Expedition Diary January 7, 2008 3500 meters above sea level Maximum & Minimum temperatures: - 24 to - 35 °C Never a uniform white blanket on the ice sheet, the character of the surface snow takes on many different forms. On the microscale, different crystal forms tell stories of their arrival to the surface as gently falling snow, wind-battered hard pack, or deposition as surface hoar through condensation events. To a traverse train of vehicles, generous amounts of gently-fallen snow represent “snow swamps” in which the treads sink and dig their way in, sometimes preventing a vehic...

January 7th 2008 I am halfway through my sojourn at sea and loving the perpetual motion of the ship. We are moving through an endless ocean in apparently endless circles. Not having a 'destination' is quite a nice thing. There is nothing on the horizon for 360 degrees. There's no ice to be seen, not even a growler. We are nearly 200nm north of Cape Denison on the Antarctic continent, adrift on a lonely sea. In fact we do have a purpose. This is the CASO (Climate of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean) sampling area. We must cover 31 stations in six days making CTD drops of around 3,600 metres to sample the cold, dense, Antarctic bottom water that drains from the Mertz Glacier. We are working over the skid marks on Rob's Gondwana map that show the seabed cany...

Sunday January 6th 2008 A clatter of footsteps in the stairwell is a sure signal to grab the camera and follow the mob. I raced up to C deck and saw a distant spouting. The CTD door was open to the sea so I ran back down to E deck. The CASO crew was riveted, watching a pair of humpbacks curving and spouting. They moved aft and we all jumped like fleas across the trawl deck to watch them coast and roll and play in a large drift close to the ship. I scurried up to the mezzanine, craning over the ship’s rail on the way, keeping them in sight, then made a dash up the stairwell and back onto C deck. Rail spac...

Tuesday, 8 January My alarm clock rings at seven, like almost every morning, and before I get up I try to guess whether we are standing or travelling, as I do almost every morning. Did the krill people finish the calibration of the echosounder? Yesterday afternoon it still seemed like a very big task... But no, a glimpse out of the window tells me that we are quietly sailing through the polynya which surrounds the ship as calm as a little mill pond. The shelf ice edge is shimmering magically in the distance even under the overcast sky. During the morning preparations start to accommodate the 33...