Written Saturday, 1 December Today is our fourth day aboard Polarstern, and we are underway to our first station. The ship looks very different already. Containers have been emptied, instruments installed, some scientists are occupied with their tricky electronics, but so far we have mastered every problem. It is hard to believe how much we have already done, how many nice and interesting people we have met and how much scientific exchange has already taken place. I feel like I have been on board much longer than four days. Some time in the morning I asked myself what day of the week it was. The answer was ea...

Written Friday, 30 November The epibenthic sledge (EBS) called “Meta“ is a prototype designed by Nils Brenke. It consists of two frames of steel with a total weight of 484 kg , and it is 3.45 m long, 1.13 m high and 1.2 m wide. It is designed to sample benthic macro-fauna from shallow waters to depths of more than 6000m. Meta was used many times in the Southern Ocean since the expedition ANDEEP I in 2002 and therefore shows many scars. None of the steel parts are straight any more. Unfortunately the container including Meta had been put on the front deck. While all boxes and smaller instruments could be unloaded and carried to the right places relatively fast (see yesterday’s entry), this was not an option for the sledge. It took half a day for three peo...

Written Thursday, 29 November After the first night at sea, which ended with a still strangely bright morning, we start a very busy day. We scientists get an introduction into the daily operations of the ship into which we will have to integrate ourselves in the next 70 days, and after that a siren calls us for a first safety drill. Today this means only that we move to the assembly point on the heli deck, dressed warmly, wearing a hat and proper shoes and the life vest. The antarctic already in my heart, I walk through the door to the outside — and I am very surprised to find the air still very warm! We are still at 37° South, and a long way away from our study area. In the afternoon we busy ourselves getting the boxes, which we had packed such a long tim...

Written Wednesday, 28 November There she was in the harbor, the R/V Polarstern, with several low-slung buildings, a security fence and a visit through customs the only thing between me and my floating home to be for the next ten weeks. You could just make out the familiar AWI logo on her smokestack over the rooftops, but with the rest of her hidden I couldn’t get a sense of her size. I’d been to sea before, but never aboard Polarstern, only in the Arctic and not for more than four weeks. A group of about a dozen scientists, technicians and students had gathered outside of the customs house in Cape Town in the heat of the midday sun, and the charity workers who were handing out food to the refuges seeking asylum in South Africa kept offering us sandwiches. I was anxious t...

PRESS RELEASE Climate change and life in the Southern Ocean Research vessel Polarstern sets out for Antarctic research season Bremerhaven, November 27, 2007. A ten-week expedition to the Lazarev Sea and the eastern part of the Weddell Sea opens this years Antarctic research season of the German research vessel Polarstern. On the evening of November 28, just some two hours after an official ceremony at the Berlin Museum of Natural History honouring Polarsterns 25th anniversary of service, the research vessel will begin its 24th scientific voyage to the Southern Ocean from Cape Town. The 53 scientists from eight nations aboard Polarstern will focus much of their work on climate-related research as part of the International Polar Year. In additio...

PRESS RELEASE The sea-ice is getting thinner - A closer look at the climate and ecosystem of the Arctic Ocean Bremerhaven, September 13, 2007. Large areas of the Arctic sea-ice are only one metre thick this year, equating to an approximate 50 percent thinning as compared to the year 2001. These are the initial results from the latest Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association lead expedition to the North Polar Sea. 50 scientists have been on board the Research Vessel Polarstern for two and a half months, their main aim; to carry out research on the sea-ice areas in the central Arctic. Amongst other things, they have found out that not only the ocean currents are changing, but community structures in the Arctic are also...

WP10 HERMES to the NORDIC MARGINS, POLARSTERN EXPEDITION PS ARK XXII/1a ( Coldwater coral reefs off Norway (72

A small but nevertheless very important piece of the puzzle in the study of climatic reconstruction of the early history of the earth is Sven Kretschmer's project with his working group from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven. His scientific instruments include the Schwerelot and the multicorer. During the whole of this expedition ANTXXIII/9, it is these drilling instruments that make the ocean floor core drilling project possible. The exact positioning is determined by parasounding equipment. The concentration of thorium 230 in sediment is particularly interesting to geochemists. This radioactive element is a disintegration product, and in water it is extremely insoluble, so it binds immediately to single minerals or other organic particles. In this way, thorium ...

The German research vessel Polarstern is now about 500km north of Prydz Bay. The engineer Konrad Kopsch from the Alfred Wegener Institute Potsdam is getting instruments (such as the so-called “bird”) ready, together with his colleagues and the geophysicist Detlef Damaske from the "Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe" (Federal Institute for Geosciences and Raw Materials) in Germany. "The bird" is a torpedo-shaped probe that is suspended by a cable a few meters below a helicopter flying over the ocean. The measuring equipment itself, which measures the magnetization at the ocean floor, is located inside the helicopter. The researchers are looking for anomalies in the magnetization data in order to be able to record and make detailed reconstructions of co...

Polarstern has arrived at Prydz Bay, the primary research area of the expedition ANTXXIII/9 of the Alfred Wegener Institute. The first task is to take sediment samples from the ocean floor at a depth of more than 700 meters. Geologist Bernhard Diekmann from the University of Potsdam stands on the ship's bridge and watches the monitor attached to the parasound equipment. This Sonar system graphically represents the layers of the sea floor sediment under the Polarstern. Diekmann is looking for areas where the sediment layers are even and parallel to each other, so that an interference-free baseline measurement can be taken. Icebergs dating back to the last ice age have left deep grooves in the ocean floor. The literature, however, does not describe the location of these areas very accuratel...