02 Nov 2011 - And we're off ! [or “She's a puker”]

Our trip has begun! A nice view of a part of Punta Arenas, Chile as we begin our journey south.

We left the dock in Punta Arenas just before noon today (local time in PA and on the ship is one hour ahead of the US East coast) and have just left the somewhat protected waters of the Straits and are beginning our journey south hugging the eastern coast of Patagonia as we head towards Cape Horn and start our journey to Antarctica.

 Sustained 30 kt winds can create a lot of surface chop and spray, but the straits are narrow enough that the waves can't grow very large so it was a gentle ride. Let's hope that continues.

The weather when we left was quite nice, very clear and sunny; although it did get a little breezy (30-35 kt winds with gusts up to 50 kts) this afternoon.  We've spent the past 2 days unpacking all our equipment, setting up lots of our gear, and then tieing everything down securely to make sure it doesn't fall or break during the Drake Passage crossing [the Drake Passage is the area between South America and the Antarctic Peninsula].
 

Everybody gets a chance to put on their survival suit as part of the safety orientation. We sometimes call these “Gumby suits” as you are not too capable of fine-scale movements or motor control once you've got it on. These suits are designed to not only provide floatation for us if we went into the water, but they also provide protection from the cold (although we hope we never have to use them). 



Today we had several meetings going over safety procedures in case of an emergency (knock on wood); deck orientation; science lab orientation; and the consumption of several chocolate chip cookies (ok, that wasn't really a meeting). The Chief Mate (Scott) during our safety orientation described our ship (the Laurence M. Gould) as “she's a puker” so I think most people are a little wary of how bumpy the next few days are going to be.

This trip's purpose is to have the science groups aboard collect data about salps, which are a very unique creature that most people have probably never seen, but is probably going to play an increasingly important role in the Antarctic ecosystem (that's part of our hypothesis-- we'll see if our data support this). We'll try to post a new blog entry roughly once a day – although that depends on the conditions and our science schedule. If  you have questions for us, please post them in the comments or email them to ales.lab.sbu@gmail.com and we'll try our best to answer them.

We had a all-hands meeting after dinner tonight where each of the science groups on the boat (including some that are just riding down with us to their field site where they will spend the next 4-5 months!) gave brief overviews of the scientific questions and methods that we're going to be working on. It was a really interesting discussion as each group is studying a different aspect of the ocean ecosystem, but the one theme that was present in all our talks is that the Antarctic Peninsula is a region that is experiencing a lot of change both physically (i.e. temperature) but also ecologically (decreases in some animal populations, increases in other animal populations, geographic shifts in where you find these organisms).  Antarctica is a beautiful place to work, but the real draw (for me at least) is that the scientific questions are so interesting here.

What a better place for a photo of our field team this year! Katie (left side, green hat), Melissa P. (right side, nearest), and Melissa M. (right side, next to the other Melissa) enjoy the luxurious comforts of the ship's life raft which we got into as part of the safety orientation.

We'll have more on this later, but our team from Stony Brook this year includes: Katie W.(a recent graduate of Cornell University), Melissa M. (a recent graduate of Stony Brook University), and Melissa P. (a 2nd year graduate student in my research lab). Katie W. and Melissa M. were part of the field team here last year, but this is Melissa P.'s first trip to the Southern Ocean.  We'll be taking turns posting to the blog so you'll get to hear from all of us over the next month.

 Our first day at sea ended with a really lovely sunset as start our trip to Antarctica. Hopefully there'll be a lot more pictures like this during the next month while we are at sea.

Sorry this is short, but it's late here and the boat is starting to move around a bit. A common reaction of our bodies to the motion of the sea (and ship) is to become sleepy. So it's time to hit the rack.

- Joe