November 25, 2007, Thursday McMurdo Station, Antarctica 10:30pm High: +28F wind chill: +18F Low: +18F wind chill +5FF Winds: SE 10-15 knts; Station Pressure: 28.800” Present Conditions: overcast with occasional light snow Next Sunset: February 20, 2008
This overview includes the past couple of days. Saturday, Nov. 24, was the official observance of Thanksgiving. This allowed station employees to enjoy 2 days off for holiday.
On Thursday, we collected the first set of marine samples from transect 1 in Winter Quarters Harbor. The harbor was named as such because it was where Scott wintered over the ships that were brought in for exploration. They brought the ships into the harbor and allowed them to be moored in with the sea ice to hold them over for the winter season. This proved to be very unsuccessful, as the sea ice destroyed the ships as it expanded around them. The dive hole had been drilled while I was at Happy Camper school. The ive hut itself, looks like a big red tomato sitting on the sea ice.
The Dive hut placed over the hole drilled in the ice.
The first collection was completed in water that was about 40 feet deep. There were two divers on two separate dives collecting the sediment cores and a sampling of fish, worms, sea stars, and urchins on the sea floor. The cores are about 1 foot in length and are tubes that are pushed into the floor to obtain sediments and benthic organisms. The afternoon dive was in water closer to the ice pier where the ice breaker and research vessel, the Oden, will dock in mid January as well as several other supply ships. Terry and Steve separate the core for each to use portions for their testing.
Terry and Steve separating the core for future testing
Terry and April are testing parts of the sediments for macro and micro fauna toxicity. The micro fauna toxicity tests are run here in the Crary science lab at McMurdo, while the macro fauna toxicity tests will be run later at Texas A&M Corpus Christi. Steve will run chemistry analysis tests on the parts of the core materials that he ships back to the Geological and Environmental Research Group, (GERG), at Texas A&M, College Station. After careful instruction from Steve, I packaged up the marine animals in aluminum foil and Ziploc bags for later processing at GERG. Since my amusement in Galveston is always based on "catch-and-release” I really wanted to have the fish at least instantly put out of their gasping for air misery. 
Climbing out of the dive hole
The samples were packaged for storage and placed in the big freezers in the Crary lab. Terry and April began running toxicity tests on the micro fauna samples from Friday to Sunday.
Dragon Fish
Sea Scallops
Nudibranch
Flabelligerid polychaete: Big Fat Worms
Proboscis Worms: More Big fat slimy worms
Sea Stars
Sea Urchins
Saturday, Nov. 24th Thanksgiving
The two-day holiday shifted the focus of activities for the weekend. There were quite a few parties and holiday preparations over the weekend. The day began at 9:45am with the annual 3k Turkey Trot along the path of the ice runway. April, Terry and I volunteered to help out in the kitchen with dinner preparations in the afternoon. I made something called a grasshopper pie that required me to open up about 300 pieces of Andes mints for the topping. April worked on making M&M bars, which we still have not seen as yet. Washing the pots and pans was definitely interesting as well given their huge size. After our dinner at 5pm we hiked (walked) out to Hut Point where the Discovery Hut is located. Andrew said it was a tradition. It was a beautiful day and the brief hike capped an enjoyable day! Steve made sure that A&M won the football game and didn’t miss too many others either. We finished off the day at the Coffee House. This is McMurdo’s answer to Starbucks, and the local wine bar. It is a very classy establishment, thus the reason they don’t serve hard liquor. It is housed in one of the former Navy officer’s clubs that still remain on the station.
April, Ann, Andrew, Steve, and Terry Thanksgiving 2007 at McMurdo
Andrew, Steve and Terry on Hut Point. Inspecting the sea ice or contemplating how Mr. Vince died at this area resulting in the memorial to him during the Scott expedition.
A Beautiful end to a gorgeous Thanksgiving Day!
Sunday, Nov. 25th Holiday Time was spent attempting to learn what Terry was doing in the lab as well as trying to catch up on the journal postings, pictures and schoolwork. There was an interesting film tonight by Werner Herzog, Encounters at the End of the World. He was here in 2006 to make a film about McMurdo and why people come to Antarctica. I hope I can get a copy of it sometime. The diving images and the footage of Mt. Erebus are wonderful.
*It’s a full week coming up with a lot more details about the project and our fieldwork!
More on what they are looking for in terms of toxicity levels will be posted shortly.*
My guess is that this guy just had a bit too much of his Thanksgiving dinner. He (?) had popped out of an ice hole not too far from our dive hut and was enjoying a lazy afternoon sunning his belly and yawning. This appears to be very common behaviour and warrants the impression that they are ice slugs- they look like that from a distance.