Routine weighs heavily today. Perhaps it’s the turning point on a voyage such as this when time is measured in days before return rather than weeks at sea.

Even the meal sittings are feeling a tad lacklustre. ‘How was the trawl?’ or ‘How deep is the next CTD?’ is starting to fall a little flat. It was a bit déjà vu that at the same time of day, at the same angle on the horizon, another fishing boat was identified, bearing the same name as the one intercepted yesterday. This time it is the ‘In Sung No 2’ and, as required, we carry out the same duty of communication. An upshot of the time we spent communicating with the fishing boat yesterday was that the depth data we gathered on the underway data logging system was used to create a new bathymetric chart. That chart provided information for a new transect that we are now covering. The cod end of the net is open so were are not catching anything, but the newly repaired stills camera will click away for two hours or more taking images of the seabed. Those pictures and the gradient map will inform the decisions on where the next seabed trawls will take place.

We are still amongst the ice. In fact late this afternoon we are running alongside a massive 38 x 18 kilometre iceberg. It takes up the entire horizon to port, while on starboard a cluster of smaller bergs are banked up under a greylit, cloud-sculpted sky. Light at this time under such a sky glances off the facets beautifully. By Martin’s calculation and reckoning on a 500 metre draft, the big berg would yield 315 million, million litres of water. (That’s 12 zeros.)

I will maintain the pattern of yesterday and head to the bridge for a pre-sunset look out before midnight, have a cup of tea and after dinner mint then read until sleep overtakes me.



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).

Pics:
Icebergs
Albatross