No. 6 - Still Enthusiastic
We're moving along the north side of the islands to the west
toward Cape Shirreff. We have little experience in this area
having mapped it only once when we set people ashore last year
for the first time at the Cape. We'll then move to the south
side of the islands in the more protected Bransfield Strait and
work our way east again past Admiralty Bay and on to the Elephant
Island area. The Elephant cluster is the most northeastern group
of the South Shetland Islands, at the very tip of the Antarctic
Peninsula, situated in the face of weather systems and ocean
currents funneling through Drakes Passage. Our beloved Seal
Island sits in the middle of this group and we know this grid of
stations well.
As we trudge along, station to station, the phytoplankton group
strains the many kinds of algae from water samples, measures
their chlorophyll and incubates them to see how fast they are
growing, the oceanography group lowers an instrument at each
station, measuring water properties and looking for signatures of
the different water masses that converge as they flow past the
archipelago, the zooplankton group sorts, counts and measures the
critters that are caught in a large plankton net deployed at
each station looking for evidence of rapidly growing populations,
and the ocean acoustics group uses underwater sound to image the
clusters of krill swarms that sustain the penguins and seals
breeding nearby. Each group depends on information from the
others to complement and help interpret their own measurements.
We are a collection of academic and government marine scientists,
graduate students and volunteers from a wide range of
institutions and locations. Each group has a different watch
schedule (some work 12 hours on and 12 off and break at 8 in the
morning and 8 in the evening, others break at 12, and others work
6 on and 6 off); the various schemes resulting from a mix of
personal preferences, artful persuasions and the occasional
penchant for martyrdom. As the day-night continuum continues to
roll on we see the full cycle of each other and get to know our
shipmates quite well - more so than sometimes necessary.
But we're in the first few days of the survey, where the stations
are furthest apart and we have time to memorize the routine.
Although fog and wet decks prevail, the seas haven't been rough,
the labs are intact, people are still enthusiastic about being
here and on we go.
-Roger