It is heresy to say this out loud when our key projects are dependent on being in open water - but I do enjoy being in the ice.
We have shared the company of many large tabular bergs as well as some scattered bergy bits today. I have learned about the ship sinkers - the growlers, and correctly identified brash ice. I've seen pancake and fused and rafted, know a bummock from a hummock, and have seen frazzle, and grease and slush.
It was Toby that pointed out an odd feature in the distant sea. He had his binoculars straight onto it. "It's black... sticking up out of the water. It's not a whale. It's some kind of structure. No, it's an iceberg!"
It was not large but made up of irregular rounded shapes, partially submerged. It was licorice black except for a white segment like a flag sticking up. Several theories are offered. It is a jade iceberg, made from very old, very hard glacial ice formed at the bottom and coloured by ancient algae, suspended, frozen and compressed. The rest of the berg has thawed but this tough remnant remains and has only now rolled up to the surface for its dying days. Another suggests it is sediment gathered at the bottom of the glacier as it moved off the continent. Someone suggests Photoshop, but I am not trained in that program. Sadly we do not have a glaciologist aboard so I must wait for further information.
The mariner's handbook warns of coloured green/blue ice: "This type of ice is extremely hard and very dangerous to shipping not excluding icebreakers, especially the very hard multi year ice. For all practical purposes it can be considered to be of the same hardness as floating steel reinforced concrete. Striking a large piece of this type of ice would have the same effect as striking a solid concrete dock wall. Even at a very slow speed the consequences could be disastrous."
I can only think that my black iceberg must be an extremely concentrated jade berg.
The past days have been a classic example of the need for flexibility. CASO CTD plans changed on the run as we dealt with the movement of dense pack ice across some of the stations on our sampling transect.
When we were blocked we simply shifted the station site to another point of similar depth. We changed direction repeatedly and reduced the planned number of stations. Today the intensive CASO CTD grid has been completed, the data confirming that the Mertz bottom water streams over the continental shelf in more than one place.
Now another change. We are taking advantage of the good weather to shift the pole compass for the last time and Voyage Leader is hoping the ice showing on the satellite to the south-west will have shifted sufficiently to begin the CEAMARC trawling tomorrow.
It is midnight and the sun is just about to set. It is hard to go to bed when through the porthole blazes a dazzling orange orb filling the cabin with light.
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).