14 November – Data !

While many of the blog posts so far have been about the inclement weather and seas we've experienced on this trip, we have been able to occupy several stations (roughly half of our initial cruise plan – which in my experience is par for the course here in the Southern Ocean, particularly in the Drake Passage which is a pretty rough area even for down here). I thought I'd take this post to talk about the purpose of our project here on the ship and discuss some of the data we're collecting.

One of the objectives of our group's project is to collect salps, a gelatinous zooplankton that can be found in many of the world oceans, but is particularly abundant (at times) here off Antarctica. Salps and krill can both be found in very large populations here, and often you'll either find lots of salps OR lots of krill as both salps and krill feed on the same food (phytoplankton).  Krill are small crustaceans that are the base of the food web here in Antarctica. All the much larger animals that people associate with Antarctica (penguins, seals, whales) depend on krill (or animals that eat krill) as their food source. We know that when there aren't as many krill in the ocean (their populations vary from year to year), the larger animals don't do as well (in terms of reproduction or individual health).

These are Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) which is often the most abundant zooplankton in the ocean here in Antarctica.  They are eaten by lots of different animals (including humans) so it is important for us to be able to measure how many krill there are in parts of Antarctica so we can understand how much food is available for the seals, penguins, flying seabirds, and whales that live here

One of the things that other scientists have studied is the relationship between the amount of winter sea ice here and the abundance (or not) of krill. When there is a lot of sea ice, then you often have lots of krill. When there isn't as much sea ice, then there tends to be more salps and less krill. This change in the dominant zooplankton in the ocean here will likely have an impact on all the other parts of the ecosystem (i.e. penguins, seals, flying seabirds, and whales) as we don't think any of these animals eat salps [although I don't think we know this for a fact. Salps are really delicate animals so trying to find them in the stomachs or scats of seals or penguins would be very difficult, whereas parts of krill can be found in both].

So we came down here to study the salps and see if there are environmental factors that can be related to the abundance and distribution of these animals. We want to see if we can use acoustic echosounders (an instrument that is, essentially, a very fancy fish-finder) which we use to measure aggregations of krill in the ocean, can also be used to study salps. And as part of that, we want to determine how much sound an individual salp (or any other zooplankton) will scatter, as we can use that along with echosounder data to estimate how many animals are in the ocean underneath our ship.

That may be kind of confusing, so I'll try to describe it a little more simply.  We use acoustic instruments (like a boat's depth sounder or a submarine's SONAR system) to send short pulses of sound into the ocean, we then listen for the echoes of these “pings” and depending on how long it takes the echoes to come back, we know how far below the ship the scatterers are.  We can produce colorful figures called echograms that show what's going on underneath us as we travel around. 

These are two echograms from the ship's Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) which show what is happening underneath our boat. Time (or distance) is the horizontal axis, and depth is the vertical axis.  Areas that produce more scattering are in yellows and reds, while blues represent water that is “empty”.  The ADCP is primarily designed to measure current velocities, but since it is mounted on the hull of the ship, it is always running. We have a towfish with another acoustic system to use on this cruise, but so far it's been too rough to deploy.  From this echogram, we can identify scattering patches that are probably krill aggregations in the upper part of the water column, although we can't be sure that's what they are from acoustics alone.

In order to identify what we see with the acoustic systems, we deploy net systems. On this trip we have a MOCNESS system and an IKMT net. Both have advantages and disadvantages to them in terms of ease of deployment and sampling efficiency; but they both collect samples of animals in the ocean so we can have a better idea of what's going on underneath us.

 IKMT recovery  caption: The IKMT net is brought back onboard the ship. The mouth opening of this net is about 5 ft x 5 ft. The metal fin at the bottom helps to keep the net going downward while it is towed. We also have a small flow-meter (little white propellor) which helps us measure how much water we have filtered through the net.

Once the net(s) have been deployed, we have to process their cod ends (cod ends are the buckets at the end of the net that hold the catch). Samples from the MOCNESS are split between the Bucklin and Warren groups on the ship. We preserve ours in formalin and back in NY we'll identify and count all the animals that we found. The Bucklin group preserves their animals differently so they can run genetic analyses on the animals they find.  We've been able to do some deep tows with the MOCNESS this trip (most down to 1000 m, and one down to 2500 m – that's more than a mile beneath the ocean surface), but we have yet to catch a huge amount of anything.

 One of the cod end catches from a deep MOCNESS tow. Seen here are shrimp, a deep-sea jellyfish, some small fish, and lots of smaller things.

We deploy the IKMT net to catch animals that are closer to the surface and we try to do the tows quickly enough that the animals are still alive when we get them on deck.  We then put them in aquariums we have on the ship to keep them happy, and proceed to do experiments on the animals.

 These are Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) a large (4-5 cm in length) crustacean that is often the most abundant animal in the ocean here. These animals are a major food source for whales, seals, flying seabirds, and penguins. Additionally, they are also commercially fished. You may see bottles of krill oil capsules in health food stores. Several companies fish krill down here, then process it and sell it as a dietary supplement. There are likely some issues with the location (and size) of the fishery here and whether or not the fishers are competing with the native animal populations for the same resource.

One of the experiments we do on the animals is to measure their density (the mass of the animal relative to its volume). This is important to know for us to properly interpret our acoustic data in that animals that are just a small bit more (or less) dense than their surrounding seawater (or other animals) will scatter different amounts of sound.  So everytime we get live animals in our nets, two members of my team shut themselves inside a refridgerated shipping container we have chained to the deck of the ship and we make measurements of the density of individual animals relative to seawater.  So far we've made these measurements on over 100 individual zooplankton, ranging from krill, to shellless snails, to larval fish, to amphipods (another type of crustacean), and even parts of jellyfish.

Some of the equipment that we use to measure animal density. We do these experiments inside a refrigerated van to try and keep the temperature of our seawater as close to the ambient temperature that the animals normally live in. Unfortunately, we humans aren't as acclimated to the cold as the krill and other zooplankton are.  So we can only stay in the van for about 60-90 minutes at a time, before we have to leave and thaw ourselves out.

 Here are some of the data we've collected so far on this trip. The different color/shapes of the symbols correspond to different types of animals. The vertical axis is the ratio of the animals density to that of seawater. Most of our animals are between 1-5% more dense than seawater. This information is used by us to more accurately estimate animal populations from acoustic echograms.

If you look at the graph above, you'll see that I have a category (red diamond) for salps. But that there are no data points in our graph for them. That's been our biggest challenge so far this trip. We haven't caught any salps so far.  There are several possible reasons for this: salps are patchily distributed in the ocean so we may not have sampled in an area where they are; this cruise is a month earlier in the year than my cruise here last year (in December) so we may be too early to find salps; this could be a poor year for salps in terms of their health and reproduction; and it may just be too early in our cruise in that we haven't had enough stations yet.  Nevertheless, with or without salps, we are collecting data down here (on other types of zooplankton) that will be useful in trying to better monitor and understand the Antarctic ecosystem.

Sorry that was so long-winded. We scientists tend to ramble on and on about our research. We will now return to our normal blog-content (i.e. cookies).

Joe

13 November - WHAT TO DO WHEN THERE IS NOTHING TO DO

Today reminds me of a lyric from one of my favorite songs as a kid:  “I am slowly going crazy…1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, switch.”


Here we are again, waiting for the winds to die down and the swell to relax so we can deploy our instruments.  We’ve been standing down, waiting on the weather, for the last 24 hours or so.  You might be wondering what we all do on the boat, while we are waiting to do our science.  So, I went around the boat today and interviewed everyone from the Marine Technicians and Science Party to the Mates and Stewards on board and put together this compilation of what people do on the LM Gould when there is no work to be done:  What to do when there is nothing to do.

Its really hard to capture the magnitude of the swells with our cameras but just to give you an idea, these pictures were taken in succession from the bridge of the ship.  The horizon SHOULD be straight.  As you can see, there is a lot of rockin’ and rollin’ going on out here.

The lounge is a favorite spot of science party members and crew members alike to hang out during down time.  There are 3 large comfy leather couches and 5 matching lazy boy chairs to sprawl out on.  There is a large flat-screen TV with a variety of movies and TV shows on DVD to watch.  Today we had a bit of a TV-marathon and watched several episodes of 30 Rock and Modern Family back to back!  There is also a Wii on the boat, complete with Guitar Hero and Joe brought his PlayStation with Rock Band, so these are both good for hours of mindless entertainment. And for those who like a quieter form of amusement, there is a pretty expansive library of books as well as a good stash of board games, cards and puzzles to keep people busy.

  First Mate Scotty gets a turn at Guitar Hero.

My personal favorite thing to do to pass the time is eat (but everyone that knows me knows that…I’m Italian for goodness sake!)  I am now working the night-shift so I miss lunch, but luckily there is a full spread put out from 11:30 pm-12:30 am  (“mid-rats” or midnight rations) for those that work the night shift, so I never REALLY miss a meal! One of the many selections tonight was French toast with this amazing homemade applesauce…it was awesome!  Also, I’ve discovered a new fruit on this cruise – the tangelo.  It is a cross between a tangerine and a grapefruit and if you have never had one, you must change this immediately! They are delicious!

The tangelo – a cross between a tangerine and a grapefruit.  Delightfully tangy and mildly bitter… Absolutely delicious!  Please run out immediately to your local grocery store and try one…you will thank me!

Here are some of the other activities that made people’s lists:  curling up with a good book, catching up on some sleep, going outside to watch the waves, dancing to some good music, eating chocolate chip cookies, studying for the GREs (not going to lie… I don’t envy you, Kelley), catching up on their ‘to-do’ list, doing laundry, gaining some perspective on life (very philosophical Alan), and, my favorite: First Mate Scott likes to eat a whole sleeve of cookies and then “weep because [he’s] fat.”

There are, of course, plenty of people doing work in their down time as well.  Peter Wiebe can always be found sitting in front of his computer programming and Paola and I are usually entering data, printing out spreadsheets and labels and organizing things for the next station.  I heard there was a riveting conversation after dinner tonight about the derivation of quadratic equations…sorry I missed that one!

One person who appears to be using her time wisely is our chief scientist, Ann Bucklin. Not only is she keeping busy with the day-to-day duties of being chief scientist and making sure that we are using our time out here as efficiently as possible, her group is writing a blog for high school science teachers, with the purpose of getting high school students interested in science and excited about we do.  Ann tells me that she enjoys having the time to write stories about our adventures out here and convey why it is that she loves what she does. It helps to remind her, as well, why we are out here doing this… because we love it.  It is nice to put things back into perspective.

So, fear not, all your land-lovers out there.  The weather may be bad but we are making the most of it in our own ways.  And when the winds finally die down and the sun finally shines again, we will go back to doing what we love…SCIENCE!

Signing off for now…

Melissa P.  (aka Big Melissa and/or Patty O’Malley)

November 12 - Nasty weather = Clean socks

Since we left Cape Shirreff we’ve been hitting stations along the northern side of the South Shetland Islands at the southern edge of the Drake. It’s been a little bumpy but all in all, not so bad. Yesterday we managed to take in a pretty good haul of krill at station 8, then we headed east to station 9. Conditions weren’t too bad last night, but the forecast looked rough for today and the swells were getting a bit bigger so we took it slow, planning on reaching station 9 around 6 in the morning. The barometric pressure dropped over the course of the night as the winds and swell height increased. Right now we’re looking at winds averaging between 30 and 40 kn and swells around 25 ft, so unfortunately we had to bypass the station and head northeast or risk seriously damaging our equipment. The weather is due to improve in the next 24 hours, so we should be able to get back to work fairly soon.
       
At the moment there isn’t much to do, so I’ve decided to fill my time by doing my first load of laundry since getting on the ship! The most exciting part of this for me is having clean socks to wear. I realized not long after arriving in Chile that I had forgotten to pack the majority of my socks. Thankfully, I got a few extra pairs in my ECW [Extreme Cold Weather] gear [Ed: We're provided with extra sets of gloves, socks, and other cold weather clothing for the duration of our project -- but we have to give it back at the end of the trip so that others can use it], but I’ve still had to ration my sock usage and rewear any pairs that passed the sniff test. Yesterday I reached a critical point in sock availability. Only one pair passed the sniff test. Not good. Those socks are currently on my feet, but the rest will soon be clean as a whistle and ready for another round. My feet can’t wait. Neither can my shoes.

The laundry room aboard the Gould. It comes fully stocked with detergent, soap, and anything else to fulfill your laundry needs.

[Ed: Sometimes if the seas are too rough, they'll even close the laundry room. That may happen in the next 48 hours.]

Melissa M. (a.k.a. Little Melissa, a.k.a. Munchkin)

11 November - Cape Sheriff Put-In: Finally!

Yesterday we steamed back to Cape Shirreff to have another shot at bringing our resident seal and penguin biologists back to land.  We had been anticipating a “weather window” (the weather is anticipated to get rough again today (Friday)) and wanted to take the opportunity to give it our best shot.   Sure enough, the conditions were much nicer than when we tried a few days earlier.  Much less of a swell and no fog!!

Unfortunately, the science party was unable to go to shore and help upload the zodiacs.  This didn’t stop us from helping, though!  We needed to move all of the food for the field camp for the next four months from the refrigerator and freezer and protect it from getting soaked with salt spray with plastic bags.  I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of food – everything from apples and oranges, to artichokes and leeks; chicken and beef, to conger eel and duck!  They even had a whole turkey – my guess is for Thanksgiving.   It looks like our friends will be eating well for the next four months! 

 Joe, Kelley, and Paola helping sort the “freshies” – fresh fruits and vegetables to help consolidate space in the zodiac.  Photo by Ann Bucklin

After about six hours of extremely hard and cold work by the MTs and ETs, we  waved goodbye to the final zodiac and our new friends now at Cape Shirreff and are headed to our third science station! 

The final zodiac leaving the LMG with Jullie, Alan,  Mike, and the last of the supplies for Cape Shirreff. Photo by Melissa Patrician

The zodiac en route to Cape Shirreff. Photo by Melissa Patrician

- Katie

10 Nov – On Station !

Yesterday afternoon, we had our first science station of the trip. We left Palmer Station in the early morning and were transiting back to Cape Shirreff to deploy the field team there, but on the way was one of our stations (#22 to be specific). Given that some of the gear we were using on this trip hasn't been deployed by members of the crew or the science team previously, we decided to do our first station here (at the northern end of the Gerlache Strait) in semi-protected waters which would help for our deployments to go smoothly. 

Traveling through the Gerlache strait, we encounter many types of ice. In the background are the cliffs of a glacier (probably 80-100 feet high), with several large bergs in the foreground. The nearest piece of ice has dark lines/regions which are most likely rocks and dirt from the continent (or islands) around here, meaning this piece of ice used to be on land and as it moved slowly across the land, the ground beneath it gets incorportated (somewhat folded into) the ice itself

On the way to Station #22, we passed through some really spectacular scenery with mountains, glaciers, icebergs, bergy bits, growlers, brash ice [those names all mean something different with respect to the size or type of ice we see] and we even had some sunshine along the way. There was also a group of penguins porpoising (swimming near the surface and occasionally jumping out of the water – so they can fly!  Just very very very short distances.). 

If you look very carefully in front of the piece of ice in the photo, you can see a group of penguins (maybe 12-15 animals) travelling from left to right. Penguins often travel by porpoising (swimming near the surface and sometimes “flying” out of the water). These were pretty far away so it's difficult to tell what species they are, however these animals have orange feet and a black head with a white patch above their eye which makes them Gentoo penguins.

We made it to our station around 3pm in the afternoon and began to do our science. We have a set of standard instruments that we deploy at all stations: a CTD rosette and two types of nets, a MOCNESS and an IKMT. The CTD is an instrument that measures water properties as well as bottles that collect water samples for us to analyze on board the ship, it's lowered from the surface of the ocean to 1000 m depth (or the bottom – whichever comes first). From these data we can tell a lot of information about the physics and biology of the area.

The IKMT net is used to collect live organisms for us to do measurements on back on the ship.  It's towed for a short time period as the zooplankton tend to get damaged by longer tows through the water column.  The other net is a MOCNESS system and we happen to have its inventor (Dr. Peter Wiebe, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and, full disclosure, one of my Ph.D. Advisors) onboard with us as part of Dr. Bucklin's science team. We'll have a blog post dedicated to the MOCNESS system as it's a really remarkable piece of equipment that not only collects animals, but also measures environmental information about the water where the animals were living.

All three of our systems were deployed (and recovered !) successfully. Although there were some hiccups.  Right before we deployed the IKMT net, we noticed that there were two small tears in the mesh. That happens somewhat frequently given that the ship and net frame and various other things are sharp onboard the ship and the mesh (which has holes in it that are about a half a millimeter in it) is somewhat fragile.  If you send down a net with rips in it, there are two major problems: 1) you might not get a representative tow since animals might be escaping through the holes and  even more importantly 2) the small tears might become larger tears which could ruin the net. Marine Technician Kelley Watson and I spotted the two rips, so we got out the net repair kit which means the tow of us got to “patch” the nets with our sewing techniques. Luckily, Kelley (like all sailors) has excellent sail-making and repairing skills in addition to seamstress skills and I've had to repair nets several times in my scientific career.  We got the holes patched up and deployed the net. 

 MT Kelley Watson (left) and myself (right) break out the needle and thread on the deck of the LMG to repair some small holes in the net before we deploy the IKMT. Fortunately, the seas were pretty calm during this repair, although it did start snowing during the MOCNESS deployment. Photo by Peter Wiebe.

We caught some interesting stuff in our nets tows, but I'm not sure anybody took any pictures last night as we were processing the samples (starting some experiments in our cold van, preserving zooplankton in jars which will be counted and analyzed back on shore after the cruise). But don't worry, we'll have get you some pics soon!

-Joe

09 November - And We’re Off…

So, as you heard yesterday from Little Melissa, we spent the day at Palmer Station, waiting for the wind to die down enough to offload all of the equipment and supplies that we had brought them.  The wind was howling all day yesterday with sustained winds around 40 and gusts up to 50+.  Unfortunately, there was no glacier hiking for us!  We took some great video of the winds, but we will have to wait until we get home to show that to you, as our bandwidth on the boat doesn’t allow us to upload or e-mail videos.

A photo of us girls as we took our first step onto the Antarctic continent.  The buildings of Palmer Station are behind us (L to R:  Melissa P. (science Melissa P., not MST Melissa P.), Katie, Chelsea, Melissa M.

 Thumbs Up for SCIENCE!  The whole science party (with the exception of Peter Wiebe, who is taking the picture) takes a quick picture in front of the LM Gould as we step onto Anvers Island.  (L to R Back Row:  Ann Bucklin, Chelsea, Melissa M. Katie, Joe Warren, Melissa P; Front Row:  Paola).

  Since this is my first trip to Palmer Station, I thought I’d give everyone at home a brief introduction to the station, through the eyes of a “newbie.”  The station, which is located on Anvers Island, an island west of the Western Antarctic Peninsula, was established in the 1960s and was originally a U.S. Navy station.  It is my understanding that civilian scientists did not start to occupy the station until the late 1970s or early 1980s.  Currently, there are 38 people living at Palmer Station this spring.  Twenty-three of those people are support staff.  The support staff are the people who are responsible for all the day-to-day maintenance and operation of the station, from running heavy equipment and clearing snow to making sure that everyone has 3 hot meals a day; these are the people who make the station a working, habitable environment for the scientists to do their research.  And then there are the scientists…there are researchers studying every part of the ecosystem down here, from microscopic phytoplankton to the seals and penguins that call this island home.

You need some heavy machinery to work in conditions like these.  Take a look at those tires!

Palmer Station is comprised of a series of blue aluminum-sided trailer-like buildings and within the walls you will find the following amenities:  a galley which serves up 3 hot meals a day (and plenty of snacks in between) for everyone living at the station, a lounge with comfy leather sofas, Lazy Boy chairs and blankets to curl up and watch one of the several hundred DVDs that line the walls of the lounge, a bar area with a pool table, a dart board and a popcorn machine, several hallways of berthing areas, washers and dryers, community bathrooms and showers (like at the gym), a sauna, an outdoor hot tub (which yes, I went in and yes, it was cold) and a station store, where you can purchase toiletries, souvenirs for your friends and family back home. Yesterday, I walked into the galley and was handed a lovely hot beverage while I sat and talked with several researchers; a game of cards transpired at the table next to me.  It is a much more civilized community that you would probably expect to find on Antarctica.

And then of course there are, as you would imagine, a plethora of science labs with state-of-the-art equipment that allow the researchers here to do their amazing science.  But you already knew about that part!

Well, finally around 6 am this morning, the winds died down to fewer than 25 knots and we were able to offload the rest of the equipment for Palmer Station and head out.  We are currently traversing through the Gerlache Strait with the intent on starting our science stations this afternoon, weather permitting.  Right now, however, the weather is amazing.  There are beautiful blue skies and the sun is shining brightly on the white ice and snow of the mountains, glaciers and icebergs that surround us.  It is truly breathtaking.

A beautiful view of the massive icebergs and glaciers in the Gerlache Strait.  See, there is blue sky in Antarctica, between all these storms!

So, wish us luck that the weather stays beautiful and that we are able to start getting some science done.  More about what we are actually doing out here in a later blog.

Signing off for now…

Melissa
(aka Big Melissa, aka Ancient Melissa, aka Beefy Melissa, aka Big-Haired Melissa, aka Patty O’Mally)

November 8 Ice, Ice, Baby

We’re finally at Palmer Station! We arrived yesterday around 6 in the evening. The weather wasn’t great: it was snowing steadily and the wind was blowing around 30-40kn. We weren’t sure if we would be able to dock, but we made it! The ride down was smooth and full of brash ice. At times it looked like you could just step off the boat and walk on the ice.

Palmer station, ordinarily surrounded by water, currently surrounded by ice.

When we came down last year the area around Palmer was almost clear of ice and the only wildlife to be seen in the area was various species of birds, save for a couple humpbacks in the distance. This year there have been an abundance of seals resting on the ice and posing for pictures.

2 of dozens of crabeater seals that were resting on the ice as we plowed through to Palmer Station.

Even as I was writing this blog Chelsea came in and told me there were a couple of leopard seals out on the ice across from the station. 3 hours later they’re still there and it doesn’t look like they’ll be moving any time soon.

A leopard seal yawning. Pretty much the extent of his activity in the last several hours

Today is all about offloading cargo for the crew and potentially some glacier hiking for some, assuming they’re willing to brave the sustained 50kn winds and freezing rain (not on my personal agenda). We’ll have to do some preparations for starting science stations as well. As soon as the cargo has been moved off the ship we can turn on the cold van, where we’ll be performing titration experiments on krill, salps, chaetognaths, and possibly amphipods at -1°C, the purpose of which will be to determine the animals’ g-values, or their density relative to sea water. For now, the tentative plan is to leave Palmer whenever the weather allows us, steam to station 22, about 11 hours from Palmer, and then after some science head straight over to Cape Shirreff where, weather permitting, we’ll be able to drop off the Cape Shirreffers and their cargo.

Melissa M. (a.k.a. Little Melissa, a.k.a. Munchkin, a.k.a. Muffin)