Written Wednesday 19th December 2007
By Margot Foster
Pleased to report that I've found my sea legs and am spending longer in the galley after a gingery start.
I’ve been prowling the ship and everywhere you turn there's an experiment or research underway - whether it’s the continuous plankton recorder (CPR) or testing the water's chemical composition, every lab is busy. The temperature is down to 6 degrees now we are in mid fifty latitudes
I watched the CPR being winched in from the trawl deck with its silk roll trapping plankton during an overnight trawl. What a remarkable contraption it is! It’s like a chunky little silver rocket with a propeller behind it. It’s so simple and elegant and successful that this piece of equipment has not been modified since it was put into use in 1931.
The bing-bong summoned expeditioners to our first meeting with Voyage Leader this morning for a planning update.
The deployment of a range of moorings attached to all sorts of scientific equipment has gone to plan and after some days wallowing in the 50's we'll set our course for the south magnetic pole, the ice and the seabed trawls. The scientists are animated about the trawls and what might be brought to the surface. The labs will move into 12 hour shifts the day after Christmas.
On account of how busy this time will be, Christmas day on the Aurora Australis is declared to be Friday 21st December.
In addition we 'cross the line' tomorrow so the King Neptune ceremony will take place at 1500hrs. Crossing the line also heralds the ‘first iceberg’ sweep. This is a tradition which raises money for Camp Quality – the charity supported by the crew of the Aurora Australis. It costs 50c per half-hour timeslot and to win, the iceberg has to be abeam of the ship at, or closest to, a time nominated by you. The iceberg has to be visible and sighted by at least two people on the bridge - including the officer on watch. Icebergs have a minimum size and the officer on watch also has the final word on what is an iceberg and what is just a bit of floating ice – the rule is if it’s bigger than the ship then it’s a berg. Finally, the iceberg must be within 10 Nautical miles of the ship. Again, the word of the officer on watch is final.
The ‘Socialites’ are juggling Kris Kringles, Christmas décor as well as the ice-berg sweep. I have taken on organizing the ‘Shipboard Seminar’ series.
Our Sitrep (situation report) summarises an extraordinarily successful series of activities today:
“The SAZC mooring was released successfully, reaching the surface by about 11:00 and all buoys, lines and instruments were on the deck a little after mid-day. Samples from the mooring are now being processed. We then moved about 3 Nm and have pressure tested equipment to 1000m on the CTD, collected some water samples and are currently deploying the 2nd acoustic mooring for the cetacean monitoring”
With that completed we are heading for the next waypoint 740 Nm south. It’s a sampling area on the continental shelf between Dumont d'Urville and the Mertz Glacier
In between commitments I’ve devoured the book "Shackleton's Boat Journey" by F.A. Worsley which makes me feel like an absolute fraud logged on to the world in this air-conditioned iron fortress, powering along over a millpond sea at up to15 knots!
I’m heading up to the bridge to see if I can get a peek at the satellite images before I place my iceberg bet.
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).
