Now that my official training in Alaska is done, let’s focus on our real work and project: our expedition to Antarctica.
Ok, so what are we actually going to be doing and researching in Antarctica and how?
Understanding this is still a work in progress for me but to give you all a first glimpse, I’ll be working with a team of 10 scientists, engineers, and researchers. In time you’ll meet them all though you can get a first glimpse of them by looking at our website, http://iceaged2010.mlml.calstate.edu/people/
Some of these people have gone to Antarctica before and some are FNGYs (another word for newbies) like me.
One of the key individuals is Stacy Kim. She’s one of the people in charge of putting it all together and she’s been to the ice (Antarctica) many, many times.
Two other key people are Paul Dayton and John Oliver. They are the original researchers that went down to Antarctica over 40 years ago to do research and we’re honored that they’re going back with us this year.
In fact, one of the primary goals of our expedition is to go back to the exact locations that Paul and John first went to 40 years ago. We will see how the seafloor communities have changed since they went down there. Watch for an upcoming journal from Stacy that will describe this in much more detail or read more on our website - http://iceaged2010.mlml.calstate.edu/science/
One of the neatest things about our expedition is that we will do this research in two ways:
1 - some of our team members will SCUBA dive (Yes, in the chilly waters under the ice) and
2 - some of our team members have created and will use an underwater, tethered robot named SCINI. (For more information on SCINI read http://iceaged2010.mlml.calstate.edu/scini/)
What do you think some of our challenges will be?
What exactly will we be looking at?
Watch for upcoming journals with answers to these questions and to learn about what it’s like to SCUBA dive in Antarctica and to see how the engineers on our team created SCINI.