Location: Punta Arenas, Chile
Two months ago as I was moving my things into my room on the Palmer I remember thinking I was the luckiest person in the world. Today, two months later and my last day on the Palmer, I am the most grateful. Twenty years ago when I started my teaching career I never dreamed it would take me to Antarctica. I never imagined that I’d be peeking over the shoulders of world class scientists doing ground-breaking work in polar science. I never envisioned seeing so many talented and hard-working people come together in spite of great adversity to achieve so many things. Teaching has truly taken me places!
This journal entry doesn’t contain any photographs of cute penguins or seals, no tales of adventure, descriptions of things we’ve broken, coffee conundrums,...
Location: From the Drake Passage into the Strait of Magellan.
Latitude: 53° 33′ S
Longitude: **72° 28′ W
**Air temperature: 4.5 °C (40.1 °F)
Wind chill: -7.7 °C (18.4 °F)
Wind speed: 15 to 20 knots
Barometric pressure: 1004.6 mBar
Antarctic trivia (answer at the end of this journal entry): Many nations conduct research in Antarctica and have permanent research facilities there. Which of these facilities is the largest?
What do milk, sugar, almonds, chocolate, coffee and excess liquid nitrogen have in common? Mixed together they make great ice cream! Apparently somewhat of a tradition on the Palmer, ice-cream making was undertaken recently by a group of conscientious employees thoughtfully putting excess liquid nitrogen to good use instead of wasting it.
Chemical waste is a concern in...
Location: From Peter I Island to the Drake Passage.
Latitude: 60° 20′ S
Longitude: 82° 30′ W
Air temperature: 1.7 °C (35.1 °F)
Wind chill: -13.7 °C (7.3 °F)
Wind speed: 25 to 30 knots
Water temperature: 3.7 °C (38.7 °F)
Barometric pressure: 985.6 mBar
**
Antarctic trivia** (answer at the end of this journal entry): 90% of the world’s ice is found in Antarctica. What portion of Earth’s fresh water does this represent?
**
*In a polynya (an area of open water surrounded by ice) near Peter I Island.
*
Our planned route home from Ice Station Belgica included a stop at Peter I Island, an ice-covered volcanic island in the Bellingshausen Sea. We reached Peter I Island late on the 25th and stopped for the night. At sunrise we began a circumnavigation around the island so that Brent...
Location: In transit from Ice Station Belgica to Peter I Island.
Latitude: 69° 08′ S
Longitude: **91° 18′ W
**Air temperature: -10.8 °C (12.6 °F)
Wind chill: - 29.7 °C (-21.5 °F)
Wind speed: 18 to 22 knots
Barometric pressure: 981.5 mBar
**Antarctic trivia **(answer at the end of this journal entry): Leopard seals, named for the spots on their bellies, are a dominant predator in the Antarctic. Do they have any natural enemies?
Wednesday morning we said farewell and adieu to Ice Station Belgica, our home for the past 28 days. Mixed emotions are the rule; we are happy to be headed home again, but sad that our great adventure is coming to an end. We encountered heavy ice throughout the day – the Palmer is rated to break 3 feet of ice at 3 knots, but the going was slow through the...
Location: Ice Station Belgica
Latitude: 70° 03′ S
Longitude: 93° 59′ W
Air temperature: -9.4 °C (15.1 °F)
Wind chill: -24.1 °C (-11.4 °F)
Wind speed: 13 – 15 knots
Barometric pressure: 964.3 mBar
Antarctic trivia (answer at the end of this journal entry): Ice fish, a unique group of Antarctic fish, have an interesting physiological adaptation. What is it?
Our last two days at Ice Station Belgica were a whirlwind of activity as everyone wrapped up work and prepared for transit. The geophysics group finished final surveys of our three study areas while the Belgian-Canadian group finished their last round of data collection. We also ran overnight CTD and trace metal casts for our water-thirsty physical oceanographers. We sent a round of our decorated Styrofoam cups down with the CTD…here...
Location: Ice Station Belgica
Latitude: 70° 02′ S
Longitude: **93° 43′ W
**Air temperature: -7.7 °C (18.4 °F)
Wind speed: 5 to 10 knots
Barometric pressure: 967.2 mBar
Antarctic trivia (answer at the end of this journal entry): Fish that live in Antarctic waters need special adaptations to survive the harsh climate. What adaptation allows them to live in water that would otherwise freeze their blood and body tissues?
Our friendly neighborhood iceberg hasn’t hit the Palmer or smashed our floe to bits. There hasn’t been another fire or hurricane-strength blizzard. It’s something worse. Jeroen discovered late last week that we are now out of instant coffee!
First, let me tell you that coffee is a pretty important item around here. When you work outside all day coming in to a nice hot cup...
Location: Ice Station Belgica
Latitude: 69° 89′ S
Longitude: 93° 10′ W
Antarctic trivia (answer at the end of this journal entry): The Titanic, though billed to be "unsinkable” sank in under three hours after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic on April 14, 1912. The iceberg wasn’t the only problem, however; do you know some of the other reasons so many people died on the ship’s maiden voyage?
The Palmer and our new neighbor, a mammoth iceberg!
Yesterday morning when I looked out my porthole I saw a pair of seals; today, a huge iceberg dominates my view! We continue to have numerous icebergs around us at Ice Station Belgica. The bridge monitors their location by radar - Steve checked the radar screen recently and noted more than 70 icebergs in a six nautical mile range. The...
Location: Ice Station Belgica
Latitude: **69° 44′ S
**Longitude: 92° 45′ W
Air temperature: -2.2 °C (28 °F)
Wind chill: **-21.4 °C (-6.5 °F)
**Wind speed: 25 to 30 knots
Barometric pressure: 966.3 mBar
Relative humidity: 94.2%
**Antarctic trivia **(answer at the end of this journal entry): Why do scientists go to Antarctica to study meteorites?
A weather system moved in yesterday afternoon from north. Unlike the northern hemisphere, air masses moving in from the north are warm and wet. We’ve had mostly southerly winds (winds are named from the direction they originate) this past week which has given us dry, but cold conditions. The "norther” we’re experiencing now has made temperatures more comfortable (-2 °C) but brought in strong winds (up to 30 knots) and more humid conditions....
Latitude: 69° 30′ S
Longitude: 92° 23′ W
Air temperature: **-13.7 °C (7.3 °F)
**Wind chill: -23.3 °C (-9.9 °F)
Wind speed: 6 to 10 knots
Barometric pressure: 982.8 mBar
Antarctic trivia (answer at the end of this journal entry): Fast-ice isn’t fast, and grease ice isn’t greasy. Why are these ice types given such confusing names?
Steve, Brent, Chris, and I participated in a live International Polar Year event Tuesday. A "Webinar” was hosted by the PolarTREC folks in Fairbanks, Alaska. We used our satellite phone to join a conference call with schools and individuals from across the U.S. The audience was able to view pictures of our expedition online during the event. We fielded many great questions from the audience, and we all enjoyed the chance to share our adventure. We hope there...
Location: Ice Station Belgica
Latitude: 69° 31′ S
Longitude: **92° 23′ W
**Air temperature: -12.5 °C (9.5 °F)
Wind chill: -28.7 °C (-19.7 °F)
Wind speed: **11 to 13 knots
**Barometric pressure: 978.1
Antarctic trivia (answer at the end of this journal entry): The word igloo comes from the Inuit word "iglu" meaning house. What is it about an igloo that makes it a good shelter?
Steve thought it would be a good idea for our group to get a little safety and survival training Sunday morning, so Erik took us outside and taught us about the construction of snow shelters and igloos. It turns out that constructing an igloo is probably the most time consuming and least efficient way to build a structure to get out of the weather, but since we weren't doing it for anything other than fun, we...
Location: Ice Station Belgica
Latitude: 69° 43′ S
Longitude: 92° 00′ W
Air temperature: -12.2 °C (10.4 °F)
Wind speed: 10 to 15 knots
Barometric pressure: 987.0 mBar
Antarctic trivia (answer at the end of this journal entry): Shipboard speeds are commonly expressed in knots instead of meters per second or miles per hour. What is a knot, and what is the origin of this term?
We drifted to the northeast for a number of days, eventually getting close enough for Peter I Island to come into view. This is the island we were headed for the second time we left Punta Arenas, but on the way in we discovered that there was no ice in the area, so we kept heading southwest. Friday our drift took us back to the southwest, so we’re headed away from the island now. It was pretty exciting to see land...
Location: Ice Station Belgica
Latitude: 69° 49′ S
Longitude: 92° 10′ W
Air temperature: -7.2 °C (19 °F)
Wind chill: -18.7 °C (-1.6 °F)
Barometric pressure: 973.6 mBar
Antarctic trivia (answer at the end of this journal entry): How many penguins live in Antarctica?
It seems our team has a bit of a problem with equipment - we keep breaking or losing it. It’s a good thing the marine techs can repair things as fast as we break them – thanks Ben, Erik, and Jeremy. Here’s the list so far:
Broken
A brand new ice thickness measuring tape (not a cheap measuring tape of course)
Another ice thickness measuring tape (but it was repairable)
A 100-m measuring tape (wind and measuring tapes don’t mix)
The connecting pin to an auger (and we got the broken section stuck in the ice)
The...
Location: Ice Station Belgica
Erik, Chris, and Jeremy check to see if what lies ahead is safe for travel.
Yesterday I reported that our destination today was an area that had been dubbed the "zone of death” by those who scouted the location previously. Why would it be given such a terrible name? The thicker the snow and ice, the harder it is to survey and sample. We were told that the snow was deeper than any we’d seen yet, and that the area was full of ice blocks and very thick, very old ice. With a bit of worry we loaded the snowmobiles with our gear this morning and off we went into uncharted territories. Did this part of the ice floe live up to its reputation? Were there untold horrors awaiting us when we arrived? In a word, no! It turns out that the "zone of death” did not have...
Location: **Ice Station Belgica
**Latitude: 70° 01
Longitude: 93° 09
Air temperature: -17.8 °C (0°F)
Wind chill: -44.3 °C (-48 °F)
Barometric pressure: **976.7 mBar
**Wind speed: 25 to 30 knots
You remember the fairy tale - the children leave a trail of breadcrumbs on their walk through the forest to find their way home. We didn’t use bread crumbs to find our way home yesterday, but we did use a trail of Kool-Aid! We were working at our remote site remeasuring snow depths along the transect lines we had established a few days earlier. We mark every five meters along the line with a spot of Kool-Aid. This probably sounds like a pretty non-scientific method of marking, but it’s almost always too windy to lay down a measuring tape and measure in a more traditional fashion. The...
Location: Ice Station Belgica
Lots going on at Ice Station Belgica, here’s a quick summary of the major activities the past two days:
Friday 10/5
Continuous CTD casts – the ship was repositioned in the afternoon to run continuous CTD casts throughout the afternoon, evening, and late night hours. Sharon and Katie stayed up all night monitoring the casts.
Belgian group – sample processing in the lab today. This group is doing work at 2 clean sites (called Brussels and Liege) on the ice floe. They work at Brussels one day, process samples in the lab the next, work at Liege the following day, and then process samples for the next two days. They hope to repeat this 5 day cycle 5 times while we are at the ice station. They are interested in how the ice changes over time during the...
Location: Ice Station Belgica
Latitude: 70° 09 S
Longitude: 94° 21 W
Air temperature: -7.3 °C (18.9 °F)
Wind chill: -8.7 (16.3 °F)
Wind speed: 5 to 10 knots
Barometric pressure: 987.8 mBar
Antarctic trivia (answer at the end of this journal entry): If you walked in a circle around the South Pole you would cross through every time zone on Earth. So, since every time zone is possible in Antarctica, how do you tell time here?
**Palmer In Ice
**
How did my port view suddenly become starboard? What happened to the open water that was outside my window last night? Where did our work site go? These questions were asked by a number of disoriented people when awakening this morning. The ship was turned around in the early morning hours to expose the starboard side of the ship to the open...
Location: Ice Station Belgica
We have officially established our home base for the next three weeks or so. Ice Station Belgica is the name given to the project location. The ice floe we’re working on is approximately circular and we think about 1.5 miles in diameter. Over the next few weeks we’ll be busy marking, measuring, coring, counting, digging, sampling, and surveying the ice, snow, slush, water and biology in the area. Our first full day on the ice was October 1. The Belgian-Canadian group established their first 2 work sites and clean areas. To avoid confusion about which site is which I learned that familiar names are often given to work sites on a project such as ours. The name Belgica is in honor of the Belgian ship that explored Antarctica in 1897-1899. The...
Location: Drifting in the pack ice in the Bellingshausen Sea.
Latitude: 70° 26¢ S
Longitude: 93° 54¢ W
Air temperature: **- 11.4 °C (11.5 °F)
**Wind chill temperature: - 35.4 °C (- 32 °F)
Wind speed: 25 to 30 knots (29 to 35 mph)
Relative humidity: 75.4 %
Barometric pressure: 955 mBar
Antarctic trivia (answer at the end of this journal entry): Which gets less precipitation, the interior of the Antarctic continent or the Sahara desert?
Sunday mornings at home for me usually begin with a cup of coffee and the morning paper. I’m still an advocate of the paper version of the news, especially on Sunday, though people tell me that print journalism is on its way out due to twenty-four hour cable news and the Internet. My only problem with getting news the old-fashioned way is that one of my...
Location: Drifting in the pack ice in the Bellingshausen Sea.
Latitude: 70° 31¢
Longitude: 93° 07¢
Air temperature: -11.9 °C (10.6 °F)
Relative humidity: 75.1%
**Barometric pressure: **946.7 mBar
Antarctic trivia (answer at the end of this journal entry): Are there polar bears in Antarctica?
Another day of waiting out the weather. We awoke yesterday to 60 knot winds and white out conditions. Today is better, but it’s still not safe enough for us to be out on the ice. So we wait, again. We’ve had a lot of practice at that on this cruise! The snow has mostly stopped, but some is still blowing around. We looked out the windows a lot and talked about the weather today…I imagine we’d all be glued to the Weather Channel if we had TV down here! The ice reminds me of the frosting on a cake,...
Location: Drifting in the pack ice in the Bellingshausen Sea.
Latitude: 70° 38′ S
Longitude: 92° 13′ W
Air temperature: -13.9 °C (7.0 °F)
Wind chill: -42.9 °C (-45.2 °F)
Water temperature: -1.7 °C (28.9 °F)
Relative humidity: 74.8%
Barometric pressure: 936.8 mBar
Antarctic trivia (answer at the end of this journal entry): Who was the Bellingshausen Sea named after, and what was his Antarctic claim to fame?
A team strategy-planning meeting and weather-watching were the main activities today. We arrived at our drift station location yesterday afternoon and were looking forward to starting our ice work today, but Mother Nature clearly had other plans for us. We awoke to cold temperatures, swirling snow, and intense winds. Sustained wind speeds throughout the day were recorded at 50 to 60...
**Location: **In the pack ice, in the Bellingshausen Sea, in transit to our multi-week drift station.
Latitude: 70° 38¢ S
Longitude: **90°42¢ W
**Air temperature: - 3.7°C (25°F)
Water temperature: -1.8°C (29°F)
Relative humidity: 74%
Barometric pressure: 945 mBar
**Antarctic trivia **(answer at the end of this journal entry): What is the largest seal on Earth?
Crunch! Crunch! Sloosh! Crunch! Sloosh! Such were the sounds of my boots when I stepped off the ship onto the ice for the first time. "Crunch” was their call when the snowfall on top of the ice had formed a firm crust, "sloosh” when it wasn’t so firm and my foot sank through the knee-deep snow layer to the ice. Though there were more than a dozen of us on the ice, I heard these sounds clearly in the still night. This was my first...
Location: In the ice, in the Bellingshausen Sea.
Latitude: 70° 24¢ S
Longitude: 90° 28° W
Air temperature: -3.5° C (25.7° F)
Water temperature: **-1.8° C (28.6° F)
**Relative humidity: 74.2%
Barometric pressure: 961.9 mBar
Antarctic trivia (answer at the end of this journal entry): Are there any volcanoes in Antarctica?
When I first saw him (or was it a her?) out of the corner of my eye, I thought it was a seal sliding into our ice station. But this was no seal coming to pay the ice party a visit, it was a penguin! The species was easy to recognize, an Emperor without a doubt, and not a small one! He appeared from out of the water behind the boat and slid on his belly into the middle of the science party working on the ice. He extended his wings to the side, pulled himself up to a...
**Location: **In the ice, in the Bellingshausen Sea.
Latitude: 70° 16′ S
Longitude: 90° 08′ W
Air temperature: -2.3° C
Water temperature: -1.8° C
Relative humidity: 74.7%
Barometric pressure: 940.3 mBar
**
Antarctic trivia **(answer at the end of this journal entry): How many species of penguin are there?
A good day was had by all! We reached the ice edge around midnight, and wildlife viewing in the morning and early afternoon was unbelievable. Yes, I’m happy to report that I saw my first penguin today! In fact, I saw over a hundred. They are quite social and tend to congregate in large groups. The first group we saw was off the bow on the starboard side of the ship. As they sensed our approach they hurried out of the way, or at least they hurried in the penguin sense of the word....
**Location: **In the Bellingshausen Sea, approaching Peter I island.
Latitude: 67° 36′ S
Longitude: 89° 56′ W
Air temperature: - 1.7° C (29° F)
Water temperature: - 1.8° C (29° F)
Relative humidity: 74.1%
Barometric pressure: 932.7 mBar
**
Antarctic trivia **(answer at the end of this journal entry): Were there ever dinosaurs in Antarctica?
Soft snowfall all day today as we head for the ice. I promised myself I would see a penguin today, but alas, no luck yet. Really, it’s worse than that…I not only promised myself, I told everyone at breakfast that I was absolutely going to see a penguin today! I better get back to my penguin watching…hard to see them in the open ocean, but I’m giving it a shot.
Later that same day…lots of penguin watching, but no penguins. Even Brent hasn’t seen any...
**Location: **In the Bellingshausen Sea, approaching Peter I island.
Latitude: 67° 36¢ S
Longitude: 89° 56¢ W
Air temperature: - 1.7° C (29° F)
Water temperature: - 1.8° C (29° F)
Relative humidity: 74.1%
**Barometric pressure: **932.7 mBar
Antarctic trivia (answer at the end of this journal entry):
Were there ever dinosaurs in Antarctica?
Soft snowfall all day today as we head for the ice. I promised myself I would see a penguin today, but alas, no luck yet. Really, it’s worse than that…I not only promised myself, I told everyone at breakfast that I was absolutely going to see a penguin today! I better get back to my penguin watching…hard to see them in the open ocean, but I’m giving it a shot.
Later that same day…lots of penguin watching, but no penguins. Even Brent hasn’t seen any...
