While Tina and Kamille were learning about interesting places in McMurdo Station last week, Julie was out diving and working in New Harbor with the rest of the ICE AGED team. The team was joined by two WATER DROPs from the Skyline School in Solana Beach, CA and the Paul Cuffee Middle School in Providence, RI. The following is Julie's report on the first week.
An aerial view of the New Harbor field camp
New Harbor must be one of the most beautiful places in the world to do field work. Our team had a great first week out on the real continent of Antarctica; SCINI worked really well, the divers spent a lot of time underwater collecting organisms and data, and there was always a little time in the evening to take in the awesome views of Mt. Erebus and the Taylor Valley.
A helicopter arrives at New Harbor. Helicopters flew into the camp quite often bringing people, supplies, fuel, food, and equipment. Sometimes a skidoo or ATV would even arrive in a sling under the helicopter!
We arrived at the New Harbor field camp via helicopter, which allowed us to get some great aerial views of our temporary home before landing. Once we landed we set about unpacking and prepping for two weeks of hard work. Unfortunately, the helicopters could not bring out all our gear on the same day that we arrived. So SCINI, some dive gear, and our underwater cameras were all back in McMurdo and we were out in New Harbor. This basically meant that we couldn't do anything underwater until our gear arrived! While we waited for the equipment to arrive (this took 2 days), we started melting holes for diving and building roads through the sea ice for our skidoos and the ATV.
The gnarled sea ice of New Harbor. We built roads for skidoos and ATVs by chipping away some of the ice to create a flatter surface for the vehicles.
When you think of sea ice, I'm guessing that you think of a wide expanse of flat, white ice. New Harbor's sea ice is the complete opposite of that image! The ice in New Harbor is uneven and convoluted and, thus, difficult to drive a skidoo over without a little help from humans flattening the ice. We spent the first two days chipping and shoveling away hunks of ice to create "roads" that we could drive skidoos and ATVs on.
The ICE AGED team meeting over breakfast. WATER DROPs from fom the Skyline School in Solana Beach, CA and the Paul Cuffee Middle School in Providence, RI joined in the meeting. The same WATER DROPs will appear in a number of these photographs!
Once our equipment arrived we got into a nice rhythm of field work. The day always began with a team meeting over breakfast. Usually we would break into two teams after the meeting, the SCINI team and the dive team. The divers would get dressed in a dive hut, load up a sled behind a skidoo, and zoom off to a dive hole.
Kevin (on the sled) and Jennifer (on the skidoo) prepare to head out to a dive site.
Almost all of the dives we did out at New Harbor were done without a shelter. In one of the photographs you can see Stacy sitting near one of the dive holes holding the Skyline School WATER DROP. The diving was great out here! I had imagined that it was going to be very dark, but instead there was some light and Paul's old cages and floaters were gorgeous. I marveled during the dives at the huge brittle stars. But my favorite sight was a hungry sea anemone that was located near some of Paul's old cage experiments.
One of the neat things that Paul gets to see - an old and hungry sea anemone that ate all these scallops
Because most of the bottom at New Harbor is soft and sandy, there are not too many rocks for organisms like anemones to grow on. But there happened to be one large rock near Paul's cages that had a huge anemone growing on it. And next to the hungry anemone were piles and piles of old scallop shells. Wow! It is pretty easy to figure out what this sea anemone likes to eat. Paul remembered this anemone from the 1970s and we were visiting it in 2010; we all thought that was totally cool. When the divers finished collecting or photographing Paul's experiments we would surface, load all our gear into the skidoo or an ATV and drive back to the hut to warm up.
Stacy holds the Skyline School WATER DROP before taking a plunge. The divers didn't dive out of huts in New Harbor, so it was pretty nice to be able to dive on a 'warm' sunny day outside. This hole was so big by the time we melted the ice away that we called it the 'swimming pool'.
Paul and Stacy transporting gear on the ATV back to the dive hut
While the divers were working underwater, the SCINI team would be setting up the ROV on the ice. SCINI did such a great job out at New Harbor! We used SCINI to find and map all of Paul's experiments before we sent divers down on the site. The SCINI team also worked hard to obtain good images of Paul's transects, floaters, and cages. If you look carefully at the photograph of DJ piloting SCINI, you can see one of the floaters in the top left computer monitor. The best part about working with the SCINI team was watching and listening to Paul's reactions whenever the ROV found another experiment. Paul is so excited and enthusiastic about his work, it makes everyone so happy to work for him! He is a very inspiring scientist and person.
DJ (and the WATER DROPs) piloting SCINI up and over one of Paul's floater experiments. Look in the top left monitor and you can see one of Paul's old experiments!
I had an awesome week out at New Harbor and I feel like we got a lot of great work done for Paul and Stacy. Kevin and I are back in McMurdo now. We are working at local dive sites, drilling holes for future dive sites, and analyzing data. We miss our team and we can't wait to catch up with them when they arrive back at McMurdo on soon!
One of the many gorgeous views of Mt. Erebus from New Harbor.