Written Thursday 20th December 07 By Margot Foster A social day with the inaugural ‘Shipboard Seminar’ scheduled at 1300hrs These are to be held in ‘D’ deck recreation room twice a week. Today’s bill: “Dr Bryan G. Fry, from the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at the University of Melbourne is speaking on ‘Evolution of an Arsenal: Diversification of the Reptile Venom System’. Dr Fry will show some marvellous pictures of dangerous reptiles” We have more offers of talks than there are spaces for them so I’ll offer a ‘Speakers Corner’ in the evenings as well. We have crossed the line – the 60th parallel, and are officially in Antarctica. The event is marked by a vi...

Written Wednesday 19th December 2007 By Margot Foster Pleased to report that I've found my sea legs and am spending longer in the galley after a gingery start. I’ve been prowling the ship and everywhere you turn there's an experiment or research underway - whether it’s the continuous plankton recorder (CPR) or testing the water's chemical composition, every lab is busy. The temperature is down to 6 degrees now we are in mid fifty latitudes I watched the CPR being winched in from the trawl deck with its silk roll trapping plankton during an overnight trawl. What a remarkable contraption it is! It’s like a chunky little silver rocket with a propeller behind it. It’s so simple and elegant and successful that this piece of...

Written Tuesday 18th December 2007 By Margot Foster I am fragile this morning and take a simple breakfast of toast and vegemite. I find that keeping busy is the key so I head for the bridge and a chat with the ship’s master. Captain Ian Moodie has made dozens of trips into the ice. These conditions, ‘pitching in a 3 metre swell’, as he notes in the ship log, are perfect. We are very lucky to have such ideal conditions for the deployment of moorings. The crew on the exposed trawl deck man-handle large and heavy equipment into place for deployment into the sea assisted by winches, ropes and chain. Perfect conditions indeed. But why do I have the queasy creep? I think it’s because we are sloshing around in the swell; at time...

Written Monday 17th December 2007 By Margot Foster A queasy start. How can it be? We are rolling around in the swell because we are dead slow in the water deploying a mooring. One vomit and two tablets is the scale of my disaster. I should never have boasted about my last trip and my capacity for kippers at breakfast and the joyrides on the bridge in heavy seas. Scientists excel at providing acronyms. Today’s included ADCP - the Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler. Work on the device delayed our departure by three hours but it’s now tested in the water and providing data to depths of up to500-700m. I watched the laying out of the PULSE mooring - a trial surface mooring. Three kilometres of line hold data collecti...

Written Sunday 16th December 2007 By Margot Foster V3 finally left the Macquarie wharf in Hobart at 7:00pm after a delay of some hours. We are sailing along the south-east coast of Tasmania. I spent some time on the bridge watching the coast slip by and houses thin out into the bush. It's now nearly ten at night and this is the last glimpse of land until we hit the Antarctic continent, pretty well due south. This trip is all science and climate change. There are 52 on board involved in a range of projects. There are scientists from all over Australia, from France and the United States. The teams are setting up labs on the ship and running through gear because the first mooring deployment takes place tomorrow. I ha...

Written 21 December 2007 3619 meters above sea level Maximum & Minimum temperatures: -27 to -36 °C One morning everybody woke up at Plateau Station due to a dramatic sound that appeared to be traveling through the camp. This was a very scary episode for the personnel that did not know what had happened. After the noise had died down, they realized that it had been a firn quake. In very cold conditions large snow crystals grow and they are very loosely bonded. Thus, this weak layer in the snow can suddenly collapse. The personnel at Plateau Station figured that the surface lowered about 1 cm duri...

Report no 10, 16-20 December The weather is now stable and clear. We are heading eastwards along the ice divide. On the 17th we reached Kohnen station, which is maintained by Germany for the European deep ice core project EPICA. The station is unmanned at the moment, but a crew will get there later in the season. From Kohnen we have travelled more or less along the 75th latitude and are now at 9 degrees east at an altitude of approximately 3300 m. The air pressure is about 650 mb, which means that all physical work is hard. The air temperature varies daily between -20 and -30C, which is cold of course, but does not hinder any outdoor activities. Along the route we are measuring data on standard meteorological parameters, ice surface elevation, i...

Written 20 December 2007 3619 meters above sea level Maximum & Minimum temperatures: -29 to -36 °C Today, at the traditional Christmas lunch at the Norwegian Polar Institute, Einar received the price “The Employer of the Year.” Congratulations Einar! It is very well deserved. The nomination committee especially emphasized Einar’s efforts on numerous expeditions in the Arctic and in Antarctica. Einar is going to celebrate his seventh Christmas in eight years in Antarctica in a few days. Also, his high standards for field safety and work for the union were highlighted by the committee....

Written 19 Dec 2007 3619 meters above sea level Maximum & Minimum temperatures: -25 to -35°C No doubt, this ice core has really challenged us. We started drilling last Saturday and have encountered a series of problems since then. Today, however, it seems like we reached a turning point. The optimism is back in the hard-working drilling team and maybe by tomorrow the second 90 meter ice core is retrieved. Today, we also took part (by satellite phone) in a press seminar in connection with the visit of Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg to Troll Station in January 2008. ...

The October 2007 issue of the WMO Bulletin focussed on the International Polar Year 2007-2008. The issue contained an IPY overview and six articles covering polar weather, stratospheric ozone, polar atmospheric chemistry, polar oceans, cryosphere connections to hydrological cycles in the Arctic, and future space observations of polar regions. As part of its sponsorship of IPY, WMO makes the IPY articles (in English) available for free download on its website, see: http://www.wmo.ch/pages/publications/bulletin/october_2007.html These articles provide fresh reviews of many aspects of polar science. The I...