and Stacy hosted for the community here.

Stacy Kim and Cameo Slaybaugh drilling a hole for SCINI to dive through.

Stacy Kim with SCINI, the ROV that lets her explore under-ice marine ecosystems.

Here’s video of SCINI being deployed through her dive hole:

This slender little ROV, only six inches in diameter, can fit through an eight-inch hole drilled into the sea ice. SCINI is portable (Bob calls it a backpack ROV) so it only needs two or three people to launch and operate it. SCINI’s flexibility allows the science and engineering team to explore very remote places in waters up to 1000 feet (300 meters) deep and inaccessible to SCUBA divers. The ROV is being used by Stacy, who is a benthic ecologist, to study the creatures that live on the bottom (“benthos”) of the ocean. But it’s also a tool that can be used by lots of other scientists in many disciplines. SCINI can provide underwater eyes to ocean sediment coring operations, like ANDRILL, that let scientists see the drill core and properly adjust their setting. It can be also used to map krill distribution for David Ainley’s whale and penguin studies and to map the ocean floor.

SCINI engineer Bob Zook driving the ROV with a game controller.

SCINI being prepared for a dive by Francois Cazenave.

In this video, Stacy explains how SCINI navigation works underwater:

Last year, Bob and Stacy used SCINI to explore some “lost” experiments in McMurdo Sound placed there in the 1960s by benthic ecologists John Oliver and Paul Dayton. Searching the sea floor with SCINI, they were able to locate these tethered experiments and hope to come back next year to collect samples from the sites. This season they took SCINI to three different locations near McMurdo station to study communities of sponges under sea ice and permanent ice shelves and also to explore areas where icebergs have scoured the bottom. For more about Stacy’s research, watch the webcast we did with them in McMurdo.

SCINI with her underwater lights turned on.

I also got a wonderful opportunity to watch the deployment of an underwater bot much larger and more complex than SCINI. Called Endurance (or affectionately dubbed “phatty” by Stacy Kim) this autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, was developed by Stone Aerospace and funded by NASA. The research camp at Lake Bonney in the McMurdo Dry Valleys is being run by Peter Doran of the University of Illinois in Chicago with funding from the National Science Foundation.

Traveling by helicopter out to the site, I caught my first glimpse of Blood Falls, a famous feature on the Taylor Glacier first described by British Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott. The striking color comes from an iron-containing salt, ferrous hydroxide, that seeps out of the glacier and stains the water and ice a rusty red. After landing, I strapped ice stabilizers on my boots and headed out on my first walk on a frozen lake. The patterns of the ice were gorgeous.

On the helo trip out to Lake Bonney, we saw glaciers pouring out of the Dry Valleys.

Blood Falls gets its color from iron salts seeping out of Taylor Glacier in the Dry Valleys.

Arriving at a big canvas-covered “garage” on the lake ice, I watched as the roughly spherical-shaped Endurance was deployed. Endurance requires a much larger hole than SCINI and the use of a hoist and several people to guide it into and down the ice hole. Once through the ice, the bot is programmed to take measurements throughout the water column, map the bottom of Lake Bonney and probe for evidence of microbial life. For this experiment, the bot is tethered with a fiber-optic cable that can send photos back to the team in the tent and keep track of its whereabouts.

The Endurance command center on Lake Bonney.

Patterns of ice on Lake Bonney.

Patterns of ice on Lake Bonney.

Enurance is being used in the Dry Valleys LTER (Long Term Ecological Research) program to better understand the ecosystem of Lake Bonney. But a scaled-down version of Endurance could one day probe under the ice of Jupiter’s moon Europa, perhaps the best candidate for finding water and alien microbial life in our solar system.

Endurance is being hoisted to its dive hole.