Written Saturday, 1 December Today is our fourth day aboard Polarstern, and we are underway to our first station. The ship looks very different already. Containers have been emptied, instruments installed, some scientists are occupied with their tricky electronics, but so far we have mastered every problem. It is hard to believe how much we have already done, how many nice and interesting people we have met and how much scientific exchange has already taken place. I feel like I have been on board much longer than four days. Some time in the morning I asked myself what day of the week it was. The answer was ea...

Written Friday, 30 November The epibenthic sledge (EBS) called “Meta“ is a prototype designed by Nils Brenke. It consists of two frames of steel with a total weight of 484 kg , and it is 3.45 m long, 1.13 m high and 1.2 m wide. It is designed to sample benthic macro-fauna from shallow waters to depths of more than 6000m. Meta was used many times in the Southern Ocean since the expedition ANDEEP I in 2002 and therefore shows many scars. None of the steel parts are straight any more. Unfortunately the container including Meta had been put on the front deck. While all boxes and smaller instruments could be unloaded and carried to the right places relatively fast (see yesterday’s entry), this was not an option for the sledge. It took half a day for three peo...

Written Thursday, 29 November After the first night at sea, which ended with a still strangely bright morning, we start a very busy day. We scientists get an introduction into the daily operations of the ship into which we will have to integrate ourselves in the next 70 days, and after that a siren calls us for a first safety drill. Today this means only that we move to the assembly point on the heli deck, dressed warmly, wearing a hat and proper shoes and the life vest. The antarctic already in my heart, I walk through the door to the outside — and I am very surprised to find the air still very warm! We are still at 37° South, and a long way away from our study area. In the afternoon we busy ourselves getting the boxes, which we had packed such a long tim...

Written Wednesday, 28 November There she was in the harbor, the R/V Polarstern, with several low-slung buildings, a security fence and a visit through customs the only thing between me and my floating home to be for the next ten weeks. You could just make out the familiar AWI logo on her smokestack over the rooftops, but with the rest of her hidden I couldn’t get a sense of her size. I’d been to sea before, but never aboard Polarstern, only in the Arctic and not for more than four weeks. A group of about a dozen scientists, technicians and students had gathered outside of the customs house in Cape Town in the heat of the midday sun, and the charity workers who were handing out food to the refuges seeking asylum in South Africa kept offering us sandwiches. I was anxious t...

Wednesday 26th December 2007 By Margot Foster The weather pattern changed overnight and the captain hove to at 0300 in the face of gale force winds gusting to 50 knots with snowstorms and sleet limiting visibility. The swell rose to 6metres. We woke up to the news that operations have been postponed and all decks closed until it’s safe to work…which may take 12 hours. There’s some time off for those on day shift. Musicians gather in the bar, which is the most stable part of the ship, for a jam. Four of us met there later in the day for a yoga session, our mats placed to follow the rolling of the ship, and the focus on sitting positions. I spent time on the bridge watching the ice crystals begin to form mounds...

Written Tuesday 25th December A lookout from the bridge is always rewarding. I watched Adelie penguins swimming sportily in circles, popping up and diving down then popping up somewhere else in a dead calm, silver sea. Then a pair of minke whales appeared and I watched their elegant curving and spouting until they passed the ship. The sun does not set and it’s very beautiful moving in and out of the polynyas and pack ice with the soft white curve of the continent sometimes sighted. The trawls have all been down now – the benthic sled, the French Beam, the AAD Beam trawl and the box core. Each one is specialised. The AAD Beam trawl has an under water digital stills camera attached. A crowd gathered around the computer when the images came up....

Written Monday 24th December These are early days in the trawl program and these first stations are taking some time as the equipment is tested and the process fine-tuned. Martin reports “Each haul of the sleds and trawls is bringing up new and interesting material, a highlight this morning being the first Antarctic record for a particular group of molluscs. Yesterday the first run of the GA underwater video camera allowed us to see what the sea-bed we are sampling actually looks like.” Rob Beaman has pictures of the sea-bed. He flicks through his computer screens to show images from the side-scanner which returned this morning with images taken beneath the ship representing a sweep of half a kilometre. He explains with relish the marvel of...

Written Friday 21st December ‘Happy Christmas’… ‘Merry Christmas’ echoes along the corridors. To mark the day breakfast is 0830 rather than 7.30 and there will be a long lunch. We are at -62 48, 142 51 for our Antarctic Christmas. It’s freezing outside, the fog has lifted and seas are rippled with a northwesterly swell to 2m. Our sitrep reports ‘In transit to the main sampling area for both CEAMARC and the southern CASO sites. Expeditioners and crew are busy with last minute preparations for Christmas lunch and festivities this afternoon. The 3rd CPR is currently in the water. Yesterday afternoon the first bulk seawater sample was collected for metagenomic analysis using techniques based on those developed for sequencing the human...

Written Sunday 23rd December, 2007 By Margot Foster Conditions are ideal for the work we are doing. There’s very little wind, a bit of high cloud and the patches of sunshine make it almost balmy at around minus 2 degrees. The scientific program is in full flight. Overnight the last three moorings were sent to the deep. Very early this morning we were heading through the loose pack-ice to CEAMARC 27 – the first station of the project, (the Collaborative East Antarcticta Marine Census). There are 67 points marked on the map covering the sea between Dumont d’Urville and the Mertz glacier. It’s an ambitious plan to fully sample each of those positions in the coming weeks. The first equipment out was the epibenthic sled. It sc...

Written Saturday 22nd December By Margot Foster Finally, notes on the ice have made it into the Sitrep. “ICE CONDITIONS: 4/10 loose pack, few icebergs.” In my cabin the lowered blind has been lit at the edges all night by the sun. I woke disoriented at 0400 by the clunking sound as the metal ship moved through bits of ice and was on the bridge early to watch us glide into the pack at around 0700. It’s down to minus 2 and I can feel the chill through the floor. Big socks and ugg boots now with gloves and hat in the pockets of the snow jacket. We saw another ship on the horizon – the ‘Orion’ leaving Commonwealth Bay. At 6nm distant it may have been an iceberg but the whale and bird watchers confirmed the ...