At Site U1356, Hole U1356A,
Position: 63º 18.6139’S, 135º 59.9397’E
Water Depth: 4003 meters

ABOARD THE JOIDES RESOLUTION, OFF THE COAST OF WILKES LAND, ANTARCTICA– Here we are on the 29th of January, 20 days out of Wellington, New Zealand, and exactly 1/3 of the way through our expedition to the coast of Antarctica. It’s been a fantastic week for everyone aboard. We have now drilled over 750 meters into the seabed off of the Wilkes Land Coast of Antarctica. We are operating far enough offshore that we are in deep water – over 4,000 meters deep. This means that we have 4750 meters of drill pipe hanging from beneath the ship. The entire length of pipe rotates a drill bit and we bring up sediment cores in 10 m sections about every two hours.

Core on deck – 8AM on Jan 29 2010. This core is from 750 meters below the seafloor and will be worked on for the next 10 hours by the shipboard technicians and scientists.

Cutting the Core from IODP Expedition 318 Site 1356 in Antarctica. This core contains rocks about 25 million years old.

The cores get run through a variety of tests on the ship. We measure how much magnetism they have and how much natural radiation they emit (all rocks and minerals on Earth emit very low levels of natural radiation). This tells us how old the cores might be. We then split them using a diamond saw (we are so deep it is real rock coming up now) and run more tests.

Core from 730 meters beneath the seafloor. It’s hard rock but used to be mud that fell down on the seabed 25 million years ago. There is about 7 meters of sediment here.

I am a specialist in sedimentology which means that I describe the sediment – is it mud? Sand? Does it have fossils? Are there features that tell us of past submarine landslides? The sedimentologists get to see all of the sediment cores that come up so it is very exciting. We have seen long intervals when icebergs were dropping off bits of the Antarctic continent as they floated by and melted. We’ve also seen periods when there wasn’t much ice at all.

A close up view of some of the rock we are collecting. Here you can see ancient worm burrows from small animals that lived that the seafloor. The sediment changes color when the oxygen content of the deep sea changes.

Another section of the core. These stones fell out of icebergs that melted and dropped to the seafloor. The scale is in centimeters.

Cathy Stickley, one of our micropaleontologists who tell us how old the rocks are. She is English but lives now in Norway.

The sediment core that just came up 10 minutes ago (photos above) contains sediments that are something like 20 to 30 million years old. We won’t know for sure until our micropaleontologists have a look but we are approaching a horizon beneath the seafloor where we expect to start seeing evidence that it was much warmer here – maybe 10 to 15 degree centigrade warmer than it is now and a time of no or little ice on Antarctica. We should be done drilling here in 2 more days. Then it’s on to the next site. I’ll keep you posted!

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.