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When people think “Antarctica” probably one of the first things that comes to mind are the black and white, flightless birds that are highly adapted for life in the water: penguins! As we travel through the thicker sea ice, we can see groups of Adélie penguins running around with their wings out and

It’s really warm today. The ice has melted off the ship and I went outside without a jacket or thermals, just jeans and a hoodie. It’s 35F… it’s above freezing! So unusual for this time of year and the area. We’re back to taking lots of CTDs and have 3-4 planned for today. We also happen to be in

Update Today is a quiet day. We’re transiting to a new glacier to collect more data. We’re heading through the ice and it’s getting quite cold out. It’s a great day to catch up on processing and organizing the data we’ve already collected and to have a little fun. ## Meet the Scientists: Dr

A Day on the Ship By popular request, here’s a look at my typical day. On the ship, work is 24 hours a day so we work in 12 hour shifts: 12am to 12 noon or 12noon to 12am. (the crew have a slightly different rotations). My shift is noon to midnight. I usually get up around 10am and make use of

Update: PolarConnect Event Coming Up Chat with us live from Antarctica! Chief Scientist Frank and I will be conducting a real-time webinar (web seminar) from the ship on April 18th, 2015 at 1pm Pacific DST [12pm Alaska DST; 2pm Mountain DST; 3pm Central DST; 4pm Easter DST]. It's a free even

Update We made our way out of the polynya (to make sure we don't get trapped in by growing sea ice on the outside) and are back along the continental shelf. We've mapped some new areas and will be taking at least two CTDs today--one of the shelf and one on the slope. It's still a little too

Update We navigated through the sea ice and made it into a polynya near the coast by Dibble Glacier. We’re doing a CTD about every other day looking for the warm water intrusion and we’re constantly mapping the ocean bottom looking for troughs and collecting new data. We’ve mapped areas of the

Happy Easter Did you know the Easter Bunny visits Antarctica? ## First Sea Ice We’re in the ice! We saw our first sea ice about 3pm on April 4th our time, just a few hours after I submitted yesterday’s blog. Congratulations to Diana Rankin, who had the closest guess! We actually saw icebergs

We’ve made it to the continental shelf of Antarctica! It’s freezing down here, literally. There’s a light snow falling outside. But no sea ice yet. Now that we're here we can get started with all the work! We’ve started working shifts (usually 12a-12pm or 12p-12a) to monitor the equipment around the

They definitely know how to celebrate on the NBP. George, one of the technicians on the boat, had a birthday and we celebrated in style. The official “NBP Party Planners” (they even have their own email address) put up decorations around the ship. George got a birthday hat and plastic leis to wear