Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 05/05/2008 - 08:47
Forums
Drake Passage Opening

What effects of global warming have you noticed or seen?Josh

How often do they dredge the sea floor?Gus

How many hours do you get to sleep?Isaac

How cold is the ocean water?Katie

Are you expecting a big discovery?Katya

Tue, 05/06/2008 - 09:16

Katie Pena

Hi Mrs. Hardwick and class! Josh, we actually haven't seen any hard evidence on global warming, we werein a section of the sea known as iceberg alley, which does have many moreicebergs during our current warmer climate.
Hi Gus! We dredge the sea every couple of days for the first half of thisexpedition. In history, the Scotia Sea has only been dredged about 50times, and in the central Scotia Sea only about 15 times. Researchersoften perform core drills for information on the rocks that make up theseafloor, and only about 5 of those have ever occurred in the entire ScotiaSea. All of this research is fairly new and very exciting!
Isaac, we get 12 hours on a watch shift and 12 hours off. So, you couldsleep for 12 hours, but then you would have no free time for anythingelse-- so I sleep for about 7 hours a night. Also many things influenceyour sleep, we are on a rocking boat so it can be hard to sleep when we arehaving higher winds, bigger waves, or bad weather and science comes first--so if something important is going on when you are sleeping then you willget woken up to help.
Katie, the ocean water is currently warmer than the temperature outside. The current temperature outside is 1.0 C and the water temperature is 2.3C. As we travel south the water will become much colder.
Katya, we actually have had a big discovery! I am going to write about itin my journal for today, but I will tell you about it as well. In thecentral Scotia Sea, only 3 other dredges have been done before our trip andduring the 3 previous dredges they only collected iceberg drop stones-- noactual rocks from the seafloor! So, we are the first people to actuallyobserve the rocks that make up the seafloor of the central Scotia Sea-- itis a very big and exciting discovery! Now we know that the seafloor ismade of igneous rocks, so I know Ms. Brosko has taught you all how igneousrocks are made-- by volcanoes that existed about 20- 30 million years ago.
I will continue to share any other big discoveries that we make on our journey!Thanks so much for the excellent questions!Mrs. Pena