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 ...

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...

Photo: Scott Island with Haggit’s Pillar to the left. By John Mitchell By John Mitchell, Voyage Leader After completion of the first abyssal station in the northern part of our survey – at a depth of 3500m – we moved on to our last seamount station next to Scott Island. Scott Island is very small (400m by 200m) and isolated, lying about 310 nautical miles northeast from Cape Adare. Its companion – Haggit’s Pillar – is an impressive 62m high volcanic stack sitting 200m northwest of the island. We are sampling in this area to compare the biodiversity with that of the Balleny...

By John Mitchell, Voyage Leader. Now we are out of the inner Ross Sea the focus of the voyage has changed to sampling seamounts (underwater mountains) and the abyss (seafloor in the deep ocean 2000–4000 m). We’re surveying a series of seamounts, concentrating on the Scott complex around Scott Island north of the Ross Sea, at about 68 ºS, 180º followed by the Admiralty chain further to the west. Even further west are the Balleny Islands and associated seamounts, which will not be visited this trip as they have already been sampled during previous Tangaroa voyages. The composition of the fauna has gradually changed and reduced in quantity (but not quality) as we have moved north and is now ‘transitional’ i.e., is a mixture containing fauna typical of both the Ross ...

New Zealand Science Learning Hub website is featuring New Zealand's IPY research voyage to Antarctica and is bringing weekly themes which are linked to the curriculum, from the scientists and crew on board the RV Tangaroa. The New Zealand Science Learning Hub features science reports, photos, video and data from the ship and associated classroom activities as well as a question and answer section for teachers and their students to the scientists. For further information go to http://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/ipyvoyage or contact Julie Hall at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ...

March 2, 2008 By John Mitchell, Voyage Leader Having left the inner Ross Sea, we passed through the ever-thickening ice barrier between the open water in the polynya to the south and the open ocean to the northeast. In the ice barrier, we had to push through ribbons of thick pack ice with relatively open ‘leads’ that were filled with grease ice and newly formed soft pancake ice. Although our progress was slow at times, it was only about 24 hours before we arrived at our first seamount site, dubbed South Scott Seamount. Photo: Tangaroa proceeding through close pack ice towards an open lead in the dista...

Submitted February 27, 2008: Snailfish by P. Marriott Our survey of the inner Ross Sea shelf and slope has now been successfully completed, with a total of 29 stations and 143 separate gear deployments. At least 400 different invertebrate species have been collected and nearly 75 different fish species identified. Photo: View of Mt Herschel 45nm away. by J. Mitchell ...

Submitted February 24: After losing 24 hours research time to rough weather, the last four days have been spent completing core station transects from the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, and down the continental slope. These are the stations where all our sampling equipment is deployed. Photo: The midday to midnight watch gathered proudly around their erratic. By J. Mitchell The DTIS (Deep Towed Imaging System) video and still images have shown us that much of this area of seabed west of Iselin Bank, adjacent to Cape Adare, is very rocky compared to the southern shelf areas sampled earlier...

Now that we have completed sampling the southern stations, the focus of the survey has moved north to the central area adjacent to Iselin Bank, which lies east of Cape Adare. The original survey plan had an extensive sampling program in this area but this year’s ice conditions has resulted in the need to reassess and redistribute the sampling effort. This redesign is completed using all available satellite ice imagery we can access and interpretations we receive from a commercial company (Enfotec), who specialise in vessel navigation in the Arctic and Antarctic. Some of this data is readily available on the web and some has to be ordered in advance and are charged for. The higher the resolution required, then the higher the cost. Figures are examples of in...

Submitted February 17, 2008: Over the past few days we have been working our way south into the lower Ross Sea and then eastwards towards 180°, paralleling the Ross Ice Shelf. During this period Tangaroa got to its southernmost point ever at 76° 52.164’S 179° 55.856’ W. As expected, the main controller of all our activities has been the weather. Heavy snow showers earlier in this period gave everything a white coating, but once the snow cleared and the clouds broke, we had good (but distant) views of Ross Island, with the mountains of the Asgaard and Olympic Ranges as a backdrop. ...