Sunday, 30 December Lecture room, 10 a.m. “Can you deploy the corer a bit faster?” – “Sure, we try! One point five down is ok.” Time is in short supply, we are nearly at the northernmost point of our western transect at 62°S. To make good use of the workfree period on New Year’s Eve, we would like to steam eastwards during that time. That was a few days ago. The urgent requests of the expedition leader have worked wonders in the meantime. At the end of today, we are several hours ahead of schedule. The switching between the different plankton nets is running like clockwork, and w...

Monday 31st December The Mertz has vanished in cloud and snow storm and we can feel the motion of the sea again. The decision to sample the additional site close to the glacier has been rewarded, as Martin reports: ‘The scientific highlight of this site was the discovery on the high definition photographs of highly pigmented patches on the sediment surface. The colour is very like the patches of photosynthetic microorganisms found on sediments in shallower places but at this depth (1300 m) no light penetrates and so photosynthesis is not possible. The most likely explanation is that they are caused by organic material from the upper waters that has sunk to the bottom fast enough to retain photosynthetic pigments. This explanation is consistent...

Written 1 Jan 2008 3730 meters above sea level Maximum & Minimum temperatures: -31 to -39 °C In the morning we reached the Pole of Inaccessibility, a milestone of our traverse. We are at the last long science stop, at the highest point of the route and have passed two third of the total distance. It is the least accessible point on the continent. But for us it also represents an important milestone being the third long science stop en route. We arrived at noon after a long night of driving and we have thus mostly been resting up today. Our camp is situated 4 km from the ...

Written 31 Dec 2007 3730 meters above sea level Maximum & Minimum temperatures: - 30 to - 38 °C The kilometers we logged today, the last day of 2007, brought us near to the Pole of Inaccessibility, which is the place on the Antarctic continent that is farthest from any coast. As 2007 came to a close, we reminisced about our journey, which started a month and a half ago from the Norwegian Troll Station near the coast of Dronning Maud Land. On this traverse so far we have drilled three deep ice cores and many shallow ice cores, in search of clues to our changing climate. We have worked toge...

The IPY exhibit at the Exhibition on Earth observations during the Ministerial Summit of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) 27-30 Nov 2007 in Cape Town, South Africa was well attended by ministers and visitors. Dr Pierre Cilliers from the Hermanus Magnetic Observatory and Mr Michael Nxumalo, professional officer of the Souith African IPY office at the National Research Foundation set up and attended to the stand on behalf of the International IPY office. The stand also featured several posters on topics related to the South African IPY programme. The themes of the posters were among others "The Hermanus Magnetic Observatory, Contributions to Global Observations of the Earth's Geomagnetic Field", "The Hermanus Magnetic Observatory, Space Weather Observation for disast...

The Swedish part of the Japanese-Swedish Antarctic Expedition, JASE: Report no 14 The Japanese traverse group left on December 30 for their journey towards Syowa station. The Swedish group will take off at January 1. During the stay here we have had social exchange and performed maintenance of vehicles, snow studies and radar, GPS and radiometer studies at the site of a subglacial lake. During this stay we have also had an exchange of scientists. Two Swedes are now joining the Japanese expedition and we now have two Japanese members in our team. The temperature has now dropped somewhat and varies on a daily basis between -25 and -35 degrees C. The annual mean temperature at this site is -55 degrees C, so winters must be tough here. Tomorrow we h...

30th December 2007 I’m looking carefully at my map of sampling stations because today we come closest to the continent and the Mertz glacier. We have been tantalized by the awesome and mysterious continent but have not been closer than 9 or 10 nm. Station 47 takes us to a depth of 1200m while at 49 we will sample at 180m, the shallowest site.There is great interest in what these different habitats will reveal. At 47 I watch Rob guiding his deepwater video camera over the seabed. He explains how the shape of the sea-bed reflects the ancient drift of the Mertz glacier. It’s rough country down there, the gouged and scoured valleys are scattered with rock carried by the ice. Life in the abyss is sparser but how wonderful it is to observe this ne...

Saturday 29th December I worked through a CTD shift with Esmee. What an insight into the nature of research it offered; a water sample is much more than a bucket over the side. The CTD equipment stands as high as your shoulders and holds a 'rosette' of vertical cylinders within a metal frame. Each cylinder can be opened individually at a nominated depth. Data from several electronic devices bolted to the frame indicating salinity and fluorescence, and temperature and depth is assessed during the CTD's descent and the optimum sampling depths identified. A crew winches the equipment out the side hatch of the CTD room, while nearby in the instrument room the descent is guided down and back 'firing' the cylinders electronically to open and fil...

Friday 28th December All day we sail parallel to the continent. The day stayed sunny, an azure zenith reflecting the deep blue sea. The bergy bits dotting the water may have been tinnies out for a day's fishing, while the distant rise of the continent took on just enough of a hue for it to look at times like our own droughty, denuded landform. It feels like summer and with temperatures up to just below freezing, we are in shirtsleeves. Through binoculars we can see the rocks near the site of Mawson's hut.. For some reason it is satisfying to know that it was precisely this bit of the endless icy fringe that the explorer used as his base. We all peer out. "Where?" "There - just to the right of the tabular berg." There...

Written 29 Dec 2007 3689 meters above sea level Maximum & Minimum temperatures: - 32 to -38 °C Originally, seven countries made claims in Antarctica. These were Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and United Kingdom. One region of Antarctica has not been claimed by any nation. Argentina, Chile and United Kingdom have overlapping claims at the Antarctic Peninsula. Norway’s claim has an undefined border both in the south and in the north, spanning from 20 W to 45 E. Norway claimed Dronning Maud Land in January 1939 to protect its whaling interests. We left Dronning Maud Land today and will be in the Australian sector on the remaining time of the expedition. ...