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...

Press Releases Changing Earth Day Press Release or download: English Espanol Spanish Francais French ?????

Thursday, 27 December We are happy. Happy about our successful first step on the way of teasing secrets out of freshly caught deep-sea isopods from 3000 m depth. Which means, we have extracted DNA and after the first successful runs prepared extractions all day long, highly motivated. How we got there: After META, our epibenthic sledge, had brought the samples for us on deck, we divided the sample immediately by weight and live-sorted one-half in the cooling container at 0°C and preserved the other half in precooled alcohol at –20°C. While live sorting we got a first impression of the creatures that awaited us: bristle worms (Polychaeta), amphipods, several forams and, among many other taxa, our target group, the isopods. (By then we were exhausted but ha...

Thursday 27th December 2007 We can see icebergs again. There is sunshine and blue sky and the continent appears as a ribbon of white satin with a hem just starting to fray at the edges. The trawls are back in action at double time, completing three stations between midnight and lunchtime. The whiteboard is rotating through a series of ticks, and shortening the average time for each trawl. The Sitrep trumpets success: “We have so far caught and documented about 28 different species of fish from the trawl samples. The fish assemblage appears to be quite different from that found at the coastal sites off the French research station, Dumont D'Urville, about 40 Nm west southwest of our current position. Many of these fish are new records for the ...

Written Wednesday, 26 December The phone in my cabin range at 8:00 this morning – two or three hours earlier than I would normally get up for my noon to midnight shift in the chemistry lab. Normally when the phone wakes me up it’s because there’s a problem with one of our instruments, but today I was pleasantly surprised that this was not the case. It was the chief scientist calling to say that it was my turn for a helicopter flight, and could I be on the flight deck in an hour. The daily flights are done so that the biologists led by Jan van Franeker (AKA, The Flying Dutchmen) can count the wildlife in the area. They take along one extra person each day to help spot animals and enjoy the view. ...

Written Tuesday, 25 December, Christmas Day When I woke up this morning and looked out the window snow was slowly falling trough the air. Even though we are located at 67 degrees south in the ice and cold, snowfall is quite rare at this time of the year. Perhaps a little Christmas present form above. As described in the log yesterday, we had a very beautiful and special Christmas celebration, officers, crew and scientists, all together. It’s quite special when everyone is sharing the same feeling, a wish to be home with loved ones at this very day, but still being able to have a very happy and cheerful ...

Written Monday, 24 December I look out of the window and I see snow and ice. We will have a white Christmas in the literal sense, except that the days are bright rather than dark and grey like they are at home. The benthologists have a break today, as the “large station” was sampled the day before yesterday and yesterday. Today the planktologists are working, employing a whole array of gear in the water column to collect krill, arrow worms, copepods, salps and other animals for their investigations. Several types of nets are put into the water, such as the multinet, which brings samples from different d...

Written Sunday, 23 December The Antarctic summer shows its most beautiful side, the sun is shining out of a deep blue sky, and the water is glittering like a thousand diamonds. I walk up to the uppermost deck and enjoy the warmth of the sun for a little while until the cold wind chases me indoors. We are enjoying a quiet ride of a steady 8 to 10 knots, so for the scientists this is a comfortable day. The quiet after the hectic of yesterday’s benthos station is much appreciated; many people have worked until the small hours of the morning or followed the successful maiden voyage of the underwater video camera from the winch control room. ...

Written Saturday, 22 December A quick cup of coffee, then I am off to work, one flight of stairs down and along a long hallway. The night shift is looking forward to a well deserved time off, I myself sit down in front of the control screens and keep an eye on the sensors in the deep. Every single data point has to be surveyed and protocoled in detail to be suitable for later analysis. The sondes and water samples come back on deck after their journey through 1,000 m of water. Many steps must be taken now quickly and accurately. The details of the processing depend on the fate of the water from the deep dow...