Returning home after a successful expedition

Mar 09

Yesterday morning we rounded Cape Horn, and woke up to the sight of land. It is warm outside, maybe 11 °C, and despite the relatively mild temperatures we enjoyed during the expedition to Pine Island Bay, it now feels almost tropical. It is amazing to think that only three days south of here lies a continent covered in ice.

Our crossing of the notorious Drake Passage, separating the West Antarctic Penninsula from South America, was well timed, and we managed to pass between two large low-pressure systems. Even so, a 5–6 meter swell imparted a 30° roll to the ship and much time was spent re-securing things that nobody thought would move.

Before leaving the relative security of the Antarctic coastline and heading out into the open sea, we set the clocks back 8 hours, the only adjustment since beginning the expedition at McMurdo station (which runs on New Zealand time). For many of us, adjusting to the new time combined with the relentless motion of the ship made sleep difficult to come by for a few nights, but most are now settled into the new routine.

We are only a few days outside of Punta Arenas, and a week from returning to friends and family in Stockholm, where I am a postdoctoral researcher at Stockholm University. For the past few years my research has focused on marine geologic records from the Arctic Ocean, and what they can tell us about the extent and timing of ice during past glacial and interglacial periods. Our interpretations of these marine sedimentary archives are increasingly being placed within a larger spatial context afforded by recent advances in high-resolution bathymetric mapping, and in particular, with the installation of these systems on icebreakers such as the Oden.

This expedition to map and core glaciogenic features formed by the rapidly retreating Pine Island Bay Glacier was very successful. Results from the expedition will not only help address pressing scientific questions concerning the rate of ice-sheet retreat in the area, but should advance our understanding of the processes responsible for this retreat. This newfound knowledge, and more generically, the experiences gained working in a modern glaciated environment, will certainly bring new insights to ongoing work in the Arctic and – like all good scientific endeavors – has brought into focus a host of new questions and research ideas.

Polarstern and Oden met in Antarctica

Mar 05

A few days ago we left our main work area in the Amundsen Sea and started our long transect towards Punta Arenas in Chile. The plan is now to sneak between two major low pressure systems and to cross over to South America without being hit by one of the major storm systems that are always moving around Antarctica.

Most of the work has finished by now and the different science groups are busy preparing first analyses of the data and writing the cruise report.

Although we left our main working area and are on our way to Punta Arenas we continue to map the seafloor. The area around Antarctica is still poorly surveyed and most of the time we are collecting data in areas that have never been mapped before.

Before we left the Amundsen Sea, we passed the German research vessel Polarstern on their way to Pine Island Bay. It is very rare to have two ships at the time in this very remote part of the world, but it also shows how important this area is for different science group around the world. Similar to Oden the Polarstern has an international science team with scientists from Germany, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Poland. They are also planning to take sediment samples and study the seafloor.

Because of the preparation and expense to get to this remote location, it is important to avoid unnecessary duplicating of our mapping and sampling efforts. Fortunately, the Polarstern has helicopters on board that they use for land operations and surveying. They invited a group of us over to Polarstern where we exchanged information about our science programs and coordinated further work in this area. For me it also provided the opportunity to meet some old friends and colleagues from the British Antarctic Survey and the German Alfred Wegener Institute that are working on board of Polarstern. It feels strange, but special to meet friends at this remote part of the earth.

Searching for life in West Antarctic mud

Mar 04

One of important goals of our investigations of the history of Pine Island Bay is to find remains of marine organisms that once lived in those water. For one, their remains are to tell us about former environmental conditions, and for two they allow to date sediment layers from which they were collected. For ¹⁴C dating, we can use carbonate shells only. And, because large shells are very rare in sediments of Pine Island Bay, we also search for remains of tiny microorganisms that build carbonate skeletons. I am Polish micropaleontologist, who specializes in Antarctic foraminifera, and my job on the boat is to find remains of these tiny creatures in the sediment.

Foraminifera are unicellular organisms similar to amoeba, which are capable of building external shells, called tests. They are commonly a fraction of millimeter in size and can be found in great numbers and diversities throughout modern oceans. There are thousands and thousands of benthic species living recently on the sea floor and only few dozen of planktonic species living in water column. Today, Pine Island Bay is inhabited by couple of hundred of benthic and only one planktonic foraminiferal species. Although they are in general rare down core, in some cores they are abundant enough to help understanding the reason and timing of ice shelve retreat. It takes long time to search hundreds of mud samples for those microscopic creatures, and it is quite tricky to do on mowing boat. Therefore, during the cruise only initial investigations may be completed and they will continue for months to go back home.

A day in the life of a geologist

Feb 28

Greetings from Pine Island Bay, West Antarctica! Today, like all other days on this trip, has been extremely busy and exciting.

A typical day on the ship for me involves waking up and heading to breakfast. While at breakfast I normally find out when the first core will be taken of the day, most likely around 9am. A core is a sample of the top sediments from the seafloor, normally containing sands, gravels and muds along with some other things. The project that I am working on here on the Oden is in understanding the retreat history of the ice sheet in this bay for the last ~20,000 years, the Last Glacial Maximum, to the present time. The locations that we choose to core are based on trying to understand this problem, and to reconstruct the paleo-ice sheet. The sediment cores are used to formulate and test models on how we think that the ice sheet retreated.

Between breakfast and the first core of the day, I have about an hour to prepare for the day; getting dressed for the Antarctic weather into my warm clothes, gathering all of our coring equipment that we will need for the day, which we secure inside over the nights, and finishing up analyzing samples from the night before.

At around 9am the excitement begins, the first core is lowered down to the bottom of the Amundsen Sea. The cores are Kasten Gravity cores. These three meter tall silver boxes penetrate through the sediment, and then close their own hinge doors when they hit something hard or are filled all of the way. The core is then taken up to the boat and brought into our outdoor lab space, also known as a tent on the aft deck of the boat.

The coring team, which I am on, then begin to process the core. This entails photographing the samples, making detailed descriptions and interpretations of the geology, measuring physical properties of the sediments, sampling for later work – such as grain size measurements, sampling for foraminifera (small organisms) for our onboard paleontologist and searching for other forms of material that contain calcium carbonate (normally different types of shelled organisms). The team consists of six people; four geologists from the USA, one micro paleontologist from Poland, one geotechnical person from Sweden/Canada and a few helpers when needed. While this is all being completed, the next core of the day is being taken. On a good day on the boat (weather, sediments, etc) we take and process around four cores, sometimes more.

This makes it a continuous and busy day for coring, and processing the samples. We try to take many cores to be able to understand the deposition in the bay as the sediments that we are coring are traces into understanding how ice sheets retreated to their current locations, and reconstructing their retreat history through time. The sediments left behind by the ice sheet are our keys in understanding the past.

A day in the life of a geologist onboard is pretty busy, but in a good way, full of the excitement of finding out what samples are being brought to the surface for us to study and to understand.

Reflections of a marine geologist

Feb 25

I am a marine geology graduate student at Rice University, USA, studying the retreat history of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The main focus of our cruise on the Oden is to find material, shells or other former living things, to radiocarbon date. In very general terms, we can use these dates to determine when individual ice sheets retreated. We can also see whether the retreat was swift or if it occurred slowly.

First time experiences:

Biggest surprises:

Biggest disappointments:

Using sunscreen or hiding out in the shade – that is the question

Feb 24

The everyday life for organisms in Antarctic waters is harsh, not only due to low temperatures, but also due to occasional extremely high levels of ultraviolet radiation (UV). Just as humans, organisms face this threat by either UV-protections, such as photoprotective pigments, or by moving into the shade during periods with high radiation.

Our study organisms, small crustacean zooplankton (1–2 millimeter long), occur both in Antarctic lakes and in the sea, but have completely different life conditions. In lakes, where predators, such as fish, does not exist, the zooplankton can use efficient protective, bright red, pigmentation. However, in the sea predation from fish is very high and using red pigmentation as protection to UV would make them extremely vulnerable to visually hunting predators. So, the only option left for marine zooplankton is to move downwards to depths where UV does not reach.

Accordingly, we have found that marine zooplankton are almost unpigmented, despite the high UV, but are performing strong migrations between deep, UV protected waters during day, and surface waters during night. In addition to studying vertical position and pigmentation levels of zooplankton in the sea, we also perform an experiment on board Oden where zooplankton are exposed, or not exposed, to UV. In this way we are investigating if they are able to induce pigmentation, that is, to change their strategy from hiding out in the shade (migrate to deep waters) to using sun protection (protective pigmentation). Hence, we aim at understanding how organisms manage this hostile environment and why they use different strategies at different locations.

Waiting for better weather

Feb 22

Today is day three of sitting in the tail end of a low-pressure system that we are waiting to pass. For the past two days we had to resist the urge to put our coring and CTD equipment in the water due to choppy seas and gusting winds. This is, of course, on top of the added challenge that we are living on an icebreaker in unusually ice-free waters. It is the Oden's football shaped hull that can allow her to list in even the slightest ice-free swell and her teeter-totter motion quickly separates the real sailors from the occasional cruising scientist.

Eventually, however, the sea will calm and we will be able to deploy the coring equipment and the CTD again. The CTD is an instrument that measures conductivity (salinity), temperature and depth profiles in the water column. It is mounted in a cage with 12 water sampling Niskin bottles directly above. A winch using a conductive cable lowers this cage (rosette) to the bottom of the seafloor while the CTD continuously collects data that can be viewed on a computer screen in real time. On its return to the surface the Niskin bottles are electronically closed at key depths capturing different water masses. Samples are drawn from these bottles and later analyzed to monitor CTD/rosette performance, and for oxygen isotopes to assess meltwater content. From this data we hope to be able to describe the boundaries and spreading of water masses, infer their mixing histories and interactions with sea-ice and continental ice.

In the meantime, while the pressure system outside is low, the moral inside the Oden remains high. Being at sea presents you with the unique challenge of rolling with the punches and making the best of all situations. Creativity can be at its finest when sitting and waiting for weather to pass and more often than not you take on new hobbies you never dreamed of trying. A big favorite on the ship has become the PS3 game Rock Band. Almost nightly you can poke your head into the movie lounge and see grown adults playing with fake guitars and beating on plastic drums like kids who just raided their mom's kitchen cupboards creating an impromptu band from pots and pans. This is entertaining none-the-less because we are after all scientists and not the lead singers of famous rock bands' even though while in that moment of playing Rock Band, we might actually think we are.

Ageless Island

Feb 19

There are a lot of uncertainties; all of the future and a lot of the past. One, however, tends to believe one’s own eyes and what has been seen gets largely accepted as true.

As I was heading for my first longer boat journey over larger expanses of water than I had ever experienced before, I grew interested in the mysteries of oceans. Stories told by those who survived the fiercest of storms can only be surpassed in thrills by the stories of those who did not survive, told by others. But those stories are all singular cases of unrepeatable history, something that happened to others. I wanted to look into something that could still be participated and found myself soon reading about phantom islands.

These islands are pieces of land that have been found, seen and even landed on, positioned and charted on maps, but that have been found vanished when others have sailed out to see them. Most of these stories are, of course, nothing else but manifestations of human vanity for claiming something unknown having been found, but a good deal of cases awoke my interest and I soon came across the most appealing of terms a cartographer may use: ED, Existence Doubtful.

For a visually orientated person with a good sense of logic that term got my imagination stirred a good deal. What could possibly be the conditions that would cause a mapmaker with veritable authority write ED next to an island? To me an island had always been a patch of solid land that, with certainty, either exists or not. The doubt concerning anything as easily confirmable as physical existence of land protruding from water added the most delicate touch of fiction into de facto exact satellite data on which the maps are presently based. I wanted to see what an island, whose existence is regarded doubtful, looks like. Would seeing of such an island make the doubt dissolve and bring the island into existence? Were these islands that were not seen by anybody and could such still be found?

Feeding the search engines of the World Wide Web with those words "Existence Doubtful" I very soon found myself on the home page of Swedish Polar Research Secretary and reading the accounts of Jakob Wegelius a forerunning artist aboard Oden on her voyage to the Southern Ocean in 2007/08. He quoted, in his delicate book of drawings and text inserts in the form of travel diary, the British Admiralty’s sailing instructions for Antarctic waters: “/About 95 miles NNE Bear Peninsula, an island, existence doubtful, is charted in position 72//°42’S, 108//°35’W”./ On his journey two years before mine it had not been possible to get closer to those coordinates despite his awoken interest, certainly very similar to mine, and the status of the island had so been left lingering unconfirmed.

Our cruise plan, as I found out, was very similar to his though in opposite direction and would take us to immediate vicinity of the charted position. I started immediately feeding those in charge of the route planning of our expedition with my interest in getting to see that mystical little island and though everything depends on a number of factors on seas sprayed with icebergs and occasionally covered by packed sea ice, my wish had been well recorded and remembered when we on February 16^th started to approach the Pine Island Bay after a good week’s sailing from McMurdo. To keep the cruise speed high we had been a well off shore sailing mostly open waters and now, coming again closer to land, the detour via the island’s given coordinates wasn’t too bad and I was informed that we heading that way.

A good many truths are relative. Sun is supposed to rise in the morning and night is assumed to start as darkness falls. Cruising across the longitudes on high latitudes makes the way around the world relatively short. We have been crossing time zones every second day without altering our clocks and causing so a considerable failure in our ship time. It gets dark now for few short hours soon after seven in the afternoon. At midnight it is relatively light again. We have also crossed the International Date Line on our way east and sailed so to our yesterday without acknowledging that. We are some 20 hours ahead of the rest of the world on these longitudes, but as we haven’t seen anybody or anything man-made for eight days we feel free to set out time whichever way we want it. We go on sailing in the future.

Our arrival to the waters of the doubtfully existing island was estimated to take place around midnight. I hoped for some ice on our way to slow us down giving day some extra time to brighten up. Photography has become over the years my occupation and the means of studying the world around me. Dim light and the consequent long exposure times give me some hard times when pictures need to be taken from aboard a moving and rocking boat.

At quarter past 11 we got a yellow dot at the given coordinates on the radar screen among all the other similar dots marking icebergs. It took another 15 minutes for the island to appear from the morning mist and become gradually visible for eye. It looked just like any other of the hundreds of icebergs we had encountered. To judge by eye, it was one of them, an iceberg.

On chart an island was anyway drawn at this position and cautious for potentially shallow uncharted waters we kept some distance to the solid mass on our port side, weather it was an island or an iceberg.

In the dull and grey light of cloudy mornings ice masses appear holy as a thin white halo of cold air and blowing snow hovering above them remain visible before the brighter light bleaches it away. At twenty to midnight we were closest to the ice covered entity and I took my photographs of it before we took a new course yet deeper toward south and confirmed land.

It was assumed that there might well be a shallower point at the seabed on those given coordinates and an iceberg has anchored itself there more or less enduringly to haunt the cartographers. Maybe somewhat permanently stationary iceberg, standing in below zero degree waters and thus not melting, deserves to be drawn on maps, but an island it most probably was not. But what would an island look like here, how could one tell snow and ice covered land from solid ice? Our technical apparatus on board had registered no signs of the 500 metre deep water getting any shallower toward the island. We could not witness seabed rising and suggesting a possibility of an island, but then again the radius of the radar didn’t reach that far to be quite sure. The island kept its well-preserved secret and ED, Existence Doubtful, remains the best way to describe it despite our eyewitness.

Icebergs or doubtfully existing islands are not given names, but for myself I named the ice entity Ageless Island. It had been the birthday of my girlfriend and my brother had turned forty while I had been looking at the well aged, but fresh and shining white island rise from the mist and disappear the same way an hour later. All of them appear ageless to me and young forever.

On the way to Pine Island Bay

Feb 15

It is a gray and foggy Monday, and we are sailing through Amundsen Sea on our way to Pine Island Bay. We had hoped to arrive there today and to start coring, but we got delayed due to the winds last night which prevented us from going at the speeds we had liked to. Indeed, last night was the darkest and windiest we had so far on this cruise. On several occasions during the 20.00–24.00 multibeam echo sounder watch I share with Björn Eriksson, we were quite happy that our chairs (on rolls!) were 'secured for sea', that means, securely tied with a rope; otherwise we would have been rolling back and forth with them in concert with Odens motions! Our 'office' corner is on Oden's bridge, and looking up from our at least 5 computer monitors (labelled with clear instructions for their use such as "this is NOT a touchscreen!" and "No butterfingers!") we enjoy the most spectacular views you can possibly get by looking out of an office window (Picture 1).

The multibeam echo sounding is operated in a 24/7 mode – that is, 24 hours every day – and gives us images of the seafloor's surface as we sail across it, no matter how deep the water is. So far, water depth has ranged from 400 meter in McMurdo Sound to more than 4000 meter in Ross and Amundsen Sea. We are taking turns watching the system: each member of our multibeam-team is 4 hours on watch, 8 hours off, 4 hours on watch and then 8 hours off again. During our shifts, we inspect the incoming raw data related not only to the seafloor's surface (multibeam data), but also to its vertically layered structure (subbottom profile sonar data). The latter is determined from high resolution chirp sonar soundings which are also recorded and inspected in realtime, as well as stored for later postprocessing. The sound of the sonar can be heard in most places on Oden: it 'chirps' every few seconds and is blending with the other sounds that Oden makes while ploughing through the sea. The only place I have not yet heard the chirp is Odens gym – howewer, the volume of the music we listened to while exercising might have contributed...

Why are we interested in the seafloor's surface, and the older layers hiding below? Because the seafloor contains a record of former glaciations of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Indeed, former ice masses, advancing from the Antarctic continent onto the continental shelf and transporting huge masses of ice from the inland toward the sea by means of so-called ice streams, left their traces behind: on the seafloor we are monitoring! These traces include drumlins, mega-scale glacial lineations, grounding zone wedges and iceberg scours, and tell a history of a waxing and waning Antarctic ice sheet in the past much like moraines in the Alps tell us something about past and present retreat of glaciers. Eventually, we will take sediment cores at the 'crimescenes' of these former glaciations, and interfere their spatio-temporal history by dating these cores (Figure 2).

Admittedly, linking the Alps and Antarctica is a bit clumsy and is not more than a humble attempt to connect what one sees in this remote place to something one is familiar with. But I suspect that this might be impossible: The scenery is probably beyond comparison with any other on this planet, simply because of the scales. I have been to Greenland last summer, and flew across the Greenland Ice Sheet in a transect from west to east. I thought it was huge. It seems small now in comparison to these enormous ice masses that are right now hiding in the fog, and who send us reminders of their existence in the form icebergs, ranging from huge and sometimes intimidating tabular beasts to small jewels sculptured and repeatedly overturned by ocean currents, glittering bluishly in the sun.

Rapport från en lärare på vift

Feb 10

Tidig morgon torsdag 4 februari blev vi väckta av personalen på Windsor Hotel, Christchurch, Nya Zeeland, för att bli transporterade till flygplatsen. Vi blev faktiskt väckta tre gånger om. Två gånger för att bli informerade om när vi borde vakna. Första gången fick vi informationen att den planerade incheckningen vid 04.30 blivit framskjuten till 07.30. Någon timme senare fick vi veta att incheckningen åter tidigarelagts till 05.00.

Väl på flygplatsen lastades vi och vår packning ombord på det amerikanska militärflygplanet och cirka fem timmar senare landade vi på flygfältet utanför McMurdo, Antarktis. Ganska snabbt blev vi transporterade in till McMurdo och vidare ut på isen där Oden låg och väntade på oss.

Det tycktes även som vi var väntade av en viss pingvin. Cirka 100 meter bort kom den gående rakt i vår riktning för att välkomna oss. Under tiden kamerorna plockades fram kom den allt närmre, ömsom vaggande, ömsom glidande på mage och stannade inte förrän än ett par meter framför oss, där den slutligen bjöd på sig själv att fotograferas i alla möjliga vinklar (Bild 1).

Vi har sedan några dagar lämnat hamnen i McMurdo och är nu på väg österut mot Pine Island Bay. I början syntes gott om pingviner och sälar vid iskanten. Även de väldiga ryggarna hos ett dussintals späckhuggare har skymtats. Nu, längre ut från land, får vi nöja oss med att horisonten här och var bryts av pampiga isberg (Bild 2).

Kartläggningen av havsbotten med Multibeam-ekolodet pågår dygnet om, lika så mätningarna av den kosmiska strålningen. Några CTD-prover, vilka mäter salthalt och temperatur på upp till 900 meters djup, har slängts överbord (Bild 3). Förberedelserna för sedimentsprover och övriga mätningar är i full gång. Filmgruppen har haft många kreativa möten med allt ökad intensitet, så vi kan nog räkna med att expeditionens första film rullar i Odens biosalong i kväll.

Icebergs dead ahead and all around

Feb 09

At the moment we have struck out from McMurdo a ways into the open seas and the major events outside at this point are the large icebergs that drift slowly past. They are an impressive sight to see, and come in all shapes and sizes. For today's pictures I will have a size comparison so that you can get an idea of how big they really are. I took this last night right before bed. Matthias and I were snapping a few shots and I zoomed in on the picture I had just taken to find that there were little Adélie penguins sitting on the berg that you could not see with your eyes. The first one is taken with my zoom lens all the way in and the second is a crop of the first so you can more clearly see the penguins.

Of all the animals I have seen thus far the little Adélie is by far my favorite. As we were leaving McMurdo yesterday we had to break some pack ice to get out into the ocean. There was a group of us sitting and watching for wildlife, there were actually a number of Orcas in the area as well. As you approached a group of Adélie they seemed to pay the ship no mind until it was too close to ignore any more, then one of them made a motion and they all went scampering off the far side of the ice like mad.

It really surprised me how quickly they can walk, and how quickly they must swim because on a few occasions they would jump back up onto the ice they had abandoned, to see if the ship was gone or something, only to find that the ship was still there and then make a quick turn and back into the sea. The other part that really gets me is that when they come out of the water, often enough they will land on their feet, not their bellies. As you can tell I really do enjoy watching them, and if it were legal, I would totally be bringing back a flock to live in Wisconsin (I think they would rather enjoy it up there since the weather is so similar).

So far the temperature has not been too bad at all, I would guess that when it is nice and sunny the temperature remains somewhere just above freezing. However, since the wind is always blowing at about 40 mph or so the wind chill really gets to you. Luckily you can generally just pick the side of the boat that is not in the wind and it is actually pretty nice to just sit outside and take it all in.

So far the whole experience has been great. The data acquisition is mostly taking care of itself, everyone on board has been very nice, the food is better than what I would get at a nice restaurant at home, and even the rocking of the boat in the open seas is relaxing and reassuring at this point (No bad weather so far, keep your fingers crossed please).

That is all for recent news really. We did have a very busy time while we were docked in McMurdo with all the loading and unloading and touristy kinds of stuff to do. We got in just after lunch on Sunday. Matthias and I took a route straight through town to the base of Observation Hill, it is not a mountain or anything by any means, but it is by far the largest thing that I have ever climbed in my life (and probably the most fun too). We made it to the top in about 40 minutes with a few brief stops along the way and what a view! We got lucky that day because the clouds had cleared away completely and we had a wonderful view of everything. Truly breathtaking.

We decided that we would make our way to the Kiwi (New Zealand) base first and proceeded to take a little bit less traveled, and a lot steeper, path down the other side of the hill. Then a walk around the base of the hill to the main road between the two bases. We ended up hitching a ride about half way between them. Unfortunately you are only allowed to visit the gift shop if you do not have an invitation to be there, but it was nice all the same. Actually I had a great time because they had knives for sale and I was in desperate need of one since mine was lost when I went through security in Minneapolis. So now I get to carry a knife from Antarctica wherever I go.

I left a little bit ahead of everyone else and caught a ride back to McMurdo to search out a friend I had met on the plane ride down from the States. He is a winter-over cook there and I needed to convince him to cook me up a good cheeseburger and fries before I don't see anything like that for a month and a half. We had a nice chat and then I wandered back to the boat to help with the loading of supplies and setting up of labs.

We left sometime just after the end of the Super Bowl yesterday and it looks like today will be very lazy. Everything is tied down and not much work will be going on. Maybe I will get a tour of the engine room today, I am not sure. I think I will go outside and see if I can find anything to do after I take coffee.

(Matthias = Matthias Danninger, scientist ICETOP/ICECUBE project Stockholm University)

Michelingubbe

Feb 08

Nu har äntligen hela gruppen anlänt till McMurdo. De resterande deltagarna kom häromdagen i en C17 från Christchurch som lågt sniffade över Oden innan de landade på Pegasus Airfield, McMurdo (Bild 1). Sedan kördes vi alla direkt ut i Hägglundsbandvagnar till Oden som låg förtöjd vid isen. I samband med ombordstigningen på Oden approcherades vi av en representant från lokalbefolkningen, som trotsat det ganska bistra vädret. Det var troligen ett försök till att önska oss lycka och välgång på färden. Men tyvärr gick stora delar av budskapet förlorat eftersom ingen lyssnade på vad som sades, utan i stället som helt förtrollade försökte föreviga det hela (Bild 2). Till slut tröttande representanten på att försöka tala till en folkmassa som ändå inte lyssnade och la sig på mage och simmade i väg.

Vi förbereder oss nu för att lämna McMurdo och som en del i de sista förberedelserna genomgick vi alla en säkerhetsövning där vi gick igenom och provade den säkerhets- och räddningsutrustning som finns ombord. En nödvändighet eftersom vi kommer att segla i några av de värsta farvattnen som finns på jorden. Vi kommer att möta stormar, höga vågor och isberg så jag tror knappast att filmen Titanic kommer att visas i biosalongen under expeditionen.

Om man inte såg ut och kände sig som en Michelingubbe innan så gjorde man det garanterat efter att man hade fått på sig överlevnadsdräkten och sedan försökte röra sig (Bild 3 och 4). Som tur var så behövde vi inte hoppa i vattnet och simma i dräkten, för det hade nog varit en omöjlighet.

Hummerfiske

Feb 04

Någonstans i översättning blev det nog fel. För vår franske helikopterpilot på 45 minutersturen ut till Taylor Valley, fick för sig att vi skulle ut och fiska upp pyttesmå humrar i sjöarna där ute (Bild 1).

Det Samuel Hylander och Lars-Anders Hansson från Lunds universitet är på jakt efter är zooplakton, och allra helst vill man hitta copepoder, pyttesmå kräftdjur. De är intresserade av är hur dessa pyttesmå djur skyddar sig mot den starka UV strålningen här nere och hur avvägningen mellan bra UV skydd = väldigt röd, och bra skydd mot predatorer (fiskar) = väldigt vit, det vill säga nästan osynlig, är. I sjöar och pölar här nere finns inga predatorer så man tror att de är väldigt röda som skydd den starka UV strålningen.

Under expeditionen med Oden kommer man att samla in zooplankton ur havsvattnet för att se hur de som lever i havsvatten har anpassat sig för att skydda sig mot UV (röda) och predatorer (vita). Kanske de ser ut som små polkagrisar? Undrar vad polkagris heter på franska?

All fältverksamhet här nere är sedan länge avslutad. Allt är i tillbommat och ihoppackat och McMurdo stationen stänger för vintern om en dryg vecka. Så vi var helt ensamma ute och kunde njuta av absolut tystnad och ett mycket kargt och öde landskap. Det är inte för inte man testar teorier och utrustning för Marsmissioner i Dry Valleys dit Taylor Valley hör.

Efter att ha borrat igenom den tjocka isen så började ”hummerfisket” som pågick i två dagar i sträck (Bild 2). Fast vi bytte faktiskt sjö mitt i för att pröva fiskelyckan på ett nytt ställe. "Fisket" går till så att man skickar ned en vattenhämtare på fler olika djup och sedan filtrerar vatten man får upp. Lagom när man avslutat en mätserie, tagit en fikapaus och en kort powernap så är det dags för nästa mätserie och så rullade det på.

Det är Antarktis och det är sen senhöst så det är ganska kallt. Provtagning och analys medför ett väldigt plaskande, vilket gjorde att det mesta vi höll på med snabbt frös, vilket försvårade det hela (Bild 3 och 4). Men inget hinder var stort nog för att stoppa de energiska Lunda-forskarna och förhoppningsvis publiceras snart nya, revolutionerade, data.

Brandkårsutryckning

Feb 03

Första dagarna här nere har varit fyllda av olika genomgångar, en massa möten och utbildningar. Prova och hämta utrustning. Väga utrustning. Lämna utrustning. Följt av lite mer planeringsmöten och genomgångar. Allt för att vi ska kunna jobba ute i fält på ett säkert och fungerade sätt. Men vi har varit otroligt effektiva och lyckats komprimera över en veckas arbete till ett par dagar, vilket resulterat i långa dagar. Arbetet har flutit på bra trots ett par  "incidenter".

Man är väldigt oroliga för att de ska börja brinna här nere. Eftersom det är så torrt så brinner det bra, mycket bra. För ett par år sedan brann till och med brandbilen upp vilket man skulle kunna tro skulle vara omöjligt. Eftersom det brinner så bra så är man maniskt rädda för att det ska börja brinna och fyller alla byggnader från golv till tak med brandvarnare och brandsläckare. Det finns naturligtvis tydligt uppmärkta nödutgångar överallt och man genomför brandinspektioner och brandövningar med jämna mellanrum.

Så när vi hade genomgången av våra nödkök så var det kanske inte helt oväntat att vi även skulle få en inblick i hur brandbekämpning i Antarktis fungerar.

Brian, vår instruktör, gick kanske lite för noga igenom på hur det fungerar, vad man ska tänka på när man använder dem, hur man lagar det om det skulle gå sönder och hur man gör olika anpassningar, för helt plötsligt så gick brandlarmet. Folk strömmade ur huset genom någon av alla nödutgångar samtidigt som brandkåren sladdade in på gårdsplanen. Med sirener och blinkande rödljus hade de kört i högsta fart de dryga 200 meterna från brandstationen till vårt hus vilket naturligtvis påkallade hela stans uppmärksamhet.

Kvällens samtalsämne i matsalen var att vikingarna hade kommit till stan med sitt stora skepp och nu börjat gå bärsärk och elda upp husen, så det var säkrast att låsa dörren.

Att flyga till Antarktis är inte så lätt som man skulle kunna tro

Jan 29

Vi gick upp lite efter 4 för att vara på flygplatsen vid 6 så att vi skulle hinna packa ihop vår utrustning, checka in, klara av säkerhetskontroll, passkontroll, tull, och inte minst att klä på oss alla de kläder som krävs för att man ska få flyga söderöver. Lite efter 8 var det tänkt att vi skulle lyfta och äntligen påbörja sista etappen på vår resa till Antarktis.

Men det går sällan som det är tänkt. För dagen följde det amerikanska flygvapnets inofficiella motto ”hurry up and wait” eller på svenska ”bråttom bråttom bråttom – vänta vänta vänta”.  Men efter ett par cykler av ”bråttom-vänta” så satt vi till slut ombord på den C-17 som skulle ta oss ned till Antarktis.

Fastspända med öronpropparna ordentligt instoppade i öronen, i ett misslyckat försök att döva det monotona motorljudet, väcktes vi av en myndig militär stämma som över den raspiga ljudanläggningen sa att vädret i McMurdo var för dåligt för att landa i för tillfället. Vi skulle alltså inte lyfta utan i stället återigen gå in i väntafasen. Först ombord men sedan slussades vi in i en ny terminal, i ett nytt skjul, för ytterligare ett par timmars väntan. Det var bara att anpassa sig, lägga sig till rätta på golvet och försöka ta igen förlorad sömn.

Jag hade lagom kommit ordentligt in i djupsömn när jag väcktes av att folk snubblade över mig. Vi var tillbaks in i bråttomfasen igen. Men denna gången var det på riktigt. För lite drygt fem timmar senare var vi i Antarktis. Precis i tid för att precis missa middagen. Men vad gör väl det.

– Vi är i Antarktis!

(Och jag fick trots allt en skinksmörgås, ett äpple och vatten till lunch).

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