Window to the deep

Today our mission was a 40 minute snowmobile ride to Pegasus, a sampling area out on the thick sea ice where two large holes were drilled in last November. This required some "Kill Bill" action in my virus bodysuit to prepare for the ride.
At the ice, our plan was to send down 2 plankton tows to collect organisms in the water column. The sea floor was about 500 meters below us, but our lines only reached down around 100 m. We also sent down a CTD (Conductivity-Temperature-Depth), which is a device that directly measures the conductivity, temperature, and depth of the seawater, twice a second as you lower it down into the water.

Conductivity is a measure of how easily electric currents pass through water, and this value is used to calculate salinity. Electric currents pass more easily through water with high salt content than through fresh water...so once we know the conductivity, we know the salinity, measured in psu (practical salinity units).

The temperature is measured with a thermistor in the CTD housing.

Pressure is measured with a pressure gauge. This is useful for the depth calculation, since depth and pressure are directly related. As you could imagine, the deeper you go, the greater pressure there is at a given point. Because this relationship is constant, a measurement of pressure (in decibars) can be converted to depth (in meters). Furthermore, since the relationship between meters and decibars in approximately equivalent, at "X" meters in the water column, the pressure should be "X" in decibars. For instance, at about 500 m below the surface, the pressure is right around 500 db.

Combining these parameters: salinity (S), temperature (T), pressure (P), you can calculate the density (∂) of water at a given point. This is possible with an equation of thermodynamics called the "Equation of State of Water." This equation is used used to understand the physical properties of fluids (ex: seawater) and mixtures of fluids (ex: seawater and fresh water). This is useful when we try to understand the biology, and biological constraints, in different environments, where these parameters differ from what we are used to here at "atmospheric" pressure.
We had some slight problems with "traffic" at the holes...the Weddell seals that spend their lives under, on, around sea ice, had found our holes and have been using them as "breathing spots" since November. They came up for about 3-5 minutes at a time, taking deep slow breaths. At the holes, they alternated between checking us out and scouting below them...the males are known to bite the genitals off seals at breathe-holes, which obviously has a major affect on their ability to reproduce, and thus their contribution to the gene pool.

The first days

Our first day here was full of safety courses. Today was sea ice safety. We went through all the emergency gear, basics like how to use a whisper-lite stove, how to set up the 4-season tent on all terrains, perfected the truckers hitch, learned how to make a "dead man" to secure ties when you can't use stakes in the snow, learned how to navigate the sea ice, like identifying the safe and dangerous spots along the terrain, used the power drill to drill down about 4 meters, though we still didn't make it to the water. It was crazy to think we were standing on over 4 meters of ice...more 12 feet solid! Under us was about 100 feet of water, and that was just on the coast. In the middle of the sound it drops rapidly to thousands of feet deep...yet we can land massive planes on it.

Gearing up, Taking off...

3 January, 2008

Before heading south, we took a trip to NSF headquarters to get suited for our ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear...packed in bright orange bags we now carry with us everywhere.

Of course, being so close I couldn't help but find my way to the beach before taking off for the frozen expanse in the morning. I found a beach in Sumner, a small town east of Christchurch on the eastern coast of the south island of New Zealand. Perfectly shaped waves and lots of body surfing.




4 January, 2008
5:45 a.m. we left the hotel to start the weigh-in, check-in, and boarding of the Air Force C17 that will fly us to the ice. And yes, we still had to x-ray scan our bags and were not allowed more than 3 oz. of liquids in our carry-on.


The flight from New Zealand to Antarctica was on a huge military C17, and the inside was like a jungle gym. A few normal plane seats in the middle, but then seats lined up along the sides that were like camping chairs and really uncomfortable after 6 hours. In the back half of the aircraft were giant pallets with bags and gear strapped in with cargo nets.
We got to go up in the cockpit and check it out, that was pretty cool. There was not much to see but white-out, and the plane was flying itself, but the pilots were pretty cool to talk to.

When we starting flying more South we could see the ice starting to form, first in floating pieces, called Pancake Ice. As we got further south the "pancakes" start to join to form ice sheets. Then as we reached the continent the mountain ranges covered in snow popped through the clouds. We had to take turns sticking our heads into a tiny portal, and then it took a few seconds for your eyes to adjust to the glaring white. The polarizing filter on my camera helped a ton to see features in the white.

When the pilot announced we were preparing to land, I felt something was wrong when after the sharp turn right and decent to the runway, we took a sharp pull up again and started circling. Then he announced there was a penguin on the runway, haha!! Really, no joke!! They had to call in the fire department to come and try to coerce it off the runway. But then they realized the only way to get it off was to have one guy walk off the boundary of the runway, and the penguin just followed him.


We finally landed and I took my first step off the plane, bright whiteness. It was like nothing I've ever seen. Perfectly flat white expanse until snow covered glacial mountain ranges sprung up in the far distance, including Mount Erebus, a degassing volcano billowing a constant stream of white smoke. It's actually one of three volcanoes on Earth (the other two are in Africa) that still has a standing lava lake. It frequently blows "lava bombs", solid basalt rocks the size of footballs, which can sometimes reach the size of a car.

After the white blindness, the first sense that hit me though was the smell. It smelled so crisp and fresh. The way I always remember winter to smell.

Then up ahead was a big long truck/bus hybrid ("IVAN" The Terra Bus) with giant tires that we all climbed into for our trip about 30 minutes from the landing site to the living site. We drove off the ice (which is the frozen sound of the Ross Sea), and onto a continental land mass where McMurdo station is...that's where we live, eat, play, do lab work. It's pretty plush living for the South Pole, pretty much like dorm life. The night when we arrived, I got a great dinner in the Galley, did a yoga class in the chapel, then rock climbed in the indoor bouldering wall :)

Another humbling experience is realizing that in the past fews days I've traveled half-way around the world, then to the bottom. It's going to take quite a few trees to offset this carbon footprint...

Half way there...

I left NYC on Dec 31st, Reesa's birthday (New Year's Eve to everyone else). Dave and I were actually early to the airport...only to find my backpack mysteriously "leaking", though there was nothing in it other than 2 computers and a camera. The culprit...a rotten Clementine, probably left over from Thanksgiving. The stench was pretty rancid, let me tell you, it took us both about 15 minutes to cover damage control in the airport bathrooms, which obviously wasn't sufficient.

After a 6 hour flight to LA, followed by a 12 hour flight to Auckland, I stepped onto New Zealand soil, only to be greeted by a very excited beagle sniffing bags at the airport. As soon as I walked into baggage claim, the pooch made a B-line for my DaKine pack. The officer asked me to drop my bag and step away, and reminded me the fine for importing food, especially fruits and vegetables, to New Zealand is $2000. Luckily, my bag was apparently clean, the lingering rotten Clemetine unnoticeable to the dull-nosed customs officer.

Boarded my last hour-long flight from Auckland to Christchurch, on the south island of New Zealand. Here I met the rest of the people going to Antarctca with me, I guess around 25 others. I ventured into Christchurch for a few hours, checked out an Antarctica exhibit at the Natural History museum, and got a nice sunburn walking around in the southern summer sun ;)

Today I'll head to the US Antarctic Program Headquarters to get suited up and fitted for my Extreme Weather Gear...almost ready for tomorrow's early morning take-off.