We are finally finished with all of our training sessions! After a week of learning how to drive, maintain, and trouble-shoot vehicles like Pisten Bullys, Tuckers, and Snowmobiles we are driving them from the station out onto the ice and back. We’ve learned about Frostbite and Hypothermia and, though some thumbs have gotten a bit too cold, we’re managing to stay warm despite the harsh wind.
What looks odd about these thumbs? (yes, this is what second degree frostbite looks like)
We had one last really interesting training involving sea ice and the ice shelf. Sea ice is frozen sea water that melts and freezes each year. McMurdo Sound, which is right in front of McMurdo and which we'll be diving under, is sea ice. The ice shelf is the more permanent ice from the glaciers and snow. The Ross Ice Shelf, which is east of our little Ross Island, is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica. It's the size of France and is several hundred meters thick.
View from John and Paul's dorm - Sunset over the sea ice. How many huts and vehicles are on the ice?
We learned about forces such as swells, tides, coastlines, icebergs, and ice breakers that destroy or develop the sea ice. We also learned how to recognize and profile the main types of cracks (pressure, tidal, active, and straight edge cracks) using various drills. This was an important training as we’ll do lots of driving on the ice and we absolutely do not want to fall through the ice.
Crossed flags on the ice mean crack ahead. We then shovel it out to get an estimate of its size.
We then drill holes in the crack with this giant drill to see how thick the ice is. We need 30 inches of solid ice in order to drive over it. The crack also has to be narrower than 1/3 of the track length of our vehicle.
What did Jen find in the ice?
We stay warm by eating PB and J sandwiches
After the Sea Ice training we were all set for work. Congratulations go out once again to our divers who have now successfully finished the tasks for our first location after overcoming various issues such as frozen masks and frozen regulators.
They counted clams, took cores, recorded videos, and took photos from a location which we call “the road”. Julie, one of our clam lovers, counted an average of 17 clams in 6 different 1/4 meter quadrats (squares). Stacy successfully took a set of 6 cores so we can now count the little things like worms living inside the sediment at the bottom of the ocean. After adjusting the lighting for the video camera, Jennifer did three transects by swimming a 10-meter triangle while video recording.
Kevin, after fine-tuning the settings on our new camera, took pictures of the organisms on the bottom of the ocean.
This means we are done with our first location and later we will be drilling a new dive hole to which we’ll drag our “tomato”. We will be surveying 14 such spots in this way as part of a long-term monitoring project for Stacy.
A sea spider (pycnogonid), a jellyfish eating sea anemone, and two nemartines (worms)
What are these nemartines (worms) eating?
The engineers are still completing system tests with SCINI though they have successfully completed their first test dive. They’re out on the ice as we speak, hopefully, flying a successful SCINI navigation test as well.
Paul has been busy helping out as needed and has been looking through his notebook, notes, and pictures from the 1960s and 1970 to figuring out where else we will need to go. Back in the 1960s and 70s he dove and took pictures of various locations. Now we are revisiting them, with the help of SCINI which can go as deep as Paul used to dive back in the 1960s. We will compare what the seafloor looks like now to what it looked like back then.
Pictures of the exact same spot of the seafloor from 1975 and 1977. What differences do you see and what do you think we will find this year?
Paul is also gearing up for a presentation he’s giving to the station for the upcoming “Sunday Night Science Lecture” which we are all very excited about.
I’m also staying up with the tasks of teaching my college English 1A class from down here. My students have finished their second essays and I'll post a few of them in the upcoming weeks for you to see and learn from.
DJ celebrated his birthday down here with a special cake the galley made – just for him.