Ramble.....

I am afraid I have been very busy since the last update. We went out of communications range last week, and it took several days before the new very basic email system got up and running. In order for us to receive and send email, the ship has to be stationary (so we lose time) and orientated correctly so that the receiver can 'see' the INMARSAT satellite, so if the swell is in the wrong direction, we can't stop. They have been trying it every evening so far, and most of the time it works. It takes a long time to deal with emails though, as one may come through this evening, I then compose my reply, but it doesn't leave the ship until the following evening, and then if the person I have sent it to, composes a reply within a day, I get it the evening after that! As I am so busy, and communications are tricky, I will stop posting (via Laurence) for every day, so instead you will get some rambling about the past few days. Since the last post, I have done many CTDs, all of which have gone pretty smoothly. We had a few problems convincing Sevy (Vsevelod, the Russian CTD technician) to deploy the CTD when the air temperature dropped below 7degrees, which it has been for the entire week, as the sensors can freeze very quickly in the process of getting the CTD over the side and into the water. Also the past couple of days, the high precision thermometer has been missing out a few readings (it takes readings every time a bottle is shut on the CTD), so Sevy is currently trying to work out whether it is a software problem, or whether the bottles are either not firing correctly or the signal isn't getting through to the thermometer. Luckily, the last few CTDs have all been for David Pearce, so as he fires all his bottles at one depth, I don't need all the readings. I probably won't be taking water from any more CTDs until we reach Rothera (~3-4 weeks). I have seen many icebergs (got within nudging distance of a few!), a few penguins (I always seem to be doing something else when everyone else sees them!), some seals, a killer whale (amazing!) and about 10 minke whales. The minke whales played with the ship, diving right underneath the bow many times. I got a few good pictures and some people got some great pictures and videos! We have also crashed through lots of sea ice, in one case, we thought the captain (also known as the 'old man' or master) would avoid it as it was a small patch, but he decided to go straight through it! So as everyone realised what he was going to do, everyone made a dive for their equipment before it all crashed to the floor! When the ship goes through sea ice, it shudders and groans, and can tip violently from side to side, no gentle rolling! Also it pitches (tipping forwards and backwards) as the ship rides up on the sea ice and then breaks it! I think most people find it fun though! The most exciting bit for everyone on board is that we have managed to get right into Pine Island Bay! This is vital for all the scientists, as only a couple of ships have been here, and in the southern-most area near the ice front, only one ship has been here and it was the NBPalmer (American ship). The biologists are the most excited, as no biology has been done on the shelf here, so they have done trawl after trawl. Most sites they have spent a day at * swathing to find the right depth (1500m, 1000m, and 500m sites), CTDs to collect water before the sediment is stirred up, 3 Agassiz trawls and 3 EBS (Epi Benthic Sledge) trawls. I think both work similarly but catch different sized beasties! They lower a sledge to the sea floor then drag it along for 1km, close it and raise it up. Recently they have caught 6(ish) octopi so Jan (biologist) is happy! They also catch many fish, gastropods and many many more. Johnnie (IT guy) has resurrected a notice used many times before, calling the cruise, the 'cruise of death'! This is because they kill everything they catch! Apparently this cruise has been relatively humane, especially in comparison to a previous cruise, where someone was looking for a particular species of fish, but caught 300 of another species. She decided to process them all anyway, in case she never caught any of her intended species. We haven't caught anywhere near that quantity! All the geologists have been on shifts for a week now, so I have started to help out with the coring. We have done several box cores (get about ~30cm of sediment) and several piston cores (up to 3m of sediment), and processed them. The whole process starts with the cores coming on deck. We go outside (hard hats, overalls, steel-toed boots, and gloves) and collect it. With a piston core, this is relatively simple, just pulling the plastic casing, containing the sediment, out of the corer and capping each end. With a box corer, it comes up in a box (funnily enough) and the top is water, which must be drained off, before we insert the plastic tubes in and come out with a core. This is where it gets very scientific*. We use thin tubes to suck the water out! This involves precise timing, as it is easy to end up with a mouthful of incredibly salty water, and even sediment! I am convinced the deck crew are laughing at us the whole time. I haven't done too badly so far, only a bit of water, and no sediment, but poor Benny (PhD geologist) unfortunately sucked up a huge glob of sediment a couple of days ago, at which point we all laughed like drains! He was spitting for hours afterwards, convinced he could still taste it! The plastic casing containing the core is then cut just above the top of the core and capped. It is then washed and dried (which rubs off the original labels). The casing is then measured and relabelled with the length, core number and a dozen other things! This is the most important part so every time the core is cleaned, it is relabelled, so this leads to labelling one core about 5 times before it is finished with. It is then put through a magnetic susceptibility recorder * every 2cm a reading is taken. The core gets split along the centre so that one half is kept and put in an archive, and work is done on the other half. Next we describe the core using colour charts, and look at shear strength and texture. There are frequently 'burrows', small holes in the core left by animals. Finally, the smear slides and samples are taken at regular intervals along the core and where there are changes in it, and the core is bagged, wrapped, taped up and stored in the freezer (-20degrees!). There is a scientific freezer, not used on this cruise, which is kept at *70degrees!