SciencePoles recently interviewed Dr Cynan Ellis Evans of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) on the subject of Antarctic sub-glacial lakes: Large bodies of water that have accumulated beneath the vast ice sheet of Antarctica. In his interview, Dr Ellis Evans answers questions about how these lakes formed, how they are being studies, and what their significance is for Polar researchers including glaciologists, geologists, biologists, and paleo-climatologists. In addition, he sheds light on the nature of the international effort to research these lakes, and addresses more contentio...

Media release: 22 March 2008 The final sailing south in the world’s largest Southern Ocean climate experiment gets underway today when the Aurora Australis sets sail from Hobart. Aurora Australis is the last of 20 international research vessels deploying instruments in the Southern Ocean as part of an International Polar Year (IPY) experiment known as CASO, for Climate of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. The Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (ACE CRC) is leading the voyage, which includes a team of researchers from the Centre’s partner organisations includ- ing the Alfred Wegner Institute (Germany) and the National Institue of Water and Atmospher- ic Research (New Zealand). “By pooling resources, s...

Hello. I’m Thorsten Dittmar (pronounced TOR-sten), Assistant Professor of Oceanography at FSU since 2003 and co-chief scientist on this cruise. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Bremen, Germany. I’m a chemical oceanographer. My research focuses on the dynamics of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in the ocean. I use molecular methods to resolve environmental questions regarding DOM. Mugshot: Co-chief Scientist Thorsten Dittmar, photo by grad student JiYoungPaeng Why DOM? DOM is important in many aspects. DOM contains several chemical elements essential for the g...

Over 4.5 months, from November 2007 to March 2008, the BELARE expedition built the Princess Elisabeth Station's outer shell and set up the seven remaining wind turbines at Utsteinen, East Antarctica. Princess Elisabeth Station: From Tour & Taxis to Utsteinen After the success it encountered during its pre-assembly and public viewing in Brussels, the elements of the Princess Elisabeth station were dismantled and packed into containers. They were then loaded onto a Russian ice-class cargo ship on November 6, 2007 for their twenty day journey ...

Submitted March 16, 2008: By John Mitchell, Voyage Leader Midday Friday, and all the sampling on Admiralty Seamount was completed. Our survey time has run out and we’re heading home. It’s a 1550 nautical mile steam from the Admiralty Seamount to Wellington, which will take just under 6 days if the weather is kind to us. If not, it could be much longer. Photo: NIWA’s research ship Tangaroa working in heavy pack ice, Peter Marriott A summary of what we’ve achieved: 39 sampling sites from the shelf, slope, abyss ...

FSU IPY Cruise: Return & St. Paddy’s Day Greeting A Celebration We’ve finished the outbound leg of our cruise; we’ve turned around and we’ll be doing additional sampling, especially in areas that piqued our curiosity on the leg out. We have some real-world experience under our belts, now. The first leg of our cruise was a gas; it’s taught us we can do, and have now already done, things we didn’t dream we could do. Challenges Some of us have had to cope with and adapt to seasickness. We’ve gotten used to a 12-hour shift, called a “watch.” We’ve had to deal with a pitching deck, at times encrusted with ice. We’ve had to sample when our hands had gone numb with cold. ...

By Jan Strugnell This evening the geologists did their first bit of coring of the seabed as part of BAS’s QWAD (Quaternary Western Antarctic Glaciation) project. Geologists with a piece of the core. To determine the consistency of the sea floor they send sound waves from the ship to the seafloor using a piece of kit called TOPAS. The sound waves bounce back to the ship where they are received. Some of these sound waves penetrate the sediment and allow a profile to be built up of the sea floor. This allows the geolo...

By Jan Strugnell Today we set sail for Antarctica at 5pm. Everyone was very excited to finally get going and we all climbed up on the monkey deck as we sailed out from Stanley and started to cross the Drake Passage. There were some seals playing in the water and they were as interested in us as we were in them! It is pretty windy (about 35 knots) and so the ship is rocking a bit, but not too badly. I've managed to avoid seasickness, but have been quite sleepy (a symptom of sea sickness) and so have been sleeping very well despite the rocking. Today we have been getting ready for trawling, which will start in a few days time. Everyone is pretty excited to see what we will catch as very little trawling has been done in this area and there wil...

Submitted March 12, 2008: By John Mitchell, Voyage Leader One of the many heavily eroded bergs seen in the northern Ross Sea (Photo: John Mitchell). We’ve spent the last two days sampling the Admiralty Seamount which has a large (12 x 5 nautical miles) flat top at about 460 m deep, and very steep flanks dropping to over 3000 m. The sampling has shown the top to be rather sparse biologically, apart from a couple of small areas which have an abundant and diverse fauna. Further sampling of those areas will be done later in the week. Although we are north of the pack-ice and acc...