Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 09/22/2007 - 09:13
Forums
SIMBA Antarctic Sea Ice

Hi Sarah,  It's great to see that the expediton continues!  Tell us more about the new destination.  Will you still be placing data collecting bouys in the ice? Chris Ormiston

Thu, 09/27/2007 - 08:27

Sarah Anderson

Hi Chris - yes, its definitely good to be out again - our first ice station happened yesterday (9.25), we did one this morning and are about to go out tonight...yes, in the dark! Very thick ice and snow, I get to go on this one, I think even you might be in snow up to your knees here. Couldn't be harder than hiking through beaver territory in Argentina...We are placing buoys...just fewer stops on the way in to make up for lost time. We had planned to station near Peter I island,but when we approached there was no ice there, despite what satellite imagery reported, so we're headed south from there. We aren't going as far west as originally intended to save travel days. I believe that tomorrow we will start searching for our thirty day location, we're in pretty heavy ice now, so I dont' think it will be hard.
Lots of data collection - ice and water are being sampled for almost everything imaginable. The geophysics team is laying transects and sampling snow, slush, and ice thickness along that line. We have an EMI device placed in a kayak suspended over the ship that is measuring ice thickness in route...has been working well, comparisons between that data and the "real thing" are very close.
A very large (70 lbs?) emperor penguin supervised work today at the ice station. He just came up in the water from behind the ship and slid out to see what everyone was doing. He hung out for thirty minutes, he somehow stayed away from the transect line and didn't enter the clean area either. Quite an experience for everyone to be supervised by a penguin!
Got to go gear up for our midnight ice station...
Sarah