Written Tuesday 18th December 2007

By Margot Foster

I am fragile this morning and take a simple breakfast of toast and vegemite.

I find that keeping busy is the key so I head for the bridge and a chat with the ship’s master. Captain Ian Moodie has made dozens of trips into the ice. These conditions, ‘pitching in a 3 metre swell’, as he notes in the ship log, are perfect. We are very lucky to have such ideal conditions for the deployment of moorings. The crew on the exposed trawl deck man-handle large and heavy equipment into place for deployment into the sea assisted by winches, ropes and chain.

Perfect conditions indeed. But why do I have the queasy creep? I think it’s because we are sloshing around in the swell; at times pitching and at other times rolling, confusing the balance and making it impossible to predict the ship’s motion.

The emergency drill took my mind off things for a while. Into the ice clobber and up to the heli-deck in time for roll-call. I do not want to be the one whose name is called out repeatedly and whose tardiness is noted.

A light lunch but a need to take it easy in the lounge where I watched Doctor Edi train up a few volunteer assistants in first aid. I could only half listen as the ‘queasy’ was still lurking, but the great distraction was the Christmas decoration. There is a tree up and a few baubles. Danica and Melissa were struggling with the tinsel, so with Doctor we formed a new team and festooned the entire ceiling of the port side mess.

There is a notice on the whiteboard. PhD student Chris Gillies is looking for volunteers for a kelp raft survey of the Southern Ocean. His supervisor, Dr Steven Smith at the National Marine Science Centre in Coffs Harbour has asked him to make some observations for him.

Researchers are always looking for opportunities to increase their data and when Chris was named as an expeditioner on Voyage 3, Dr Smith seized on the chance to add to data gathered on previous voyages in the Southern Ocean.

His work examines the role floating kelp plays in dispersing marine benthic invertebrates between distant locations in sub-Antarctic latitudes in the Southern Ocean. I’ve joined the observation shift on the bridge and we are looking for all kelp passing the vessel on the portside over hourly time slots.

We note the type – Mostly it’s Durvillaea antarctica which has thick flattened straps and often carries its base, or ‘holdfast’, which looks like a half soccer-ball. This is an important detail as the holdfast provides habitat for marine invertebrates such as worms mollusks and small crustaceans, which would be transported in this part of the kelp raft. We also guesstimate the size of the raft, note the latitude and longitude of the sighting and the speed of the ship.

This sort of long-term research is pieced together over decades and will test the hypothesis that marine invertebrates were transported between sub-Antarctic islands on clumps of kelp. The kelp might drift across the ocean but can the fauna survive such journeys, and if they land can they survive?

There is more work to be done but the observations on Voyage 3 will add to Dr Smith’s research.

Margot Foster is a journalist currently on board the Australian Aurora Australis, an Australian research vessel currently participating in the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML, IPY project 53). She works with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).