... now we are steaming towards the southernmost part of the Lomonosov Ridge in completely open water. I cannot help thinking, is this how the Arctic Ocean will look like in the future if the trend of diminish summer sea ice continues? Without ...
... frown upside down. I would love to go deeper into the ice. Big fat blue ice hunks that shoot up in the air when breaking through it. PhD student Barrientos and I had a fun night in the bar talking to the russian colleagues the other night. ...
... made in the very loose pack ice at about 80°30’N, 154ºE before we headed for the southern Lomonosov Ridge working area of Box 4. The birds to the left are Kittiwakes and to the right an Ivory Gull is sitting. Photo: Martin Jakobsson ...
... milky white layer that covers large areas. Since we presently have a quite big ocean swell when the freezing is taking place, the milky white layer bulges up and down with the swell. Smaller turbulent waves that otherwise make the ocean ...
... up and switched from field to office work. It completely changed the scenery onboard and it’s almost a bit sad walking around the labs to see everything stuffed away and sea secured. Almost over. I still hope to keep going through the ...
We should have flown to McMurdo today. Instead: another baking hot summer’s day in Christchurch. Our shuttle to the US Antarctic Program base out at the airport was due to pick us up ...
... “It’s just round that khaki coloured building over there”… as I looked out on a mass of brown industrial looking sheds and containers and dorm buildings. Two days later and it feels like I’m getting the hang of things, and it’s a ...
... Sea with Principal Investigator John Anderson: www.earthscience.rice.edu) and a group from Louisiana State Univ, working in the Eastern Ross Sea with the Chief Scientist on board the ship, Phil Bart (www.geology.lsu.edu). We’re a small group ...
... floor), chirp sonar (to ‘see through’ and record the stratigraphy of the upper ~20m or so of sediment) and we’re taking a large number of sediment cores to directly sample the surface and up to 6m of buried sediment. The sonars have been ...
... Date Line. The ship’s operating on New Zealand time, and the geophysical equipment is operating on GMT. I’m working the night shift in broad daylight. Confused? Good. You’re not alone.
... resolution. And in contrast to the chirp and multibeam, which are mounted on the ship’s hull and emit a short clicking sound, the seismic pulse is fired from an airgun towed ~60 m behind the ship. I think those of us who’ve never been ...
... that. The Lows seem to be leaving us alone right now. The Sun’s out, the water’s flat and littered with organic-looking patches of ‘sugar ice’, the data’s coming in beautifully, England kicked off this year’s Six Nations rugby with a win in ...
... and more ocean and more ocean around us, for some reason it’s still important for my brain to know whether I’m looking out to the north or south. I check where we’re at with data import, processing, multibeam editing. There is always ...
... the Lab to be cleaned up, described, logged, sampled and archived. And the MT’s on the back deck have been working flat out to turn around core after core after core. We’re targeting various grounding zone wedge surfaces in the complex ...
I asked for some wind, to disturb the forming sea ice and give us some open water and clean data. 40 knot winds and breaking waves was not what I had in mind. The blue and white skies and seas look beautiful outside; my multibeam computer screen ...
... in the pitch dark, reducing visibility and the ship’s speed, 2 hours out from our final core site with the clock ticking down to handover. Another quick change of plans and, fortunately, a short-lived snowstorm (though one that had me pretty ...
... Freire from the Department of Geological Sciences has been onboard to see that the multibeam echo sounder is working continuously and that is it regularly calibrated with sound speed measurements of the ocean water. Francis also operates ...
... still muddy but the rocky scree made for reasonable footholds. We then climbed about 200 m up across the slope looking for any outcrops of marine shale, which is our prime target for aquatic reptiles. Grzegorz found an impression of an ...
... oldschool and ridiculously simple and yet there’s no better way to learn about an ecosystem than to put on hiking boots and search for bones, bend on the knees and determine plant species composition, take binoculars and look out for ...
... even cleared in the moment of writing, August 2. This means that we have to break through the sea ice that is blocking us from reaching the working area for the expedition, the Petermann Fjord and adjacent areas all the way across to ...
