Submitted February 13, 2008: Now that we are in the open waters of the Inner Ross Sea, the sampling program can start in earnest. In the typical style of all marine surveys, some of the gear gave us problems on the first deployment but once teething problems were sorted everything worked as we wanted. As expected, the weather has already had an impact. From a relatively calm sea we suddenly expe...

This morning, just 62 years ago, Byrd and his Ice Party members, including Yours Truly, sailed up the Bay to the D.C. Navy Yard... So wrote Dr. Alton A. Lindsey to the author on May 10, 1997 — he had turned 90 only three days before. In the early years of the Great Depression, he was at Cornell University studying for his doctorate in biology, when he interrupted this pursuit to serve as the Vertebrate Zoologist on the Byrd Antarctic Expedition II (1933-35). While the interior of the continent was canvassed by dog sled, tractor and airplane, Lindsey studied penguins, seals and other animals on the coast. ...

January 30, 2008: Today the Tangaroa, New-Zealand's Antarctic research vessel, departed from Wellington and is heading due south to undertake the New Zealand IPY-CAML project. New Zealand is conducting a major biological survey of the Ross Sea, in the Antarctic, as part of the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML) and International Polar Year (IPY). Forty four people including 24 scientists and 18 crew will take part in an eight-week voyage aboard RV Tangaroa from January 30th to mid March 2008. The data collected will provide baseline information from the Southern Ocean and Ross Sea environment that can be used to help monitor the effects of climate change in the Ross Sea region. With a biodiversity focus, the voyage will collect samples of...