Sunday March 28, 1999

1000 hrs. 62 40 S 64 10 W.

It's been a while since I wrote last, so there is much to catch up on. Today we are finishing fishing in Dallman Bay, which is about 9 hours north of Palmer Station. The science team that has the boat for these three days is trawling nets day and night here in Dallman Bay. We are just passengers, catching up with the processing of the samples that we collected at our stations, and catching up on sleep.

When they trawl, they come up with quite an array of creatures, including a number of the "ice fish" that they are looking for. The basis of one of their projects is that there is a protein in the brain of these fish that is functional at extreme cold temperatures. They would like to determine the nature of that protein, learn how it works, and possibly even clone it and use it for beneficial purposes. It is not unlike the work that was done years ago when a so-called "antifreeze protein" was discovered inthe blood of cold-water fish. When the gene for that protein is introduced into commercial fish species, they tolerate much lower temperatures, which allows them to be grown in aquaculture sites where it was not possible before.

The fish team filled up six large tanks with hundreds of these fish, which are about a foot or more long, skinny and speckled green, with large heads (but apparently small brains). Every time the nets come up, we go through the collection of animals and take those that are of interst to us - such as snails and a variety of predatory or filter-feeding animals that might pick up toxins through the food web. Later tonight the boat will dead-head back to Palmer, arriving there at sunrise. The scientists working with the fish are anxious to get their animals back alive and in good shape.

As soon as they off-load the big aquarium tanks using the crane, they will stay on shore while the boat heads out on leg 3 of this cruise. We will do some sampling during this period of time, but most of the effort will be that of another science team interested in the physical oceanography of a section of the Wedell Sea. They will be putting three instrumented moorings in waters south of the South Orkney Islands, which are way out at sea and far from here. Their moorings will have a large railroad wheel as a weight on the bottom, and tethered to it will be a long wire extending over a mile to the surface. Along that wire they will attach instruments of different kinds to make measurements at specific depths. They are interested in the salinity, temperature, currents, and dissolved gases at these different depths. The three moorings they will deploy will tell them a great deal about the structure of the water column in that area, and how the water layers move.

Again, we will be passengers for the first part of this cruise, and then will sample on the way back to Palmer, once the moorings are deployed. The total cruise time will be 13 days, which breaks down as follows: 3 days transit to mooring sites, 4 days of work to deploy the moorings and take local measurements, 3 days transit back to Palmer, plus 3 days of our sampling on the way. It may seem like a waste of our time, having to go along for such a long ride without doing any science ourselves, but there is no choice. This is the only boat assigned to work these waters, and it is necessary for science teams to double up and wait for each other to finish with the boat. It's not like there is an airport or any other way for us to fly in and meet the ship when it is our turn to use it. We have to be patient.

There is a positive side to this - at least if the weather continues to be favorable for the next week or so, since it will be a time to get a lot of work done. Everyone has their computers with them, and with frequent e-mail connections, we can work on backlogged work once we have finished processing and examining our samples. It's also a time to relax and enjoy our surroundings, which we seldom get to do back in our offices. If the weather gets bad, however, it will be a long and interminable trip since there will be little to do but hold on and feel sick.

One thing that has happened on this cruise is that most of us have lost track of the days of the week. We might know vaguely what the date is, but not whether it is Monday or Thursday. On the boat, all days are the same, all days are work days, and there is no TV or radio, so most of the signs that tell us what day it is are gone. Someone mentioned that it was Sunday evening, so most of us are going to take a break and go watch a movie in the lounge. The ship has a very comfortable lounge, a lot like a normal living room, with big stuffed couches, a large TV and VCR, and a large collection of tapes - over 200 movies.

Monday March 29

0730 hrs 64.33S 63.35W

We arrived at Palmer Station this morning, waking up to banging sounds as the ship manuevered through the brash ice to tie up to the dock. I don't think I attached an image of the station last time when we were here, so I will do so now. Palmer is just a cluster of 5 or 6 blue buildings built on a rocky point that juts into the water, surrounded to the rear and the sides by a massive glacier that looms over it. There are places to walk onto the glacier, but you can't go far because of the crevasses and the steep cliffs around. The station can only cling to the very edge of the land, since the glaciers and mountains rise so steeply all around.

We got off the ship to get our feet on dry land, and wandered around a bit while they off-loaded the fish. We stopped at the dining room and availed ourselves of some very good coffee and fresh cookies. I talked the cook into giving me a bag of the coffee for the coming cruise leg, since the ship's brew leaves a lot to be desired, and on long cruises, such simple pleasures are important. We only had an hour or two to walk around, as the ship left at noon, moving back through the channels that lead to the north. We once again had a sunny and clear day. At one point the water was so calm that we could see the mountains reflected perfectly like a mirror. I've attached a photo of that beautiful scene, but it may not come out with the low resolution files we can transmit from here.

This is another time we are watching the weather closely. We have such a long trip, and it's out into exposed waters where we would obviously prefer not to encounter a storm. I've attached another weather map. You may not think it's important or interesting to look at these, but remember that we don't have the weather channel giving us such forecasts every few minutes. All we have are these maps, and we have to learn to read them as best we can. As you can see in the map for today, the high pressure is still dominating. We are heading for the South Orkneys, which is the easternmost of the two tiny purple islands on the weather map, located southeast of the tip of the Antarctic peninsula. I am not an experienced weather forecaster, but I'd say the outlook is good.

Tuesday March 30

0900 hrs 62 59.23 S 58 32.27 W

So far, so good. A nice smooth ride as we head further and further offshore. Not much to see here - no land in sight. Today we just had both good news and bad news on my science project. The bad news is that the algae we were seeing that resembled the toxic species we are searching for turned out to be a non-toxic species. We determined this using the molecular probes I mentioned earlier. By treating our plankton samples with six different probes which are specific for each of six different species in the particular genus we are interested in, we found that only one of the probes labelled any cells, and that probe is for a non-toxic species. These probes are needed because the differences that determine which species we are looking at are not easily observed with a normal microscope. The non-toxic species we encountered is called Pseudo-nitzschia fradulenta, an appropriate name because it is not the one we hoped to find. This is discouraging news, but we have many other stations to sample over a large area, and we have learned that these waters can and do support the growth of at least some species within this group of organisms. As I said, stay tuned.

That was the bad news. The good news is that we learned about an event that may have been due to toxic algae. A technician on the ship told us that last month, they observed a large-scale penguin mortality at Deception Island, one of the places we will sample next week. There were many penguins dead on the shore, and no obvious cause. As certain of the algal toxins we are looking for down here move easily through the food web (especially those produced by toxic Pseudo-nitzschia species) and are known to kill fish, sea lions, dolphins, and even whales, we would like to get to that area to sample. Unfortunately, we have to wait for the other science team to finish their work, but once they do, we will work our way to Deception Island to sample. It just so happens that Deception Island is a submerged volcano that looks like an upside-down C on the map, with the opening into the crater being barely wide enough to allow the ship in. Once inside, it is apparently another spectacular spot, with an abandoned whaling station to visit on shore. Since we need to look for the dead penguins, we will be going ashore, weather permitting.

Anyway, that is for another day and another time. For now, we wait.

Below I have listed our coordinates during the day today, as I understand some classes are plotting our trip and learning latitude and longitude.

1300 hrs 62 45.7S 57 30.2W

2000 hrs 62 41.7 S 55 34.67W