To be precise, this is my 12th Sunday on Polarstern. As I participated in the transit from Bremerhaven to Cape Town, I have been on Board as long as the crew. Of course, my longing for my family, friend and home is growing, but Polarstern is an easy place to call home for a while. Even after all these weeks no feeling of everyday life has crept in. Each day is different from the previous, some are more exciting than others, but it is never boring. On today’s program was, like on every Sunday, the weightwatcher’s club – one of the few regularly occurring events on board besides the meals. After that I went for the regular cooling container check-up. As we stopped station work a few days ago, I am glad to be able to keep some animals alive for experiments. I am one of th...

Definitely no plans for today. But life on board is sometimes surprising and unexpected things happen. And today is one of these days. Just during breakfast time I received wonderful news… “at 9 o’clock there will be an AGT”…and only in a few hundred meters of depth…this means…Cnidarians!! I was really delighted and hopeful…maybe this time I will find the missing genus, the object of my PhD studies. “Antarctica’s gorgonians. Evolution and biodiversity. Distribution and reproduction patterns.” This is the title of my research, focused on the family Primnoidae and mainly on the genus Thouarella, the best represented in the Southern Ocean. Around half of the species have been described from Antarctic waters, and most of them were found below 800 m depth. T...

Todays' Sitrep proclaims success. 'CEAMARC sampling officially finished at 8 minutes past midnight. Overall, 82 different sites were occupied during CEAMARC, with samples collected from at least 78 sites; well in excess of the 67 sites we had hoped for.' We are one of three ships working in this part of Antarctica collecting marine life for the Collaborative East Antarctic Marine Census (CEAMARC). Our focus is on the benthic organisms below 200 metres. We have been looking at biodiversity in a region never before investigated so comprehensively and can now offer another jigsaw piece of information to complete the larger Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML) picture. Our grand tally is 106 trawls and 114 grab or box-corer deployments. The CEA...

Because everything is going so well and we are on target with our sampling, a window of opportunity has opened. We are going to have lunch beside the giant iceberg while the crew in the Fast Rescue Craft (FRC) takes a small party to collect some special water samples. When they return we will have a group photo on the helideck. Looks good on paper. The berg has a name and a history. B-17A calved from the Ross Ice Shelf in April 2000 and appears to have become grounded here in 2006. It's 35 km long. Toby measured its height using the sextant and found it was 43 metres high. From the chair in my cabin the iceberg makes up a strip across the middle third of my porthole. Testing the waters around B-17A is Tank's extra project. He wants to find out if icebergs ar...

The oceanography lab next to the CTD room is a maze of plumbing linking test tubes, flasks, computer screens and electronic devices. It's heart, which never stop beating, is the 'debubbleometer', which provides the lifeblood to many of the research projects underway on the voyage. Surface seawater drawn from beneath the ship is continuously measured by a range of instruments: a salinometer (measuring salt), a fluorometer (measuring fluorescence) a temperature probe and a CO2 monitor. There's a great deal of interest in CO2. People are taking samples to learn more about the relationship between CO2 found in the air and the ocean, which makes the debubbleometer (or air separator) a vital piece of equipment. It's crucial that only the CO2 in the water is measured an...

Anti whaling activities in the Southern Ocean headlined this morning's daily onboard newspaper "Australia Today". The paper comprises four A4 pages printed from News on Board services via TEAMtalk Satellite. Anything from our part of the world, the Southern Ocean, generates animated conversation. Two Sea Shepherd Conservation Society members from the ship the 'Steve Irwin' boarded the Japanese ship the Yushin Maru No 2 to deliver a letter to the captain advising him that he was illegally killing whales in the Southern Whale Sanctuary. They were promptly taken into custody on the ship, where they remain. Notions of law at sea were bandied about at lunch along with the practicalities of regulation, prosecution, anarchy and foolhardiness. Opinion was divided....

We are amongst some very dramatic icebergs at various stages of decay. There are lots of crazy triangular tilts, some long tabulars, many with massive glowing caves, decaying fringes and yawning cracks. Sharing the stage is the backdrop of the Antarctic continent. We steam parallel to it all day and because it might be my last glimpse I'm up and down to the bridge for regular good long looks. The ship is a fascinating combination of complex and traditional technologies. Take the 'French beam trawl' which is doing so much of the benthic work. In the end it's just a four and a bit metre long lump of wood with a 35 centimetre frame to keep the mouth of a ten metre long prawn net open to the catch. Sounds simple, but it's a workhorse that needs...

Routine weighs heavily today. Perhaps it’s the turning point on a voyage such as this when time is measured in days before return rather than weeks at sea. Even the meal sittings are feeling a tad lacklustre. ‘How was the trawl?’ or ‘How deep is the next CTD?’ is starting to fall a little flat. It was a bit déjà vu that at the same time of day, at the same angle on the horizon, another fishing boat was identified, bearing the same name as the one intercepted yesterday. This time it is the ‘In Sung No 2’ and, as required, we carry out the same duty of communication. An upshot of the time we spent communicating with the fishing boat yesterday was that the depth data we gathered on the underway data logging system was used to create a new bathymetric chart. That...

News of a change of plan and that we were going in closer to the continent brought nearly everyone onto the bridge late last night as we moved into uncharted waters. The echo sounder was closely monitored as we sought a narrow but very deep channel between the icebergs. A hush of concentration fell as we passed through a gallery of carved ice. Sheer and sharp planes alternated with piled ice rubble and blue honeycombs of collapsing walls. On one side a majestic flotilla of ragged peaks receded into the distance like mystical Chinese prints. On the other a midnight sunset backlit the stratus cloud over the continent in garish stripes of pinks and yellows and orange. I sat high in the navigator's chair, watching a strange twilight illuminating the soft band of ...

There's a changed mood on board now the frantic pace of the CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, Depth) circuit has abated. Work continues along with the CEAMARC trawls but it seems as if people have been absorbed by the ship. I have a kind of holiday - a reading blitz, and have just finished reading about the explorer Hubert Wilkins. Wilkins grew up on a property on the wrong side of the Goyder line in South Australia and saw the Federation drought of 1901 destroy the family farm. His remarkable exploration expeditions to both poles were driven by a certainty that understanding the climate of the polar regions was the key to predicting weather and that understanding climate could alleviate human suffering. When he set off for Antarctica with Shack...