Written Friday 21st December
‘Happy Christmas’… ‘Merry Christmas’ echoes along the corridors. To mark the day breakfast is 0830 rather than 7.30 and there will be a long lunch.
We are at -62 48, 142 51 for our Antarctic Christmas. It’s freezing outside, the fog has lifted and seas are rippled with a northwesterly swell to 2m.
Our sitrep reports ‘In transit to the main sampling area for both CEAMARC and the southern CASO sites. Expeditioners and crew are busy with last minute preparations for Christmas lunch and festivities this afternoon. The 3rd CPR is currently in the water. Yesterday afternoon the first bulk seawater sample was collected for metagenomic analysis using techniques based on those developed for sequencing the human genome.’
I have been invited to join Steve Rintoul’s team doing the CTD sampling for the CASO project. My training session is before lunch. Immediately daunting is the computer screen displaying other than a word document. There are in fact three screens before us and a surround of electronics - some of which have indicators we’ll need to monitor.
Graphs of data fields blink in dazzling colours with unfamiliar headings. There’s an exacting sequence to learn, data to enter within seconds, and options we must NEVER select. (The team would be amazed that I need more detail on what ‘pressure’ refers to and what terms like ‘down cast’ mean. I feign nonchalance but plan a secret tutoring session.
But first there are drinks before our Christmas lunch, this being one of three designated ‘special days’ where at the Voyage leaders discretion some alcohol is provided. So glasses are raised under the tinsel and the decibels rise in animated conviviality.
The galley has prepared a feast – crayfish and king prawns and hot and cold smoked salmon, a phalanx of salads and roasts of ham and fowl with all the vegetable trimmings. Mince tarts and trifle and fat black Tasmanian cherries with great bowls of berry fruit salads follow, with a trail of chocolates and sweets at every gathering spot.
Santa calls each of us to sit upon his knee and presents us with a wrapped gift, and so the holiday day rolls away. The call went up of the first iceberg sighting at 2130hrs - and what a beauty. We passed close by. It was a big worn tabular one with lots of caves and fissures, glowing iridescent blue.
We will be reaching the ice shelf tomorrow morning just south of the South Magnetic Pole near Commonwealth Bay, which means I will be in exactly the opposite place to Santa who will be at the North Pole preparing. Imagine that!
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).
