Wednesday, October 31, 2007:
All in a days work at New Harbor
As Stacy reported in the previous post we are currently at our beautiful deep field camp New Harbor, which is about 60 miles away from McMurdo Station. Today was filled with all kinds of jobs that needed to be done around the camp and some of today’s highlights include pluming issues, moving of equipment, starting generators, drilling and cooking.
Just take in the beauty of New Harbor, and I thought McMurdo was amazing.
(continued...)
So the morning started off cold! I woke up a few times throughout the night because I felt pretty cold and noticed my sleeping bag was a bit unzipped. I thought this was why I felt cold but when I awoke I found it was still very cold in our hut. Upon inspection Stacy saw that the heater was on the lowest setting and turned it up. This helped out a little but our hut is so big it would be a couple of hours before cranking up the heat would make a difference. As Mindy, Stacy and I sat around the kitchen we talked about turning the oven on to help heat the hut (an old trick I remember my mom doing as a kid). Stacy turned on the oven and within a few minutes we had the oven blazing and by this time the rest of the group was awake. Marcus and Bob felt the heat immediately came over to the oven. This led to… well the picture below explains it all.
The oven seems to work better than the heaters do!
After warming up our bones we all had some breakfast. Mindy was so kind to cook everyone some oatmeal, thank you very much Mindy, and made some coffee. While we were enjoying breakfast our camp was called on the radio and we were informed that two visitors were going to be dropped off via helicopter. The visitors were Joe and Tomas from McMurdo Station and were here to help us GPS some locations. Now the real work begins.
During breakfast I went out to our lovely outhouse (see picture below) but discovered something very interesting. Upon doing the morning procedure I noticed the tube where guys pee had sprung a leak…. on the wall and my shoes. Why do I always end up with pee on me and my stuff!!! (see “Happy Camper is an Understatement” post) I reported my findings to the girls inside but they were already aware of the frozen tubes. They were inside trying to devise a plan on how to unfreeze the tubes. By this time the whole group had joined in on devising a plan and Marcus and Bryan took charge of this task. Boy did they have a good time and their plan involved a hair dryer, generator, screw driver, kerosene heater and a new barrel to dispose of the waste. Through relentless effort Marcus and Bryan got the outhouse working again and just in time.
Marcus how can you smile with frozen pee in your hands?
Bryan worked the frozen line from the inside. Notice we have two different places to do business, how luxurious!
While Marcus and Bryan battled the bathroom Mindy and Stacy were off drilling holes. These girls punched through 12 feet of “dirty ice” in no time at our soon to be dive/ROV site Explores Cove. During the drilling process Bob and I were moving our ice melting equipment which included a generator, an ice melting machine and a hot finger that you stick down a drilled hole to enlarge it.
Moving equipment, Antarctica style. I'm in the back riding the machine like it's a bronco.
So we are all set. The girls have the hole drilled and Bob and I have the ice melting equipment read but of course the unexpected incidents begin to occur. The ice melting machine that we use re-circulates glycol (think of the stuff that is in your radiator) in the hot finger and is suppose to be a nice fluid liquid. Well the liquid that was in our ice melting machine was pretty much frozen and of no use to us. Along with frozen glycol, the hot finger was busted in the shipping process
The first hot finger was not hot nor happy at the New Harbor Camp, notice the busted weld.
By this time the work day was coming to an end and everyone’s energy levels were running low. When you are busy working in the field it’s hard to remember to replenish the liquids that you displace and to continuously be munching down food. Working outdoors in a cold environment such as Antarctica will make you thirsty and hungry and if you forget to drink and eat you will feel your body crash.
So after our day of drilling, moving equipment and bathroom maintenance I was in charge of cooking dinner for the night. Each night someone else is responsible for cooking for the whole group and I elected to cook tonight. Tonight’s dinner called for chicken breast with chopped onions and rosemary, linguine with creamy pesto sauce, garlic toast and veggies. I really miss cooking as it was one of my favorite things to do back home and I had a great time making food for everyone. Yummy!
Tonight’s dinner being prepared, I think we eat better out here than we do back at McMurdo!
Just thought I would leave you with another picture to show you how beautiful this place is.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007:
One Month!
Today we landed on the Antarctic continent! I know, we have been in Antarctica for a month, but we have been in and near McMurdo Station, which is on Ross Island, just off the continent. So though McMurdo is technically Antarctica, now that we are at our field camp at New Harbor, we are on the actual continent!
The real Antarctic
(continued...)
All our packing efforts over the last few days resulted in 2500 lbs of stuff, carefully classified into 1006 lbs of Do Not Freeze, 112 lbs of Keep Frozen, 90 lbs of Hazardous, and 1292 lbs of Everything Else. We were so fat that it took 2 helicopter flights to get us and all our gear out here. And that was after we sent the really heavy stuff – fuel, vehicles, sleds, camp gear, etc. on an earlier traverse, where it was driven across the ice in a slow convoy to a nearby staging spot at Marble Point, and then flown the shorter distance from there. The sea ice is so rough that they cannot traverse all the way here!
A Bell 212 helicopter sling loading some of our 2500 lbs of stuff.
We got to the helo hanger at 7:30, weighed ourselves, picked up our helmets and got briefed on how to properly load, ride in, and unload a Bell 212. There is a technician as well as a pilot to help but you still need to know how to be safe. The techs had previously loaded all our gear, and we took off 15 minutes apart.
Unloading the SCINI ROV from the helo at New Harbor Camp.
It is a wonderful view of McMurdo Sound from above. You can see the distinct line where the annual ice starts – where the ice that is less than a year old meets the ice that is several years old, and a less distinct line where the multi-year ice meets the permanent ice shelf. We could see icebergs pinned in the annual ice, and finally, the rim of broken ice on the shore of the continent and our camp, looking very tiny.
The edge of the Dry Valleys and the Antarctic continent.
The red building and 2 snowmachines are part of our camp.
We spent the rest of the day working quite hard in the big gorgeous silence. First we had to unload everything we had packed for the traverse, and make sure it had all actually made it there. About the time we figured out that there were 2 boxes missing, another helo came in with them. We moved all our fuel barrels, eleven 55 gallon drums of diesel, gasoline, premix, and kerosene, onto containment berms. We organized our 444 pounds of food onto shelves. We moved tables and chairs and cots and tents, and dragged around dive gear and ROV parts, and started engines and chipped a road through the pressure ridge of ice just offshore. Bryan even got the GPS base station set up and started surveying to find our dive locations. I made a quick meal of curried seafood and chocolate chip cookies – we have to cook for ourselves out here! – and finally set up a tent for bed at around midnight. Despite the comments about happy campers school, I really enjoy sleeping out on the sea ice, and besides, I was tired enough to sleep anywhere, I think! But it was worth it, we had camp all set up and were ready to start science in the morning!
The "Polar Palace" PolarHaven with some of our fuel and generators and vehicles.
Monday, October 29, 2007:
Last day in paradise, Visit to Le Pegasus
Our helo flights are scheduled for tomorrow morning, our bags have been packed and are at the terminal, and our divers are grounded because they'll be flying tomorrow, so we had a bit of a breather to get our personal gear together and do some more detailed planning for the New Harbor camp site.
We also got to explore a crashed resupply plane that's been lying on the sea ice for decades...
(continued...)
Mindy already picked up all of our food (more than 200 pounds! that's a lotta beef!) and we shipped a lot of our bulky items like tables, fuel spill kits, and hazardous materials (glues, lab chemicals) in the past few days, but all the dive equipment and both SCINIs will fly with us. The helicopter technician and pilot need to know exactly how much everything weighs, including us, so they can balance and fuel the aircraft.
The New Harbor field camp we're going to lies at the base of Taylor Valley in the Dry Valleys region, which will place us in an ASMA, or Antarctica Specially Managed Area. While all of Antarctica falls under United Nations treaty protection, some areas of particular scientific and environmental interest have additional visitation and procedural requirements. The Dry Valleys represent almost all of the ice-free, "dirty" land on the entire continent (2.0% of Antarctia is ice-free; the ice free parts of the Dry Valleys are 1.8% of the continent), and are one of the longest term stable environments on the planet. We've heard that despite extremely hard winds during the winter, there are still human foot prints from over 50 years ago. This Australian site has more information about the ASMA system, and this paper is an example of the kind of technology that might be used to reduce impact in the valleys.
photo: plane in the snow
In the afternoon we visited an old crashed plane on the sea ice. Back in the 1970's this plane, with 80 passengers onboard, passed it's Point of No Return on the way from Christchurch to McMurdo station, which means it didn't have enough fuel to turn back. The weather deteriorated rapidly and by the time it got down here it was Condition One and the air field was invisible. After several flyovers the pilot attempted a landing, but the wing caught a snow drift and spun the plane around. Everybody survived, but the search and rescue team couldn't find the plane for a long time because of the weather.
The plane is still in amazing condition all things considered, and has a nice texture of scratched in initials from over the years.
That's pretty much all for now, we should have lots more to write about when we get to New Harbor, and we should have some form of internet access to post updates from, so check back again soon!
Sunday, October 28, 2007:
Packing, Diving and Paul Airey
We spent all day organizing and packing up the significant amount of support material for our trip to New Harbor. This included 45 pounds of my dive gear - and that's not including the 43 pounds of lead or the 60 pounds of tank and regulators. We were suddenly aware of what everything weighed since each box had to be weighed and tagged for the helicopter flight. We had to decide what things we could do without - do we really need that big variable lab power supply or can we make do with something smaller and lighter?
Stacy and Mindy carry Stacy's lab cooler full of lab supplies for sample processing as well as the coring rack.
Bryan is thinking about what to pack and where to pack it...
Nick was ready to hang himself then realized we were late for dinner
This is SCINI in a box - our second system was assembled and tested, then we broke it down into the modular parts
All this stuff will fly WITH us to New Harbor on two Helicopter flights
Stacy, Bob and I are scheduled on a helo along with another scientist, a helo tech and the pilot. We have 900 pounds of gear going along with us in a Bell 212. This twin turbine, 1800 horsepower helo can carry 14 passengers or 4000 pounds of cargo. It burns almost 100 gallons per hour so we put everything we could on the Marble Point traverse which gets the equipment to a depot which is within 15 minutes by helo to New Harbor. We've been watching and hearing these guys take off and land since the helo pad is within view out our lab window - Tuesday will be our turn and I can't wait!
We didn't go diving today but we did have a dive meeting with the Diving Control Board for the USAP - Michael, Adam and Dive god Rob.
We discussed regulators, fins, training, equipment and tips for diving in these extreme conditions. Rob runs a great diving program here and is very well organized. The equipment is very old, very well maintained and very reliable. Thank you Rob!
Seals keep the ice hole open for us. This is what it looks like when they chew the ice to maintain a breathing hole.
Sunset at 2 am
The next day we went out to see Pegasus - the Navy plane that crash landed on the permanent ice runway which is now named after the plane. Though this is a Navy plane I wanted to get a picture of me holding an Air Force coin given to me by
Paul Airey - the first chief master sergeant of the Air Force. The coin commemorates the Paul W. Airey NCO Academy - named after him. I met him while doing my Science Diver training under Mike Zinzser at Florida State University - Panama City. This guy is really amazing - he was an aerial gunner on B-24 bombers and did 28 combat missions during World War II. After he was forced to bail out of his flak-damaged aircraft, he was captured and became a prisoner of war in Germany from July 1944 to May 1945. The coin is a commemorative piece that he was kind enough to give me to bring along here.
Me holding the Paul W. Airey NCO Academy coin in front of Pegasus on the permanent ice
Saturday, October 27, 2007:
Fata Morgan and Elvis Revived
On Shackleton’s return journey from within 97 miles of the South Pole, they were miles off their course, starving and weak, when by “an almost incredible coincidence the signal flag Joyce had mounted on the depot was raised into sight by a mirage, just in time to save the returning party.” From
Shackleton’s Forgotten Men: The Untold Tragedy of The Endurance Epic, by Lennard Bickel.
Fata Morgana (Photo by Bryan Newbold)
(continued...)
I'm cheating here and stealing the next three paragraphs from wikipedia: A Fata Morgana, Italian translation of Morgan le Fay, the fairy shapeshifting half-sister of King Arthur, is a mirage, an optical phenomenon which results from a temperature inversion. Objects on the horizon, such as islands, cliffs, ships or icebergs, appear elongated and elevated, like "fairy tale castles".
In calm weather, the undisturbed interface between warm air over cold dense air near the surface of the ground may act as a refracting lens, producing an upside-down image, over which the distant direct image appears to hover. Fata Morgana are usually seen in the morning after a cold night which has resulted in the radiation of heat into space. They may be seen in Arctic seas on very still mornings, or commonly on Antarctic ice shelves.
Fata Morgana are superior mirages, which are distinct from the more common inferior mirages, which create the illusion of distant pools of water in the desert and on hot roads.
We typically see the Fata Morgana as raised cliffs on the distant shore as we look across McMurdo Sound to Mt. Discovery (2681 m, 8796 ft). My two photos aren't exactly the same scale or color, but hopefully you can see some difference between our Fata Morgana view with mirage cliffs and our non-Fata Morgana view without the cliffs.
Fata Morgana View of Mt. Discovery region
Non Fata Morgana View of Mt. Discovery region
There were some other strange apparitions tonight at the annual McMurdo Halloween party. Here are a few of the fun costumes that we saw!
Cara Sucher, the Crary Lab supervisor, with Bert and Ernie
Elvis revived?
The Toast Busters were a popular group entry
Marcus had his own "scare" today in the dive hole when he thought he'd lost his dive mask. Our dive tender, Allan Timm, was shooting video of Marcus for a VideoRay presentation. Marcus had taken off his mask, taken out his regulator, and was trying to talk with frozen lips. Halfway through the video you can watch him start patting around his head looking for his mask. When the video was done rolling, Marcus looked panicked. "I can't find my mask!"
Stacy crawled down the ladder and started patting around Marcus looking in the icy slush for his mask. Marcus said "I had it in my hand!" and held up his empty left hand. Stacy said "Check your other hand," and there it was! Phew!
Your last excitement for the day is another quiz. Match the wierdest thing that the team brought down in their luggage with the correct team member!
1. Stacy a. a piece of Christo’s gate from NYC
2. Bob b. battery-powered holiday lights
3. Nick c. three bottles of Thai garlic and pepper hot sauce
4. Bryan d. a star-shaped collapsible lamp
5. Marcus e. a cheerleading top
6. Mindy f. flotation material for SCINI
Don't peak below the photo until you've guessed. Below was my personal favorite costume.
Zim Zimmerman wins most creative costume
Answers to Quiz
1. Stacy = lamp
2. Bob = flotation material
3. Nick = cheerleading top
4. Bryan = piece of Christo's gate
5. Marcus = Thai hot sauce
6. Mindy = holiday lights
Hope you all have a great Halloween!
Friday, October 26, 2007:
Word on the McMurdo Street is….
I can see observation hill out of one of the windows in our lab. If you look closely you can see a cross that has been mounted at the top.So after three weeks I have started to become familiar with all of the acronyms and slang that runs ramped around McMurdo Station. There are so many times when I have to search my brain to connect the acronym to the actual meaning. So just incase you intend on coming to Antarctica I have taken the liberty of introducing all of you some McMurdo idioms.
(continued...)
Mac Town: Short for McMurdo Station
Bag Drag: When people who are traveling to and from McMurdo Station show up to weigh in for their flight
Beaker: Scientist
Boomerang: A flight that turns back to the departing airport usually due to bad weather.
Bunny Boots: Boots that are issued to you in Christchurch. These boots water proof and keep you pretty warm.
C-17: A type of aircraft that most people fly to Mac Town in and will boomerang if there is bad weather.
CDC: The Clothing Distribution Center that is located in Christchurch. This place issues you all of your Extreme Cold Weather gear.
ChCh: Short for Christchurch
The Crud: The name of the sickness that fresh arrivals get when they come to Mac Town. Usually the crud flies in with the freshies.
D.A.: Dinning attendant who makes sure the food in the galley is fully stocked.
DNF: Do not freeze. This was written all over our food that we are sending out to our field camp.
ECW: Extreme cold weather gear. This gear is issued at the CDC and is a life saver in this cold environment.
Finjy or F.N.G: Stands for “Freakin New Guy/Gal”. We’re all a finjy at some time or another.
G.A.: General assistant who does all sorts of labor type tasks.
Helo: Short for helicopter.
The Ice: Another name for Antarctica.
Mainbody: The group of people who come during the summer season. The mainbody can reach up to 1,000 people during the summer.
Midrats: This is short of “midnight rations”. The crew who work the graveyard shift need to eat to and the galley is open at midnight to provide them with food.
NSF: National Science Foundation. They have paid for most of us beakers to be here. Thanks NSF!
Ob Hill: One of the hiking trails that is just above MacTown and provides a great view of the town.
P.I.: Principle Investigator and the person who is head of a science project. Stacy is our P.I.
POO: Point of Origin. My POO is in San Jose.
The Pole: Short for the South Pole Station. People who are flying to the pole usually come through MacTown first.
Polie: This is the person who is headed to the pole either to be a worker or a beaker.
S.A.R. Team: The Search And Rescue Team. If you get lost, these people will find you… hopefully.
Skua Central: When people are leaving MacTown and don’t want to lug all the stuff they have collected while here back home they drop it off at skua central. Think of it as a place where you can drop off anything of value that you don’t want and think someone else might.
USAP: The United States Antarctica Program, they make the whole trip possible
WinFly: Usually the group of people who fly to the Ice in August and are the first people the winter-overs will see that summer.
Winter-Overs: People who spend the winter on the Ice. Someone’s got to be here to keep the place running. There are usually about 200 winter-overs here during the winter.
And that is just some of the new words I’ve had to learn. There have been so many new people whose names I have been trying to remember that have been packed into my head. One new name I remember is Ben Bachelder. The reason I remember Ben’s name is because he was our tender dive tender today. Stacy and I dove at a site called Outfall B and we had Ben and Mindy as dive tenders. I had a great dive and it was all due to a tender dive tender named Ben.
Tender dive tender Ben in all his might and glory.
Stacy snapped this photo of me while we were at our safety stop.
The sun and blue skies returned to McMurdo Station today. It’s been pretty cloudy and overcast lately and it’s nice to be able and see Mt. Discovery across the Ice.
Thursday, October 25, 2007:
Drilling and Pulling
No, today was not about dentistry! But we started out drilling (sea ice, that is) and ended up pulling (food, for our field camp). It was another windy day, so Nick and I were not that warm when we started out to meet Tom the driller on the sea ice. Rob Robbins also went with us, to try and ease things along with the Fleet Operations office, since one of the drill locations was unfortunately in the middle of the road out to the runway, and they are responsible for the road. But everything went smoothly, and since we were in the track vehicle road, which requires less maintenance than the wheeled vehicle road, Fleet Ops were flexible enough to let us drill at the dive site. I’ll point out that we did not intentionally place our site in the road, but that the road moved to over one of our long term sites! Because the roads are on sea ice here, they are regraded every year, sometimes in new locations, and the location they selected for this years road went right over one of our sites!
Tom finishing up with drilling a dive hole.
(continued...)
And what about the pulling? When a group is going out to a field camp, where they will have to cook for themselves instead of having the wonderful galley staff to feed them three hot meals every day, they have to do what is called a food pull to select all the things they’ll need and package it up for transport by helicopter. Mindy spent all day, and I helped her in the afternoon, in the food room, presided over by Peggy, a warmly wonderful and very capable woman. During the summer in Colorado, Peggy selects and purchases all the food that all the field teams will need during the entire season. I don’t know what the total amounts are, but just for our group of 6, going out for 11 days, that was 444 lbs of food, including 132 chocolate bars! Maybe we will all come back looking like Weddell seals!
Hopefully after eating 444 lbs of food in 11 days we will
not look as rotund as this contented Weddell seal!
You can get almost anything in the food room. Peggy has even written a cook book to help us plan good, easy meals. We’re being democratic, each of us will be cooking dinner a couple of nights, and Mindy had us go through the 6 page list of available food items (in very small print) and check off what we wanted. Then she compiled it all and started pulling things off the shelves and packing them in boxes, and weighing each box and marking it clearly on the outside. Since we are going by helicopter to our field camp in New Harbor, everything we take needs to be weighed so the pilots know how heavy the load is, and where the weight is distributed. We also have to separate out the “DNF” or Do Not Freeze items – anything liquid, in a sealed container that will burst if the contents freeze, which will happen if they are left outside for even a pretty short time. The other classifications are “CF” for Can Freeze, and of course, Keep Frozen. The strangest thing we got was 9 packages of yeast for Marcus. He found a bread maker in Skua Central (see 5 October journal) and evidently plans to keep us in fresh bread the entire time. Never mind that we don’t know if the bread maker works…nor do we know if Marcus knows how to make bread…
Nick looking casual next to our massive food pull, all nicely boxed up.
Wait, is that one of our precious chocolate bars in his pocket?
The last thing that I did today was attempt to set up yet another camera and strobe combination for tomorrow’s dive. I have flooded 2 strobes (or the same strobe twice), and the connector for Rob’s strobe, and tried taking images with the HID video lights, and tried synching the digital camera on a long shutter speed with the film camera taking strobe pictures. Only the film camera worked, but it does not have our scaling lasers attached to it, so we can’t tell the sizes of animals in those pictures, which is part of the data we need. So we did some internet research and found an excellent web site that detailed the cord wiring from a Nikonos strobe, and Marcus was convinced it would synchronize with our digital camera. We hooked it all together and it appears good – and it only took 3 zip ties – so we will attempt that tomorrow. Wish us luck!
This is the kind of picture we would LIKE to be getting out of our
underwater digital cameras, instead of ones that are all black.
I’ll bid you goodnight with one other story from yesterday. We turned back from our efforts to mark safe routes to two of our far-away sites because weather conditions were worsening. As I made the final turn into town, I noticed blowing snow coming across the hood of the Tucker – but snow is odd in Antarctica – this is a desert after all. A few seconds later I smelled burning antifreeze. It wasn’t snow, it was steam! I stopped and checked all the gauges – everything seemed normal – then turned off the engine and jumped out – and we were spewing red propylene glycol all over the snow. We quickly got out a spill kit to soak up the spill and began shoveling contaminated snow into garbage bags – we had left a trail of red drops for 10 m behind us. My investigation under the hood revealed a lot of red stuff everywhere, but no single obvious cause. Susan, who is the Sea Ice expert and was with us to help us measure cracks and decide on crossing safety, called the Vehicle Maintenance Facility on the radio and they immediately sent a mechanic out to help us. We reported the spill (any release of a hazardous substance to the Antarctic environment needs to be reported and dealt with by trained folks) and they came right down and we turned over our two bags of contaminated snow to them. And then we called the taxi service and they came and gave us a ride home. 4 hours later we had our vehicle back, all fixed. All of this amazing help, from Carl who had volunteered to work with us on his day off and ended up shoveling red snow, to the mechanics and waste specialists and taxi drivers and Susan’s expertise, are part of the incredible system down here that lets us focus on science and engineering. But we’re always aware of how lucky we are to have so much support. Thank you to everyone who is helping us, both here and at home!
Susan, Mindy and Eternal Tuck(er) on our ill-fated attempt to find a
safe route to Turtle Rock. We'll try again on a nicer day!
Wednesday, October 24, 2007:
Ye Olde Leaky ROV
We've been having the good kind of pressure leaks the past couple days: the slow predictable kind with no permanent damage. While testing the electronics bottle for our backup SCINI, we found water repeatedly leaking in around our "waterproof" connectors. Usually we're worried about leaks caused by dirt and hairs around our rubber O-rings, but as we've demonstrated it's worth testing the usually reliable connectors as well.
(continued...)
One we determined we had a leak near our connectors by checking the dampness of different paper towels arrayed around the inside surface of our otherwise empty electronics bottle, we reversed the usual pressure and pumped up the air inside the bottle. Submerged underwater, the bubbles streaming out identified the culprit connector quickly. It's a lot easier to look for flowing bubbles on the outside of the bottle than for tiny drops of water on the inside of the bottle because usually the drops spray or get shaken around before we can inspect them.
To give an idea of the forces involved, our bottle lids have a surface area of about 30 square inches (193.5 square centimeters) and we inflated the bottle with air to a relative 5 psi (pounds per square inch); that means each lid had the equivalent of 150 pounds (68 kilograms at Earth's surface, or 667.2 newtons) of force spread across them, pushing outwards. Ultimately we would like SCINI to dive to a thousand feet (305 meters), where the pressure reaches about 425 psi; this works out to 12,750 pounds (5,783 kilograms at Earth's surface, 56,714 newtons) spread out over our thin little plastic lids... if that force was applied to my body (in a vacuum), I would break the sound barrier in less than half a second.
After sending down our troublesome bottle for a (final?) supper time pressure test in one of our dive huts, Mindy and I stopped by the old science aquarium, where marine work used to get done before our our modern spaceship/science complex was constructed a few years ago.
We were looking for an open tank we could use to rinse off SCINI after dives while we're in the field next week near New Harbor; Mindy made a very somber ruler.
Even though it's still used by a number of groups, the old aquarium reminded me of Scott's hut: cozy, lots of notes and warnings handwriten on the walls, piled up snow, and an efficent degree of disorganization.
The past few days have mostly been snowy and desaturated, but the snow blows away every now and then for us to see a new kind of sunset, like this one tuesday night. Tonight was snowier when Marcus and I went back out to recover the electronics bottle from it's final test. The snow here has a consistancy unlike any other, I think it's kind of like really good ricotta cheese, only lighter and stonger like aerogel. Either way, the bottle was bone dry inside, so we can go forward with our packing tomorrow!
Tuesday, October 23, 2007:
Another amazing day and dive!
So I'm in Antarctica AND I'm diving under the ice AND I'm working on underwater robots - WOW!
We start off each day meeting at breakfast to make plans for the day. We still need high resolution still photos of both tomato locations (Road and Transition) so Stacy can do her benthic ecology organism counts. We've had a terrible time getting a strobe working with the digital still camera so we hatch this crazy plan. If we can get Stacy's old Nikonus FILM camera strobe setup, she will use the film camera and I'll use the digital camera with the scaling lasers on manual mode to try to use her strobe. It's a bit far fetched but it might work and at least the film camera will get the shots we need. Also, since we need to cover areas from both locations we will swim from one to the other. It's not that far and we can go back up the other hole so we don't have to swim back to the other location. Sounds like a plan - a bit odd but hopefully we can get both locations done so we can move on to other sites that need to get done. Nothing ever goes according to plan though and I had some other problems on this dive...
So we gear up with a video camera with HID lights, a film camera, digital still camera with lasers and some other lights. I can't put my own gloves on and need help with just about all my dive gear - that's why we need dive tenders.
Nick and Matt put on my gloves.
(continued...)
Here's how we jump in the water (download):
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After I jump in I purge my suit and begin the long descent through the ice. There's a bit of shock involved when you hit the cold water but I immediately notice my right wrist is REALLY cold. I have a leak through my dry gloves and as I reach up, a trickle goes right down my spine! Wow was that cold! Then I notice my left wrist is also cold but not as bad. I continue my descent through the 20' ice hole wondering if I'll have to scrub the dive due to my leaks. It takes a while to purge air out of my suit and hoods as I descend through the ice tube until, suddenly, I'm in "open water" under the ice and easily see the bottom, another 40' below me. I think I just forgot about the leaks as I'm overwhelmed by the incredible view below me. They didn't leak any more and the ice cold water warms up inside my many layers of synthetic insulation. I honestly didn't even think about it again until I was out of the water.
I continue to descend to the bottom where Stacy is trying to get the video camera lights going. After giving up on one and just using the one working light, we video for a bit then attempt to get the still cameras going. It's dark so you can't read the buttons until you shine your light on them. The whole time your working on anything you have to maintain your buoyancy so you don't float up or, even worse, touch the fragile bottom and it's delicate, slow growing organisms. So you get your light in the right spot, look for the right button, press a button, control buoyancy, read the menu, get the light, look for the button, control buoyancy etc... until you finally get the camera set in the right mode with the right settings. Then we tried to make some pictures. Well the plan didn't work out so well but we eventually ended up getting the shots we needed on the film camera. Mission accomplished and me running low on air, we start our ascent up the second hole. I was so focussed on the camera and trying to make some pictures, I was almost overwhelmed when I took a minute to look around. Visibility was probably 800' or more and I could see blue light filtering down through thinner cracks in the 20' of ice. The underwater scene is so surreal and amazing with so much life and color below a frozen, all white and sterile looking ice sheet. You feel like you are flying - floating in air since you can't "see" the water. It's such a cool sensation - pun intended.
I still have remnants of the crud so I was still a bit stuffy. What happens when you go up is all the gas in your dry suit, lungs, eustation tubes and nasal passages expands. For the dry suit you carefully control the expanding air by controlled venting through the shoulder valve. This is mostly automatic - or at least you control it automatically without really thinking about it. My problem this time was with my clogged nasal passages. Basically snot ends up getting pumped into the mask where the fresh water snot freezes very rapidly. This also doesn't feel so good with lots of pressure right between your eyes. I ascended very slowly so this all wasn't a big deal but I ended up with so much frozen snot in my right lens I couldn't see anything out of that eye and I ended up blinking hard to keep the ice out of my eye. Some weird experiences and sensations but well worth it!
Look closely and you will see my right eye is full of frozen snot
Yuck and ouch!
Getting out is quite a chore as the water is about 6 feet below the tomato floor. This is another reason we need dive tenders. We have to take off our tank and clip it to a line. Then the dive tenders can haul up the 60 pound tank on a line.
I'm clipping on the tank with Mindy ready to haul it up.
Next the 43 pound of lead I wear, then my fins, then I can finally climb out.
I jumped down to help Stacy with her fins - not that she needed any help.
In the afternoon we tour the wastewater plant and the drinking water plant. Mindy explained all that so well I won't repeat it here.
Here's what the wastewater "bugs" look like under a microscope
Monday, October 22, 2007:
Tomato Diving in Condition 2
We woke up today to Condition 2 at McMurdo with Condition 1 (the worst) in some surrounding areas. There are official standards for each Condition but basically Condition 3 (the best) is cold and windy, Condition 2 is colder and windier with low visibility, and Condition 1 you don’t leave the building you are in because you might not be able to see your hand in front of your face.
Marcus took this picture of our formerly red Tomatoes out on the sea ice.
But did Condition 2 stop the divers? Of course not! It’s always Condition 3 under the ice! Bob, Stacy and dive tender Annie met me in the “Road Tomato” where I had been chipping the ice out of the dive hole. The wind was howling outside, and inside for that matter, as the Tomato sits up on skids for sledding across the ice. A seal had been using our dive hole as a breathing hole which helped make the chipping a little easier.
Stacy getting her second hood on to try and thwart brain freeze underwater.
Stacy’s regulator was frozen so I stuck it in my armpit for a few minutes to thaw it out. Lucky Stacy! Then Stacy plopped in and we watched her bubbles.
Okay - we are taking a break from this exciting adventure for a quiz! Match each of the people on the team in Antarctica with their hometown. Good luck.
1. Stacy a. St. Paul Park, Minnesota
2. Bob b. San Jose, California
3. Bryan c. Phoenixville, Pennsylvania
4. Nick d. Boston, Massachusetts
5. Marcus e. Colorado Springs, Colorado
6. Mindy f. Morristown, New Jersey
Bob getting ready for the icy plunge.
Back to the scintillating story: The divers got out of the water, and we got all the gear into the Tucker, just in time for me to catch lunch at 1 pm. Such an exciting life! I made Bob and Stacy each a plate of food before the scrumptious goods were put away and put their dinners on the warming rack for them to eat once they were out of their dripping dry suits!
Auger Update: Bryan valiantly tried to pull the sword from the stone, I mean the flights from the ice, but the &^%$# things are still stuck. So maybe if/when the 20 feet of ice goes out, we'll find our 18 feet of flights in the bottom of McMurdo Sound. It will give Stacy something new to look for when she goes diving.
Bryan doing his best King Arthur imitation
Health Update: Bryan went down! It might have been from leaving his computers and venturing out to wrestle with the flights. He has a cold, he sniffles, he coughs, he has the "McCrudo". Poor Bryan. Nick is holding steady. Good luck, Nick! The rest of us are feelin' fine though you hear remnants of the TB ward from Bob and Stacy. Bob lost his voice for awhile, but he's back with full vocal cords.
Okay - now you can have the quiz answers.
Stacy = New Jersey,
Bob = Colorado,
Bryan = Massachusetts,
Nick = California,
Marcus = Pennsylvania, and
Mindy = Minnesota.
Sunday, October 21, 2007:
Days off are well spent
The work days seem to fly by and before I know it, it’s time for another update and a day off! Everyone in McMurdo Station usually works about 10 hours a day six days a week with Sunday being the only day off. Except for a select few who work 12 hour shifts and get two day off. You’d be surprised how much there is to do on a day off. There are all sorts of arts and crafts events, movies shown thought out the day, workout sessions, soccer, rugby, basketball, tours, hiking, skiing, snowboarding and even a quite library where this update is being written.
Come on, I just couldn't resist putting up this silly picture of our P.I. (principle investigator).
(continued...)
So on days off it is nice to catch up on some sleep. I usually don’t go to bed until after midnight and wake up around 6:30 in the morning. So I am averaging about six hours of sleep a night which I function just fine on. It’s hard for me to sleep when I can see sunlight out at night, it like my mind and body want to go outside and play in the freezing conditions. It’s like being a kid trapped indoors on a rainy day. You know you shouldn’t go outside or else you’ll get sick (at least that’s what my mom told me) but something about the rain draws you outdoors. Well the sunlight is my rain and it keeps me up at night. I heard some Antarctic slang this weekend. When you are having trouble sleeping it’s called having the Big Eye. So I this day off I slept in until 9:30 a.m. which is a new Antarctica record for me.
As I comfortably lay in bed I picked up Antarctica - The Heroic Age, a book I have been reading lately. I picked this book up at the McMurdo Library, which has a fairly extensive selection of books. The Heroic Age is a book about some of the first explores to step foot on the polar desert that is Antarctica. The book highlights the first three exploring parties that attempted to reach 90 degrees south. The first of these exploring parties was led by Robert Falcon Scott. Scott was unsuccessful in reaching the South Pole but he had done what no one else had ever done. Scott proved that people could travel around in Antarctica and in doing so cover several hundred kilometers.
The next party to attempt to reach the South Pole was led by Ernest Henry Shackleton. Shackleton was part of the first expedition that was led by Scott and had gain a great deal of knowledge from his mentor. But like Scott, Shackleton was unable to reach the South Pole but was able to get closer to the South Pole than the previous expedition and this satisfied Shackleton.
The third attempt was led by a Norwegian explorer named Roald Amundsen. During this time Scott had launched a second attempt at reaching the South Pole and a race was on as to who would reach the South Pole first. On 14 December 1911 Amundsen was the first party to reach the South Pole and arrived five weeks earlier than the Scott party would. Amundsen made a successful journey to the pole and back and was now headed back to Norway to bask in fame but Scott would not be as lucky. On the return trip from the South Pole Scott and all of his men perished. The trials that each of the exploring groups had to endure was amazing and these men were true heroes of their time. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to know a little more about the first explores to come to Antarctica.
So after reading this fascinating story and an awesome Sunday brunch what else was there to do…. go to work! Well I didn’t really go to work to work but instead to write some emails and get online. Which is very slow by the way, think of the days of 56k dial up modems and it is slower then that. While I was writing some emails the Crary Lab was giving a tour to residents of McMurdo. Every Sunday one of the tours that are conducted is of the Crary Lab. The tour guide tells the guest about the science that is going on here and sometime can get a researcher or two to tell the group what exactly they are doing. Taking a break from the emails I decided to go out and talk to the group about Project SCINI. I invited the group into the lab to show them SCINI and where Marcus and Stacy both joined in on the group conversation. All of us really enjoy talking about our project and it’s great to be able to share our excitement with other people who are just as interested. The group was awesome and had all sorts of questions. After some Q and A that was directed by Stacy the tour concluded and the group was off. And Mindy and I were off to a dive hut.
Here I am talking about SCINI, what a captivated audience.
So why would Mindy and I go out in the freezing conditions to a dive hut? Well to chip open a dive hole and fish out all the ice blocks! We recently had two dive holes that were drilled for us but require two people to go out daily to clear out the holes. It is so cold here they any exposed water will be frozen over in less than 24 hours. Lucky for Mindy and I the ice only builds up a couple of centimeters but this whole process can take about two hours. We began by chipping the ice away with chipper bars that weight about 10 pounds and once all the ice is free we have to clear it with nets. This whole process sounds easy enough but believe me, when you have “Big Red” on, in -20 degrees C temperature everything is harder. While Mindy and I were chippin’ and fishin’ we came across a funny looking ice block that we just had to take a picture of.
We found a heart in the dive hole. I wonder who it belongs to???
Mindy and I decided it would be fun to fish the heart out and take some fun pictures with it.
After the silly pictures with ice some of the group got together to watch the movie Life Aquatic. This is a hilarious movie that is a bit of a spoof of the famous French scientist Jacques-Yves Cousteau. I won’t go into too much detail of this movie as you should watch it for yourself but seeing this movie reminded me of why I enjoy watching it so much. In some ways I feel like the Project SCINI team can relate with the characters of the film.
To conclude the day off I went to the Sunday Night Science Lecture entitled “The Antarctic Cryoecosphere: A New Paradigm for Life in the Biosphere. This was a very interesting talk and focused on microscopic life that may be living in the ice and in the subglacial lakes that are several kilometers below glaciers. One of the lakes that the talked focused on was Lake Vostok which is considered the sixth largest fresh water lake in the world, and it’s under a glacier!!! A Russian science group is leading the drilling operation and are very close to penetrating the lake. It’s exciting to think that there are new discoveries are occurring here every year and I geek out on the idea of finding life and new organisms in Lake Vostok. I wonder if they will want a robot to go down into the lake a take a look, perhaps a small size diameter shaped robot named SCINI???
Saturday, October 20, 2007:
Everybody dives!
With our dive tomatoes sitting 200 m apart, it was easy to drill a single hole halfway between them to for the third transducer and have both divers and the VideoRay in the water at the same time. Since we are still working in front of the station, where the ice is 8 years old and 7 m thick, anything that reduces the number of holes we have to drill makes things much easier.
Here's our Tucker, placing one tomato over a dive hole.
(continued...)
We started with the hole drilling, taking advantage of the enthusiasm of our tender for the day, Elizabeth. Elizabeth had volunteered to help the divers, and we asked her to also help us drill the transducer hole. In an ideal deployment, we have an isosceles right triangle with the main hole (that the ROV goes through) at the 90 degree angle. The length of the legs is constrained to 30 m by the length of the transducer cables, but the longer they are, in theory, the better the accuracy of the navigation. However, this time, the distance between the tomatoes forced our triangle into a squashed configuration so that the angle was greater than 90 degrees. You’ll see the consequences of this later.
Bryan's-eye view from the lab window of our deployment configuration (badly drawn by Stacy, who still has not mastered the basics of perspective nor any graphics program).
Then, to make things even more confusing, we deployed the ROV through the north tomato dive hole instead of the central hole. We did this because we were using the VideoRay, which won’t fit in the smaller 15 cm hole that we drill, and testing the navigation with it. We couldn’t get the heater in the tomato going because we were missing the hose that connects “Mr. Heater” to the propane canister –another example that you have to check EVERYTHING and not assume that just because you request a heater and a fuel tank that you will also be issued the thing that goes between them… Even Mamback, our friendly propane guru from the carps shop, did not have the right part. So it was a chilly start. We warmed up though by taking turns chipping and dipping – the ice out of the dive hole, that is. About 8 cm of ice formed since the hole was drilled, less than 24 hours ago! And since the tomato sits well off the ground on its skis, and there is a lot of snow on top of the ice here, we had a 1.5 m drop from where we were and the ice we were trying to remove. Add that the tomato is somewhat small and this led to very interesting “crab moves” as we tried to slam the 7 kg chipper bar hard enough into the ice to break it but not so hard that it slipped out of our hands and got lost in the water below.
Mindy and Elizabeth demonstrate proper crab posture for chipping and dipping.
After finally getting the hole clear of ice we put in the down line with 2 cameras (still and video), a core rack, and a quadrat and slate on it, as well as the usual flashers and flags for relocation, and pony bottle for emergencies. The we put in the transducer, and then the VideoRay, and finally, the divers, Nick and me. After we were all gone and there was a moment of peace in the tomato, Mindy and Elizabeth rigged an ingenious carabiner clip system to help them hoist our 27 kg (60 lb) tanks and 18 kg weight belts out of the hole, and put in the ladder so we could climb out.
Finally those pesky divers get out of the way and leave the tenders in peace. This is an image taken by the VideoRay of Stacy dropping down through the dive hole, just before she got her legs tangled in the tether...
Underwater, Nick was taking imagery of the larger animals and I was collecting samples of the tiny infaunal animals that comprise the community, to allow us to fully describe the ecosystem. Once again, the still camera refused to work though the video worked fine. And it was great having the ROV in the water too – its lights helped illuminate what we were working on, we could grab it and direct it at something we wanted a picture of, and of course, Marcus and Bob who were operating it out of the Tucker had their own list of goals – to map the positions of sponges and trash on the surrounding seafloor.
Another VideoRay image of Stacy collecting core samples (and making a little duststorm of mud).
Here’s where the configuration of the transducers became interesting. The navigation system works by sending a signal from transducer 1, which causes the transponder that is attached to the ROV to send out another signal that is received by transducers 1, 2 and 3. The transducers are all hooked into the same clock, and the speed of sound is constant (presuming the water conditions are constant) so by the tiny differences in when each transducer hears the ping, the system can calculate how far away each transducer is from the transponder. The problem is when you have a really squished triangle, the error can be just enough that you can’t tell if you are on the right side or the left side of the baseline. Then you have to use other information, like depth, to confirm where you are. Either that, or there were some spooky mirror images on the seafloor. But in the end, we were navigating right back to mapped targets with 1 m accuracy, so we were quite happy…though we’ll keep working toward the 20 cm accuracy target!
Some of the sponges (white) and plastic trash (yellow) that the VideoRay was mapping.
Friday, October 19, 2007:
Internet killed the Video Star
Got some goodies for you to viddy today from the past week of diving and driving. See if you can identify critters using
this field guide to marine species around Ross Island!
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Here's a jellyfish Nick saw while SCUBA diving (
download).
(continued...)
The following clips should stream if you click on them; otherwise you can use the links to download and play them locally. If you have trouble playing the downloaded clipls I highly recommend the VideoLAN ("VLC") client for just about any operating system. Watchout, the "large" clips are short but high resolution! Ultimately we will have even higher resolution video and photos from SCINI, stay tuned...
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Fish in the Crary test tank (small)
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SCINI Surfacing in the test tank (large, small)
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Coming into focus for the first time off the jetty (large, small)
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A mysterious orange reflective object near the jetty (large, small)
This is the first time we've done video, so let us know if you have any problems!
Thursday, October 18, 2007:
The Crud is winning and Travel Bear Q&A
Yesterday we managed to get 6 flights stuck in the ice and, after dumping 40 some gallons of hot water down the hole, we finally gave up on the stuck bit. I'm not sure we explained why we are trying to make other holes. To use our short baseline positioning system,we need three transducers in the water separated by at least a few Meters. The system works by having three wired, through the ice transducers connected to a processor box. Then, a battery powered transponder goes on the ROV or diver and a combination of hardware and software time the ping returns and use triangulation to determine position underwater. Too bad we can't just use GPS underwater but a GPS signal only travels a few mm through water.
I spend most of the day in the lab working on another microprocessor board for SCINI as a spare. Since we aren't in production, everything is hand wired.
(continued...)
I was getting over my Crud but after the last few nights late on the ice, it's gotten much worse. I take a nap in the afternoon then go to Scott Base.
I'm not sure the pictures of McMurdo convey just how industrial looking this place is. I hadn't thought about it for a while until we visited Scott Base and it looks so much more hospitable.
Some excellent views from Scott Base:
I received some excellent questions from Perkiomen Valley School District about Travel Bear (TB). Here's Travel Bear on the sea ice with a wind chill of -50 F.
1. How long will TB be in Antarctica?
Travel Bear will be in Antarctica until Nov. 16th. We'll be deploying to a Remote Field Camp for 10 days in the Dry Valleys which is in the Antarctic Specially Managed Area (ASMA). This means we have to be extremely careful not to contaminate anything there. Read some really interesting facts here. 2.Have you seen penguins or seals?
I have not seen any penguins but I have seen and even swam with Weddell seals! We didn't have a functioning underwater camera so I didn't get any pictures under water but you can see some pictures from the surface here. 3.Are there any snow dogs there?
There are no dogs here now and different bases banned dogs at different times. They used to have dogs here but there were concerns that the dogs might transfer diseases to the seals. Scott Base used dogs into the '80s - see a picture of them here. 4. Are you having a good time?
I am having a great time! This is certainly the opportunity of a lifetime and you should experience it if you can. There are many ways to earn a trip here - even as a kid. Since the 1970s, the National Science Foundation has brought a Boy Scout each year to visit the United States Antarctic Program. Now the Boy Scouts alternate years with Girl Scouts. This link details the various ways to get here. 5. Is TB having fun and being good?
Travel Bear is really enjoying the scenery and is generally being good. I had to give him a time out the other day when he tried to sneak a dive in my dry suit. He really wants to dive but he doesn't have the qualifications.
And some more excellent questions:
o What do you use to cover your noses and mouths to keep them from freezing, but still allow you to breathe in the sub-zero temps?
We were issued a neck collar which we pull up over our noses. If you keep your nose in for too long ice builds up and you have to rotate the collar a bit.
o Did you opt for the snow wall, igloo, ditch or ice sculpture for your overnight shelter during your training? How long did it take you to build?
I wanted to try a 2 person snow trench so I found another guy Derek willing to dig and we started digging. We sawed, chipped and shoveled the very densely packed snow for about 6 hours to make our shelter. It worked very well and it was warmer in the trench but we were both still cold.
The trench has two shelves on each side and is covered with big blocks of ice. We block ourselves in with one big block to keep out the howling wind.
My trenchmate Derek
o I assume you use the melted snow for your drinking water? How much treatment does it require to make it potable?
You start with a little bit of water in the pan (burnt snow or minerals in the pot taste bad) and just dump in some snow. The air is very pure here so the snow is drinkable when melted.
o About the "frozen electronics" problem: is there any way to cobble together some flexible thermal gel packs with some duct tape to make an attractive camera (or gps, etc.) cozy that can be stored next to the body?
To keep anything electronic operating you have to keep the batteries warm. I have a camera small enough I carefully put in an inside pocket to keep warm. To take a picture I have to undo Big Red, unzip my wind pants, remove my outer glove, grab the camera and take some pictures until the camera stops working. This can be a few minutes or more depending on conditions. A few times the camera stopped working it actually had ice on it from moisture in my glove liners. So far, 10 minutes inside a warm pocket and it's ok again. Having to go through all this is one reason I'm not taking my usual hundreds of pictures. I've tried the pocket warmers and they seem to help a little but not much.
oo What sort of materials are your clothing/survival gear made out of?
Our Big Red is made with lots of goose down and a windproof nylon shell. It's the one piece of ECW gear you cannot be without and you get so used to having certain things (gloves, neck collar, hats, water bottle) in certain pockets it feels funny not wearing it on warmer days. Everything else is synthetic as we learned "cotton kills" since it holds sweat. We wear layers and are constantly adjusting as we go from various temperatures. Some days we are just going from building to building so you can wear anything and be ok. Our lab is at the end of Crary Lab so it can be chilly (50) inside. Things are warming up here and our minimum temperature was -26 F this month with a max of 14 F. Interestingly enough, the monthly low occurred while we were out camping on the ice where it is both colder and much more windy then recorded at McMurdo.
How do you clean them?
My wife will be amazed but I wash everything - together. In our dorms we have washers and dryers just like home.
oo How's the food there? Are you able to get anything fresh, or is everything canned, boxed and frozen? Are there special dietary issues related to the cold and harsh conditions (eg everyone has to increase Vitamin D consumption)?
I think the food is quite good. We do get some fresh fruit in now and then and we usually have a very nice variety of foods to choose from. There is always a vegetarian dish available as well which are usually yummy. I usually have a little bit of everything. I have to find the bakers and thank them - they do an outstanding job with excellent breads, muffins and pastries. The thing everyone notices is the more you are out in the cold the more you eat. Some days we were eating huge meals - way more then I could possibly eat normally. We have lots of daylight here so we get plenty of Vitamin D but most everyone supplements with Vitamin C.
oo How much sunlight is available? Are full-spectrum bulbs used? Is depression a problem?
It's summer here and the length of day is now 21 hours 52 minutes, which means we have lots of light even at night. Depression can be a problem here even in the sumer season but it has more to do with such an abrupt change in social routines or lack of them. During the winter there is no light other then the very bright stars, moon and stunning Aurora (awesome pictures from nearby Scott Base). I have noticed full spectrum bulbs in common areas like the galley.
oo I had asked about the water treatement at the base station, but what do you do for water in the field? Any unusual water conservation practices there (eg, gray water used to flush toilets, etc.) ?
For water in the field we melt snow. I don't know about all field camps, but generally all waste is brought back to McMurdo. We will be setting up a remote field camp in New Harbor in the Dry Valleys. The entire Dry Valley area is in ASMA (described in #1 above) where special precautions are necessary. Nothing is allowed on the pristine ground there including urine and even snot (no farmer blows). We even have to disinfect our boots so we don't contaminate the soil there.
oo Speaking of toilets, what do you have to do to answer the call of nature in the field? Do the women use female urinals to limit their exposure time? How do you clean your hands afterward?
We use Pee bottles - men and woman - read this for Nick's funny Pee bottle story. We can't use alcohol sanitizers as they can cause instant frostbite like the fuel that got Mindy. For more serious bathroom business we have a seat over a bag - and you don't dawdle and read the paper while sitting there!
oo What amenities do you miss most from home? What do you do for entertainment there (or is there any time for entertainment)?
I miss my wife and kids the most! Amenities? I guess I miss fast internet and easy phone calls. We haven't had much time to relax other then some time before bed. So far I watched The Thing and Life Aquatic - both appropriate for our work here. I went bowling one "night" and there seems to be lots of things to do including some odd ones like pottery as well as exercise programs and various social gatherings like “How to Listen to and Understand Opera”.
Keep the questions coming!
Wednesday, October 17, 2007:
VideoRay takes a dive!
Bob launching VideoRay. Photo by Marcus.
One step forward, two steps back is how it feels sometimes - but progress is being made! Today we tested the navigation system with VideoRay taking her first Antarctic dive and using our newly remodeled Tucker as dive-command center.
(continued...)
The morning started out with "two steps back" with Bob, Marcus and Nick trying to extract the triple-stack of flights frozen in the sea ice. They tried 220 F water, big wrenches, swearing, and a few other creative ideas, but the flights remained stuck.
You are just seeing the top of the triple stack - picture 13 more feet of flight below the ice!
In order to get at least one step forward, the guys decided to put the transducer in the fish hut hole and deploy VideoRay through the dive hut hole.
You can see how close the fish hut (left) and dive hut are. Notice the Tucker in front of the dive hut. Look closer and you can see...
...the generator and cables running from the transducers and power supply into the Tucker cab.
So what is going on in the back of the Tucker?
Open the door and let's see...
The first day of using the modified Tucker as command-central. Thanks to Christian from the "carp" shop, there is a beautiful wooden shelf to put the computers and monitors on. Now we are at least three steps forward for the day.
Notice Marcus doesn't need his sunglasses inside command-central because of our hand-crafted curtains blocking the sunlight.
The VideoRay took some great footage of the sea floor and everyone had a blast flying it underwater - except for me because I am a chicken-weeny and was afraid I'd bury it in the silt or hit one of the pilings!
VideoRay Image: Starfish making a "nosh-pit" over the bag-0-bones that Stacy put down under the Jetty.
VideoRay Image: This strange creature is a polychaete (many bristles) worm called Flabelligera. It looks like a Flabelligera, don't you think?
VideoRay Image: Under Ice Garden
Health Update: The youngun's seem to be keeping the evil cold virus at Bay; Bob, Stacy and Mindy claim to be feeling better but sound like a walking TB ward, and Marcus is taking a well-deserved nap to keep his cold from pounding him into the basalt and ice of McMurdo!
Tuesday, October 16, 2007:
Cameras and Recovering Equipment from Under the Ice Sheet
In our last excited episode the SCINI Team got two transducers, which are used for the navigation system, stuck in the ice sheet during the excitement of our first SCINI deployment. Through the ingenuity of Bob we were able to free one of two transducers with hot water. By the time we recovered transducer one it was 2 a.m. and we decided to call it a night and return the next day to recover the second transducer. So let’s continue with the exciting adventure of under the ice diving, cameras, amazing jellyfish and of course the recovery of the lost transducer…
This picture has nothing to do with the post but I don't think a happer flower in Antarctica exist.
(continued...)
At 2 a.m. I was exhausted from a long day and immediately went to sleep the second my head hit the pillow. I was schedule to dive with Stacy at 9 a.m. and I wanted to get as much sleep as possible before the dive. At 8:30 a.m. I rolled out of bed, got a bit to eat and headed down to the dive locker. At the dive locker I met with the team and Roxanna, our dive tender for the day. Stacy and I reviewed our dive plan for the day and it included taking some photos and recording some transects with a camcorder. Stacy was going to take some photos of an experiment she placed down the previous week and recover a core that we misplaced below the dive hole while I was going to use the camcorder to record three 10 meter transects of the ocean floor. After these tasks we were going to attach our gear to the down line under the dive hole and go look for the missing transponder. Since we were not able to move the transducer last night we assumed that it would be hanging a couple of meters below the ice sheet and should be pretty visible. After our brief we geared up and headed to the Jetty dive site.
Splash! Stacy jumps in the dive hole and she reaches up for her waterproof camera as Roxanna hands it down to her. I am sitting on the edge of the dive hole while all of this is going on doing a mental review of the dive plan. After Stacy has cleared the dive hole I lifted myself off of the edge and jumped into the dark 28 degree F water. While I was still on the surface the dive tenders handed me the camcorder. I met Stacy at the bottom of the down line and we same over to where I was to do the three transects. After I finished my transects Stacy and I regrouped and swam back to unload our gear at the down line.
Here is some of the gear we are using to record images under the water. The gray camcorder (on the left) goes into the yellow waterproof housing while the two HID lights illuminate the scene.
We are at about 30 feet of water and Stacy starts to hook her camera onto the down line, meanwhile I am looking around at the sapphire blue ceiling that is illuminated through the cracks in the sea ice and then I spot the shadow of something in the distance. As the creature swims along it comes into focus, it is a beautiful jellyfish! I have never seen a jellyfish like this in my life and I feel like I am at the Monterey Bay Aquarium looking into one of the jellyfish tanks, but instead of a piece of glass it is only a couple of meters of water that separates us. I get Stacy’s attention and point out the amazing jellyfish to her. She motions over for us to go get a closer look and with the camcorder still in hand I push record and get the creature on film. As we get closer the jellyfish is getting larger and large until I can no longer fit it the frame. At this point I am about two meters away from this huge jellyfish and the bell (top portion) of the jelly looked to be about a meter across. In all honesty, I was very excited to be so close to this animal that moved so gracefully but looked like an alien for a completely different world. I attached some still frames from the footage we recorded below (when I made it back to the surface I learned that the jellyfish was a Desmonema glaciale After a few minutes of jellyfish gazing Stacy and I focused in on our third and final task, recovery of the elusive transducer.
Follow me with the beautiful jelly; Jellyfish open
Jellyfish close, jellyfish move
Jellyfish open again
Look at the massive tentacles.
The bell must have been about one meter across. HUGE!!!
What another amazing feature of Antarctica.
With the help of Stacy I attached the camcorder to the down line and we started heading in the direction of the ice frozen transducer. We had an idea of its direction as it was placed about 10 meters from a four foot fishing hole that was near our dive hole. We swam towards the fishing hole that looked like a moon hanging in the sky and headed towards where we thought the transducer was. It took less than five minutes for us to find the transducer thanks to Stacy’s bright light and the awesome water clarity. I swam up to the lonely transducer, unscrewed it from its connector and clutched it in my hand the remainder of the dive. After a successful transducer recovery we swam back to our dive hole, did a safety stop for 5 minutes and headed back up the dive hole. The firs thing I handed the dive tenders was the precious transducer and then all of my gear. Now the only thing that remained was the recovery of the transducer cable.
This little transducer gave us so much trouble, but in the end we were able to retrieve it.
Again, thanks to Bob’s MacGyver like skills the transducer cable was pulled from the ice. Bob, Bryan and Marcus headed the task of getting the cable free and like the previous day used hot water, a tent pole, some duct tape and a funnel with a hose. The funnel and hose were attached to the tent pole with the duct tape and was placed down the half frozen hole. Next the hot water was poured into the funnel and was jammed into the hole. With each jam the tent pole went further into the ice until it made a hole that was larger enough for the cable to be pulled up through. Both our transducer and cable were recovered, GREAT SUCCESS!
The day was filled with great accomplishments above and below the ice sheet and I am impressed at how our team is able to divide and complete various task. I am slowly learning about the many unanticipated events that occur in the Antarctic environment. I never thought maintaining a transducer hole was going to be such a task but here we are trying to think of ways to keep 5 inch holes from freezing over. I’m sure this is only one of many unanticipated occurrences that we will come across while here in Antarctica, I only wonder what the next unforeseen events will bring.
Monday, October 15, 2007:
Huge Success!
Today was incredibly eventful! After all the months to years of planning and designing and building SCINI did what she was "born" for, she went under the ice in Antarctica, swam around, and sent us back pictures! I can't describe how thrilled the team is with this success.
This intrepid explorer-fish has decided to go for a ride -
(continued...)
We started this morning with a plan to do a "dunk test" in the big tank in the aquarium room in the afternoon. Marcus and Bryan worked their magic with the insides of the electronics bottle and the computer software, and got to a point of stability and readiness, and then Nick took over assembly. We are still perfecting our checklists to make sure we don't forget any important steps, and writing directions and documentation to help us, and any future users, through each stage. So we had some minor hitches, where we had to go back, and carefully redo the steps, but eventually we had the robot fully assembled.
The visionary Team SCINI-zou, with the fully assembled robot, looking towards the future...
We hooked her up for her pre-dive tests next to the tank full of Trematomus bernacchii. All the thrusters responded perfectly, the camera and lighting were giving us nice clear images, the checklist was complete, it was time to get wet! We gently placed her in the tank and carefully ballasted her so that she was neutrally buoyant and level. This way, it takes no extra effort to maintain position. A curious crowd started to mill around: the GPS expert who is helping us with our navigation, the lab safety guru, the gents who maintain the facilities in the lab building (and have gotten the temperature in our office above freezing!), the janitors who help us stay organized, and even the NSF science representative. Bryan, Nick, and Marcus took turns driving around the fish in the tank, and Bob could not get the proud papa grin of his face. Everyone was so supportive and congratulatory and sharing our excitement, it felt absolutely fantastic. Even if it was just in a tank, SCINI's electronics and everything else were performing well in cold Antarctic water! We let others try out the thrusters and only splashed a little water out of the tank, and scared a few of the fish. We did some resolutions tests on the camera, and determined that SCINI could read (with a little translational help). We were so excited with our success that we almost forgot to go to dinner, but we had a bigger goal in mind too!
SCINI in the test tank with some confused fish!
After a quick meal, we came back to the lab and loaded everything up into a Pisten Bully that Rob, the Diving Safety Officer, had kindly lent us (our vehicle is still in the clutches of the carp shop undergoing minor but evidently very challenging modifications). We met up with Joe, who along with Thomas, are the UNAVCO GPS specialists who can locate positions to within cm. They came with us to the nearby Jetty to show us where to put our navigational transducers that would allow us to tie the underwater position of SCINI into the global positioning system. Joe and Thomas were willing to work late just to help us out, another example of the fantastic folks down here.
Is it Ghost Busters, or UNAVCO?
Set up went fairly smoothly, except that we got the Badger drill stuck in the ice for a little while, and then the ice was much thicker than we expected, and then we drilled into the rock at the top of the Jetty at one point. The, ahem, usual challenges! Mindy, Bob and Marcus were the troopers, staying outside in the wind until the job was done, and all of the navigation transducers were in place, snug in their 5 cm holes through 7 m of ice.
How many scientists does it take to drill a 5 cm hole?
And finally, a little push, a brief whirr of thrusters, and SCINI was under the ice in Antarctica!
SCINI starts her first Antarctic dive!
It was a deeply rewarding feeling to have the sub driving around under the ice, looking at seastars and worms and anemones and sea spiders and sponges. For the divers, it was a new perspective on a somewhat familiar scene, and for the non-divers, it was a first view of an exciting new world! We could drive around the rocks of the Jetty, and the soft sediment nearly, and sneak up on krill, and shine our lights in all the mysterious seafloor animals, without getting wet ourselves! I really can't find the words to describe how intensely thrilling it was. And it's just the start!
It's better than your favorite movie!
Of course, not everything went perfectly; that would be too unbelievable. The navigation system was inexplicably noisy, though it had worked well in tests a few days before. After gradually shutting down everything, we found several causes, including a low battery in the transponder. We fussed with that for quite a while, and then finally decided that as it was after midnight, we should go home and get some rest. So we began to wrap things up, and found that the 5 cm holes had frozen down too far for us to recover the 4.5 cm transducers. Yikes! Much pushing with tent poles, attempting to heat seawater in plastic buckets over kerosene heaters, and "borrowing" of heating elements that happened to be around the aquarium area, and Bob devised a plan to pour hot water down a funnel and hose, which I was convinced would not work because the water was fresh and so freezes at a higher temperature than seawater. But lo and behold, with one cup of hot water to spare, one of the transducers came free. It was now 2 am, and we decided that with a proven plan for recovery of the second transducer, we could go to bed so that we could make our 9 am dive schedule the next morning. We scuttled on home, and unloaded and brushed our teeth and actually got all the way into bed, before I recalled that we had left the Pisten Bully parked outside our lab and running, instead of plugged in outside the dive shack where it belonged. So Bob, bless his heart, volunteered to get his warm clothes back on and walk back to the lab and put the vehicle away. I was asleep by the time he got back!
The tent pole and hot water funnel transducer recovery strategy.
I am So Proud of the whole team, and especially of Bob, who really has made SCINI work.
Staying up until 2 am has some rewards - we got to see the moon over Discovery!
Sunday, October 14, 2007:
Rest and Rec Antarctica Style
Sunday was our first day off since we got here, and we made good use of it running around to visit historical sites, take care of mail, read, and generally flop about. I can't say building SCINI really feels like work, but it's good to take a break and let our brains process through all the progress we've made.
This photo is from arrival heights looking north along Ross Island; it was a very windy spot, Nick could lean 45 degrees into the wind without falling over and we all slipped over the ground a bit when the wind gusted.
(continued...)
The Hut Point structure is more than a hundred years old; it was originally constructed as storage space while explorers live on ships anchored nearby. Over the years it has hosted as many as 16 people at the same time and saved many lives by providing shelter and supplies for any one desperate in the region. Today it's a protected historical site within shouting distance from Mac Town, but several emergency huts are scattered around Ross Island, and many supply caches across the continent, to provide the same type of safe haven.
The dry climate and extreme temperatures generally keep the structure pristinely preserved, but with summer temperatures hitting 10c (50f) and around a thousand visitors a year walking through and raising the humidity, strange forms of fungus have cropped up in this an other historic structures. It's pretty amazing that there is a form of life that can hibernate for an entire year then wake up for a couple weeks when conditions are just right, but on the other hand it's pretty amazing there is any life here at all, and there are entire rich ecosystems. See this article from the Antarctic Sun for more information about the mold pro
blems.
The huts are still full of old food from the last inhabitants, including this half eaten pot of seal blubber... that's a lot of calories!
We had the day off, but the station is crawling with activity 24/7. Different groups of people have different free days, and at least a few hundred work the night shift. The sun won't be setting for much longer, and there's lots to do! Our lab is right next to the helo pad, where cargo was being hauled out to the field all day yesturday and empty flights coming back in for more. Things are pushing into high gear, we've got some milestone tests planned for monday, and long months of work back home are starting to pay off. Weee!
Saturday, October 13, 2007:
Incredible Ice Diving at Cape Evans Wall
I'm going to jump back a few days to cover my ice dives since this is one of the most amazing things I've ever done - and I've been around the world a few times and done some amazing things! I thank God and a bunch of others (credits towards the end) for this incredible opportunity and experience.
Me under the ice with a refrozen crack letting in some light. We were drilling on refrozen cracks just like this one the other day from above in sea ice school and now I know what they look like from the bottom!
(continued...)
Here I am very excited to dive and trying to show my smile. I wear two "wet hoods" over my head which means my head gets wet but the hoods trap the water which warms up and keeps my noggin from freezing.
I've only been SCUBA diving for 2 years but Stacy convinced me this was the opportunity of a lifetime and, since I would most likely never get another chance to dive in Antarctica ever again, I should go for it and get the rather intense training I needed so I could dive here. Since the water is so cold and covered with light-blocking ice, there is very little suspended in the water column and the water visibility is some of the best on the planet. I was on a National Geographic expedition exploring Cenotes in the Yucatan jungle with the VideoRay where the visibility was similar but the range of vision was limited by the cave walls. More Cenote pictures here. Under the ice here you can make out valleys and ridges that are hundreds of feet away - a truly incredible underwater vista like none I've ever seen either diving or using the VideoRay. This can cause some interesting problems I'll elaborate on later...
As excited as I was to dive, I was also nervous about my mask leaking. Normally my mask leaks a bit and I just clear the mask by blowing out my nose and tilting my head back. The air displaces the water in the mask and you soon have a mask without water in it. When the water is really cold things are a little different. When the nose gets submerged in really cold water your body goes into automatic "DON'T BREATH - YOU'RE UNDERWATER YOU FOOL" mode. Since I seem to have issues with my mask leaking, naturally I was concerned. If you look closely at the picture below you can see some water in my mask.
After messing around with my mask I didn't seem to have any particular problem with clearing it and even had it 1/2 full of water at one point. Maybe it's because the water is below freezing and my nose is just numb or maybe the water in the mask is warmed up by my face or maybe I just really want to breath...
Here I am descending through the slush layer. Here the ice is only 5' thick so I don't have too far to go down until I'm out of the bottom of the hole. This part is scary since you can't see much and your body is shocked by the sudden impact of this 28.5 degree water seeping all around my 2 layers of "wet hood" covering my head.
On the first dive we saw lots of Weddell sealsunderwater and they were amazing to watch as they watched us. We drove about 10 minutes to another hole at Cape Evans and Stacy and Rob had just dove in and Bob was ready to go when we heard something that sounded like opening a 2 liter soda bottle that had been shook up. Dive god Rob said "Weddell seal" nonchalantly and she came up again just poking out her nose through the slush and blew again - this time sending lots of snot all over some of the guys standing around the hole. She kept coming up and breathing deeply, each time sticking out her head a bit more until eventually...
She stuck out her head and looked right at us! What a sight!
Bob waiting for the seal to blow snot on him. By the way - they have big nasty teeth but only bite if aggravated - so I'm told.
After a while she cleared the hole and Bob, Nick and I descend through the hole and into darker water. This time the bottom is at 117 feet and we are much further away from the shore, which is, in this case, a very steep wall. Recall that I said the incredible visibility can cause problems? It caused two at this location - one for Nick and another for us both. When I got through the hole I saw Nick going up and down rapidly and seeming to have some problem. I swam over to him and he gave me the signal for equalization problems with his ears. I immediately realized he couldn't tell he was going up and down 20' since there was nothing to reference against. Probably the only reason I could tell was that I was on the other side of the down line (a rope with flags and strobes hanging down the hole). I swam him over to the down line and made him grab on and descend very slowly. He kinda did a "Doh" underwater and was fine after that. This whole thing was no big deal but it can lead to panic and panic can lead to stupid decisions.
The dive was incredible and I seemed to swim and swim until all of the sudden I was almost bumping into the huge boulders of the wall. It's REALLY difficult to judge distances with this phenomenally clear water. We swam around observing the abundant life all over the rocks as we moved across the wall. Nick and I were exploring the wall together and we were drifting down the wall as we went. I don't have any pictures but I also saw some sea butterflies swimming mid water - really fascinating! We were watching some fish or something around 80' when Nick starts to descend towards a giant sponge. It looked close but about 1/2 way there I looked at my depth gauge and I was at 90'. I inspect the 4' high, amazing sponge which looked like a Volcano Sponge then signal to Nick to go up. He keeps looking at the sponge then looks at his gauge and nods. After we get out we figure out neither one of us could tell the sponge was 20' away - it appeared more like 5'.
One of the strange physiological issues of diving with air is that when you increase depth to around 90' and beyond you start to experience nitrogen narcosis or in diver slang: being "Narced". Stacy knows she gets Narced around 85'. Nick also thought he might have been a bit "Narced" or under the debilitating effects of nitrogen narcosis since he recalls being "really into" that sponge. My dive computer showed my max depth at 103' and Nicks showed 105' - well within nitrogen narcosis range. The sponge was huge and really fascinating though. Again this wasn't a big deal but another reminder we are diving in a very strange environment which requires some new techniques and awareness.
Something else disconcerting was how much ice accumulates on my primary regulator as you can see in the picture below.
The primary regulator is cooled a bit below the surrounding water temperature as high pressure air exits the tank and expands and cools. This causes ice to form all over it even though I'm moving through the water. This would also happen with a normal second stage regulator (the one in my mouth) except that the ones we use have a heat exchanger in them which extracts the heat from my exhaled breath and transfers it to the valve to keep ice from forming inside the regulator. This can still happen and the regulator is designed to "free flow" if it freezes. Normally when you suck in air, a valve opens and when you stop sucking the valve closes. A free flow means the valve stays open and air - precious air is dumping out of your regulator. You can still breath just fine but you are losing air quickly. This is the reason we have two regulators - each on their own valve and the reason Rob makes us switch them under the ice on our first dive. This is standard SCUBA stuff but complicated by the really cold water. It's strange to have to find your mouth - it's all numb so I had to use my other hand to pull my mouth open and get the regulator in there. Once you swap to the other regulator you have to shut off the valve to the free flowing regulator which is extremely difficult with the drysuit and everything on. You either have to remove the tank so you can get to the valve or get your dive buddy to shut off the correct valve.
And if the day weren't odd and interesting enough - I actually went bowling that night! The alley was built in 1961 and I think it had 4 lanes but it's down to 2 now. We had two people as pinsetters sitting just above the pins to set them up and return the balls for us!
I want to thank everyone who made this amazing experience possible.
I huge thanks to Stacy for making this all happen and allowing me to be part of the team AND getting me to dive here!
THANKS to my amazing wife Carol, who is now mom and dad to our 4 kids ages 6, 4 and 2 years old and 6 months. She says I'm just another kid to take care of anyway - I don't know what she's talking about...
Thanks to my partners in VideoRay - Scott Bentley, Tom Glebas and Chris Gibson.
To Steve VanMeter for lending my his drysuit and advice.
Also to my Science Dive Instructor Mike Zinszer at Florida State University for teaching me how to do underwater forensics while being followed by an 8' alligator. Also thanks to his wife Amy and their daughters Elizabeth and Caroline for letting me be part of their family for 2 weeks as I trained and lived with them.
Also thanks to Joe Porter for inviting VideoRay to the Dominican Republic so I could get a bunch of dives in and to John Chatterton for making fun of me doing drysuit training for the Antarctic in 83 degree water!
Also thanks to the NSF for funding Stacy and the SCINI project. I hope they understand what a great effort and contribution this team is making.
And thank you all for your tax dollars - they are well spent with this bunch I can assure you!
And one more picture so you actually read the credits...
This is what happens when you don't cover your face - moisture from your breath freezes on everything around you. Did I mention it's cold?
Friday, October 12, 2007:
A Day in the Lab
Or rather in and out and in and out of the lab!
(continued...)
We have been so busy trying to get things up-and-running that it was a rare moment today when we were all in the lab together with the cozy familiarity of working together and apart but all for a common purpose. It is a good feeling, and helps provide some of the sense of family that we are otherwise missing. Our SCINI team is six individuals from different backgrounds that are meshing our strengths to help each other. It is pretty darn cool, and the music those youngsters play is "tight".
SCINI and Nick are our cozy kick-off photo. SCINI may have grown since the last time you saw her. She is not wearing heels. They put in an extra section to test for flooding. Nick spent most of today in and out machining pieces, and attempting two SCINI pressure tests out in the cold sea with Bob.
Bob has the geospatial maps of McMurdo Sound on his computer. He spent today in and out with SCINI and Nick at two different places, but I caught him inside without his hat on. He also worked with SCINI electronics today.
Stacy never sits still unless she is working hard at her computer. She packed boxes for the giant traverse to Marble Point, where giant rigs will haul literally tons of stuff for us about 60 miles out to Marble Point. From there, helicopters will sling it to our camp at New Harbor. Here she is delivering hot chocolate to all of us in the lab.
Bryan does stuff I don¿t understand at all. He uses four computers at a time and his eyes are being overtaken by the Elphel camera! Elphel stands for Electron-Photon-Electron and that is all I know about it. He writes code, moves tiny things around on transistors or watch-a-ma-callits, and does other stuff I can¿t explain either. Bryan also helps pack heavy boxes for the traverse in his spare time!
Marcus does stuff I don't understand either. He works on his computer or with electronics or helps pack big boxes too! I think the guys are going to need to explain what they do, as all I can say is everyone keeps very busy.
Colds have been moving around the lab too. I might have been the first culprit (forgive me). My line is that they tried to kill me at Happy Camp but all I got was frostbite and a bad cold. Some consolation. Then Bob and Stacy got the crud, now Marcus is showing signs. The young guys are holding out so far. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they have immune systems of perfectly working t-cells and platelets.
Signing off, with a headache and a sore throat, from the snowy south. May all your circuit boards be well-wired. Mindy
Thursday, October 11, 2007:
Ice and Diving Make for a Good Day
I have been waiting all year for the scuba dive that took place on 9 October 2007. When I first learned that I would have the opportunity to dive while in Antarctica I was very excited. Never in my wildest scuba diving dreams would I have thought that I would be diving under five feet of solid ice. Before I continue with my dive let me tell you what I had to do in order to get cleared for diving in Antarctica.
Bob, fully suited up and getting ready to make his third ice dive of the year.
(continued...)
There are several requirements that one must satisfy in order to dive in Antarctica. First you must be competent in dry suit diving. A dry suit is a one piece full body suit that has latex seals around your wrists and neck to keep water from entering your suit. Under the dry suit there are several layers of fleece and pile clothing that you must wear for insulation. Divers in Antarctica also wear dry gloves with liners to keep their hands from going numb, and let's not forget about the three hoods we wear to keep our heads nice and warm. Dry suits are great for diving in Antarctica as they can help to keep you warm and prevent the 28 degree F water from turning you into a popsicle. While we are on the topic of dry suit diving, the Antarctic diving program also requires that a diver make at least 15 dry suit dives and must have 10 dry suit dives within the last year. Along with the dry suit dives an Antarctic diver must have at least 50 open water dives.
Next comes the research diving certification. I received my AAUS research diving in the summer of 2007 through Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. Aside from obtaining your AAUS research diving certification, this class also focused on a higher level of diving physics, physiology, troubleshooting, navigation, dive planning and emergency and rescue skills. A third goal of this course was to become familiar with various fish, algae and invertebrate species so that the class would be able to conduct a Reef Check survey in the Big Sur area. This class was fun and knowledgeable and most of our open water diving was done in Big Sur where the visibility was amazing and the wildlife just as spectacular.
Once I cleared all of these requirements, and passed my diving physical, I was cleared to dive in Antarctica. On with the ice diving!
After a little trouble starting our Piston Bully, we were on the road and headed to a dive location known as Little Razor Back.
The dive site Little Razor Back is named after the rock formation in the background. Part of the dive hut is seen on the right side of the picture.
The dive team consisted of Stacy Kim, Bob Zook, Marcus Kolb, Rob Robbins (the dive safety officer in Antarctica) and myself. Not only was this going to be my first Antarctica dive but Marcus Kolb was about to take his first Antarctic plunge with me. Marcus and I were to be dive buddies for the two scheduled dives so that we could look out for each other while under the ice. To keep us divers out of the windy conditions we do most of our diving out of a dive hut. This hut usually has a heater blasting and a hole cut out of the floor and the ice so that the divers can access the water.
Here is picture of the dive hole that is cut into dive hut and sea ice. Marcus makes his debut into the blue waters of Antarctica.
Once we get into the hut everyone starts to get into their dive gear. This process can take several minutes because of all the equipment that we must put on. This can prove to be a difficult process at times because of the bulky dry suit and having a dive tender to assist you with gearing up is a blessing. (Thank you to all past and future dive tenders, you truly make the diving process that much easier.) Only four divers, Rob, Bob, Marcus and myself are scheduled to go in on this first dive. After gearing up I am sitting on the edge of the dive hole with many thoughts racing through my mind. I had been preparing my body and mind for this moment all year long and it was now in front of me. I was overwhelmed with the thought of diving below the sea ice and in all honesty a bit anxious. I didn’t know what to expect once I jumped in, would it be cold, would I be scared of not having an open water environment overhead, what if my regulator falls out of my mouth? While all of this is going through my head Rob jumps in and then I hear the call from Stacy, “Okay, who’s next?” Immediately I snapped out of my thoughts, focus in on my next moves and tell her “I’m going in next.” I lift myself off of the edge and jump into the dive hole.
This is me preparing for my first jump into Antarctic waters. The full face mask helps to keep my cheeks and lips from freezing and it also make me look like I have fatty lips!
At once I am eye to eye with five feet of sea ice and the next thing I know I am under the ice. This visibility under the ice sheet is like nothing I have ever experienced, it seems to go on for miles when in reality it extends for several hundred feet. Looking below me I can see a vast benthic ecosystem that is thriving in the 28 degree F water. When I turn around I notice that Marcus and Bob have both made the plunge and are now swimming around. All four of us make our way down to about 80 feet where we look around at all of the little critters on the ground. Nudibranchs, sea stars, anemones and many other critters were all there, doing the critter thing. I got so focused in on looking at the life on the sea floor I almost forgot I was diving in Antarctica! I found myself to be very comfortable in the frigid waters of Antarctica and all of the thoughts and anxiousness I had on the surface were now gone.
Say hello to your family and friends Marcus. Marcus poses well in 28 degree F water.
Swimming along we made our way up the slope of Little Razor Back into about 12 feet of water. We were very close to the bottom of the sea ice and the ice looked like a gallery of underwater chandeliers. With the touch of my hand part of the ice chandeliers broke into several pieces and fell to the sea floor like snow flakes falling from the sky. As we made our way back to the dive whole we were joined by some underwater guest. A couple of Weddell seals had noticed us and decided to come and check us out. Marcus and I were hypnotized by these massive looking seals and seeing them is something we have been looking forward to. The seals looked much fatter than the ones I am used to seeing in the Monterey Bay as the Weddell seals require a thicker layer of blubber to keep them insulated in the freezing water. These fatty seals were so graceful in their element as they rolled around to show us their undersides.
After several minutes of seal gazing it was time to head back to the dive hole and perform the one skill Rob has each Antarctic diver complete. Rob points to Marcus and I and motions for us to take our regulators out of our mouth and switch to our backup regulators. Now this skill sounds easy enough but let me tell you, it is hard to find your mouth when your face is freezing cold! In order to find my mouth I bit down on my tongue, then I grabbed my secondary regulator and shoved it into my mouth. Marcus and I were able to get the regulator, and a bit of freezing saltwater, into our mouths without any problems. Next Rob gives us a wave goodbye and heads up the hole to the surface. I come up next and I am followed by Marcus and then Bob.
As the dive tenders helped pull some of my gear off I replayed the dive through my head. It was great to see and feel my year long training coming to me as I was underwater. Antarctic diving was everything I expected it to be and more. Later in the day we made a second dive at Cape Evans Wall but I'll leave that dive for Marcus' update.
There is a beautiful world underwater and I recommend that you experience it for yourself.
Here I am my first dive under the ice, what a feeling.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007:
Today is our LAST training session!
After this, we should be fully prepared to survive and do all the things we need to in the Antarctic. Our morning training session was drivers training. We learned about the most normal vehicles on station, 4wd trucks with special parking brakes that won’t freeze, and then a new one for me, the Tucker Sno-Cat. Vehicles are in such short supply down here that we are lucky to get this vintage 1984 two stroke diesel, and as an added extra bonus, it will be customized with blackout curtains and a computer bench so we can use it as a mobile control room for ROV operations. Here's Bryan exiting the cab after successfully piloting the Tucker around town.
(continued...)Before the driving lessons, Mindy and I spent a couple of hours sorting through our small machines and making sure that all the pieces fit together. In the process, we manage to break the lift gate on the borrowed truck that we hadn’t yet been trained to drive. Not that the training would have helped, as lift gates appear to be one of those things that “everyone” knows how to operate. Next time, we won’t be shy about asking more questions!
One of the many "small engines" - this one is a 5kW generator that Mindy and I played with first thing in the morning. Tom is explaining to us how to get it started in the extreme cold - just keep pulling!
In the afternoon we got more training – this time with smaller machines – snowmobiles, ATVs, generators, Jiffy and Badger drills, and the Hotsy hole melter. Our brains were swimming with which fuel goes in which machine (it can be mogas, diesel or premix), where the chokes are, how many priming pumps to give a snowmobile versus a Jiffy drill, and whether to lean into or out of turn. We finished up with Pisten Bully training, which is a very cool tracked vehicle, and then proceeded to check out a Mattrack, the one vehicle we have NOT been trained on, for use tomorrow.
Bob, one of the MEC folks, shows us the relevant innards of an Alp snowmachine.
Julie shows us how to check out a Pisten Bulley for broken bits before we start driving it.
Bob and Mindy are exhausted by all the trainings!
Now that we’re through all this, we can finally start the work we came here to do. All of the training has been useful and well done and necessary, but we’ve been here for a whole week already! In celebration of the first week, we gave out an award to the person who had done the least number of bonehead things. First we were going to give a booby prize to the person who did the MOST boneheaded things, but it turned out that that wouldn’t work because all of us have made at least a couple of mistakes. So let’s see, Mindy and Stacy don’t get the award because they got frostbite on their fingers and lips respectively. Nick peed on himself (and Bryan’s camera, though this somehow didn’t make it into his update), and Bryan hooked up a microchip backwards and melted some of the bits. Bob blew his fin off underwater while gently floating upside down. Fortunately, none of these problems were major and all have been fixed more or less. But we’ll try to be more careful and aware so these kinds of things don’t keep happening.
So what did Marcus win? Flashing, floating penguin bathtub toys of course!
Marcus is wearing a "stupid hat" as punishment because he is two days late writing his update. But he seems to like his prize!
While we are on the subject of Marcus looking silly, here is an image of him just before his First Antarctic Dive. He was so excited that he did not even realize that I was taking a picture of him with his pants around his ankles. Both he and Nicholas had great dives, and did just fine in the cold water. I'll leave it to them to tell you about their experiences firsthand.
Bob at the safety stop under the ice, with a beautiful jelly.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007:
More Sea Ice and Preping SCINI
There's a lot to say about ice, and you'll be hearing of it from us as we continue our training and start spending the majority of time on, under, and around the stuff. Today Mindy and I took the training course Marcus and Nick took yesturday, and the two of them took their first check out dives under the ice. They're alive and exited, but you'll have to wait to hear all the details from them.
In the next few days we'll be deploying SCINI for the first time, and i'm feeling the same kind of suspensful anticipation Nick and Marcus had this morning at breakfast about how our baby will fare in this new harsh environment.
(continued...)
Can you find Mindy in this photo? When we get cold standing around outside it's great to take a quick jog to get the blood moving, and before you know it your warm verhicle and all your pals are just a spec on the horizon. It's literally impossible to hide while it's clear like today, but even a little snow and wind can render us blind.
Mount Erebus is not the world's biggest hot tub, though sometimes we wish it was... it's the southern most active volcano, and almost always has a little tuft of steam at the top. Geologists and the adventurous sometimes make the treacherous 3,794 meter (12,448 foot) helicopter flight to its peak, but it's slopes are some of the most dangerous in the McMurdo region, and we will only admire it from afar.
We got in a little work-study action at the end of our sea ice class and surveyed a route out to this year's "penguin ranch". This spot is part of an on going study of Emperor Penguin diving physiology by a multination group of scientists (visit their website!). Penguins from closer to the open water are rounded up and corraled around one or two lone dive holes so their dive times and behavior can be observed. We've been hearing about the incredible ability of these penguins to store oxygen in their muscles to pull off 20 minute deep dives with their heart rates slowed down to a beat every 10 seconds without chilling their core body temperatures. Perhaps one day we can reduce the brain damage and fatigue humans feel from extreme hypoxia by copying these hearty birds?
Monday, October 8, 2007:
Sea Ice School
Today we learned all about Sea Ice and how to determine if its safe to drive on with our various tracked vehicles. Heres a picture of what happens when youre not careful!
(continued...)
Susan taught us how to use all the tools such as ice measuring tape rigs and ice augers, both hand and gas engine driven.
Nick models one of the 2 inch flights. Flights are what the extension auger sections are called. They are modular and you plug in a bit on one end and either another flight or the power head on the other.
We load up in the Hagglund vehicle which is a really cool, 4.2 ton tracked vehicle with a front tractor and a people and/or equipment hauling tracked trailer. This baby is amphibious so even if we crash through the ice it still floats and the tracks paddle us around. Im not convinced it could climb back up on the ice though.
Here we are loaded up its cold and windy today with a wind chill around -60 F on the ice.
We drive out on the ice and learn how to look for dangerous areas with our excellent FSTP instructors Galen and Danny. FSTP stands for Field Safety Training Program and these guys were the same great instructors we had for Happy Camper survival training along with the also excellent Kevin.
They finally let me run the gas powered auger and poke some holes in the ice at a pressure ridge. Here we could see that the ice was thinner here and, though it was still safe for our vehicle, we did hit water. I wont explain it all since it would take all day - just as it took us.
As we drill deeper we add flights in 1 meter sections. This can get a bit difficult but you really cant leave the flights in the ice and add more or they freeze solid in a few minutes.
If you look closely at the Hagglund you might notice its number is AT96007 and, since its just like the one in the James Bond Movie Moonraker, it is so labeled and referred to as double-o-seven.
As we look at cracks in the sea ice that have refrozen we sometimes find other evidence that there was a crack to open water. Whenever there is an open crack, seals or penguins may find it, come up for air and even pop out for a while and hang out on the ice. When they hang out they poop and pee which we can easily spot on the seemingly endless desert of snow covered ice. Thats the little black stuff in the picture. And yes, it does smell - once it thaws
Here I am with Perkiomen Valley Schools Travel Bear. Not only has she been in Antarctica but here she is on the sea ice next to the magnificent Barne Glacier. Just in case you can't tell, it's really cold and windy out on the ice today! The tiny bit of nose that's exposed is cold and requires me to frequently pull my neck collar up to warm it, otherwise it would look like Mindy's frostbitten fingers. You can't really leave your nose in there or the vapor builds and turns to ice an gets your whole face cold.
I wonder where travel bear will show up next...
Here Nick is holding up the Barne Glacier. Hes really feeling the weight on his shoulders as he has to get SCINIs hardware bits together for a cold water pressure test on Thursday.
In case your wondering where we went, heres a map. My thumb is pointing to McMurdo and my finger is pointing to the Barne Glacier. Im getting REALLY psyched up for my check out dives which are supposed to be at Little Razorback Island which was along the way.
Sunday, October 7, 2007:
Happy Campers with Frostbite
I woke up this morning to discover I had frostbit finger tips on both thumbs and half of my fingers. White blisters surrounded by darker pink skin had replaced my normal light pink skin. Bummer.
(continued...)
Today is Sunday so the departments here are closed. The regular working hours at McMurdo are 7:30 am to 5:30 pm, 6 days a week. Everyone works long hours here to help the science teams with everything they need. The 10% of so of people here that make up the science teams get the trainings and supplies for a successful field season from the other 90% of the good folks on the ice. The "summer" season starts here around October 1st with some personnel arriving on the same flights as the people they are training, feeding, supplying mechanical equipment for, etc. The spin-up of the field season is AMAZING! I'm glad they get today off to rest!
Most of the science teams continue to work. The field season is so short everyone has to maximize their time here as much as possible. Nick, now in dry clothes after his last exciting adventure, is working at writing the blog about Happy Camp.
While Nick, Stacy and I hammered away at the computers most of the day, work on SCINI continued with Bob, Marcus and Bryan sorting parts, and getting the videoray into one of the aquarium tanks that are just outside our lab. At one point Bryan was working on four different computers at once! When the 2 pm Crary Lab tour came by, Stacy talked about our project and then they "flew" the videoray in the tank.
There was a nice crowd around the tank admiring the videoray. If you want to know more about Marcus's company and videorays - go to www.videoray.com!
We wrapped up the day with an evening lecture by Paul Ponganis entitled "Penguin Ranch Observations: From Emperors to Toothfish." Most of the talk was on the amazing physiology of the Emperor Penguins. To learn more about Emperors, and also Adelie Penguins, go to: www.gdargaud.net/Antarctica/Penguins.html
Saturday, October 6, 2007:
Happy Camper School is an Understatement
I am writing this update as my fingers are still recovering from Happy Camper School. You may be asking yourself, “What is Happy Camper School?” glad you asked! Happy Camper School is a field course where three instructors teach you how to survive outdoors in the Antarctica environment. And then you actually camp out over night in this environment! Lucky for us (and everyone else who comes to Antarctica) we are outfitted with Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear that is designed to keep one warm while on this frozen continent.
Our introduction to survival bags.
(continued...)
The course begins with a short intro on survival bags. These bags will allow for two people to survive in the field for a couple of nights but should only be used during an unanticipated over night stay in the field. These bags have all sorts of field gear ranging from a mountain tent and sleeping bag to a cooking stove with a pot to boil snow in. After our short introduction to our survival bags we are shuttled onto a bus that will drop us off a couple of miles from McMurdo Station on to the ice sheet to spend the night.
Once on the ice sheet the Happy Camper class learned all sorts of techniques that will assist a person stranded on the ice sheet. This course had the campers try various tasks indoors in a controlled environment where the wind and cold weren’t sweeping the heat away from your skin. After several rehearsals indoors it was time for the real thing…
Before I go any further let me try and explain just how cold it is here. Think of a time in your life when you felt cold. I’m talking freezing, think you will never warm back up, icicles coming out of your nose cold. Well Antarctica is colder than that. Antarctica is the kind of cold that will put an unprepared person down in less than an hour. I once visited Massachusetts during the winter time and I thought that was cold, I now have a new found appreciation for the weather in Massachusetts. But I’ve digressed….
During the outdoor session we started off by making our structures for the night. One of the first tasks was to put up our pyramid style Scott tents. These tents are pretty neat and they are the same style of tents we will be using during our 10 day stay in the field. After Scott tents we moved on to constructing our mountain tents. These tents are similar to mountain tents but are completely water proof and can protect you from some nasty elements. Along with learning how to set up these tents we learned how to stake them down with bamboo and a couple of simple knots. The next shelter we learned how to make was a quinzhees hut or snow mound. This style of hut is made by placing a bunch of gear in a pile (as shown below) and shoveling snow on top of the pile. In order to made the quinzhees work you need to shovel several centimeters of snow on top. After all of the snow has been piled on, you dig a small hole to pull all of the gear out of and you are left with a insulated shelter that can housing two to three people.
Quinzhees hut before snow.
Quinzhees hut in the process of being built.
The fourth kind of structure we learned how to make was a snow trench. Just like it sounds, you dig into the snow and make a cavity for your body to fit into. Bryan and Marcus were two of about five people who slept in a snow trench. Surprisingly, snow is a great insulator and neither one of them froze over the night.
Here is a picture of Bryan digging his snow trench.
Marcus is sleeping in style with his two person snow trench.
In order to protect our structures from potential high winds we built a snow wall. Our snow wall was made of up of blocks that are similar to igloos. We dug out a couple of feet of snow and started to saw out blocks using blades. It sounds easy enough but cutting snow in below freezing temperate is challenging.
Here are one of the instructors showing us how to cut snow blocks.
A half finished snow wall.
It’s about 8 or 9 pm and the instructors left us happy campers, with all of our new skills, to spend the night outdoors. The next task ahead of us was to light our mountain stove to start boiling water. Lighting a stove was one of the task that we did indoors and was pretty straight forward in the confines of the instructor hut but this task proved to be very difficult outdoors. It is amazing how hard it becomes to light a match with frozen fingers let alone try to get a stove to start. At this point gas leaking from the fuel canisters, the wind has picked up (which drives the temperature down further) and I can’t light a match to save my life. Luckily, things start to go our way and we got two stoves lit while others worked on two more. With boiling hot water, campers are enjoying hot drinks and warm food in their bellies. It how now reached about 11 pm and people are slowly drifting off to their structures to get some sleep.
I went to bed around midnight and crawled into my mountain tent for the night. Each happy camper was given two sleeping mats, a down sleeping bag and a fleece liner for the bag. I cram into my sleeping bag only to find that it is freezing cold because it has been outside all day. As I lay there trying to go to sleep I get that sneaking feeling, I have to pee!!! Instead of getting out of my warm sleeping bag to endure the -26 degree F0 weather I decided to perform the pee-in-the-bottle trick our instructors told us about. I proceeded to pour out the rest of my water bottle, rolled over and did the deed into the bottle. After I was done I closed up my new pee bottle and put it in my sleeping bag to provide me with a little warmth. About a minute or two later I started to feel something wet down my back side and it dawned on me that my pee bottle was leaking! It is so cold here that liquids that are exposed to the air freeze up instantly and this is what happen to my bottle. The second I opened up my bottle the threads froze up and didn’t provide an adequate seal and this lead to my leaky pee bottle. So there I was with a wet bottom/back and starting to get cold. One of the things they teach you about a down sleeping bag is that you do not want to get it wet because once it is wet it no longer keeps its insulation. Then enters Adam Green. Adam had given up on trying to make a quinzhees and was going to take up shelter in one of the mountain tents. He told me he was waiting for some water to boil to sleep with (another cold weather trick is to boil water at night, put it in a water bottle and put the bottle in your sleeping bag to keep you warm at night) and I asked him if he would boil me some water as well. I gave him my non-pee bottle and 10 minutes later he returned with a hot water bottle for me and this bottle kept me warm thought out the night. No longer cold, I tried to get some sleep but I was only able to get an hour or two. It seemed like the instant I feel asleep I would wake up reminded that I was outside…. camping… in Antarctica.
Finally 6:30 am rolls around and people start waking up from a long night. Campers started to boil water and break down camp. At about 8 am the instructors come to our camp and we follow them back to the instructor hut. We debrief about the night and each talked about what helped us get through the night, and of course I shared my pee bottle story. After the debrief we did a couple more simulations one of which was a missing person search during a full on white out. A white out can hit at a moments notice and when it does you won’t be able to see your hand in front of your face. In order to simulate this experience we wore stylish buckets over our head as we searched for one of our instructors. We were in teams of 10 and were all tied to a rope as we fumbled our way onto the ice searching for instructor Kevin. This was a frustrating experience as it was so tempting to lift the bucket and look for Kevin but the buckets were party of the simulation. No more than 10 minutes later we found Kevin and returned him back to the warmth of the instructor’s hut alive.
This pretty much concluded Happy Camper School and we packed up all of our gear and hiked back to our pick up station. So after what seemed like the longest night I have every experienced, I am fortunate to have the understanding of what it feels like to spend a night outdoors in Antarctica for a couple of reasons. First, this coursed showed me that I am fully capable of spending a night outside in the event of an emergency. I am fully confident that I can sleep outdoors in this inhospitable environment. Second, I now trust my ECW gear more than ever. The technology that is behind this gear can save your life if used properly and this class helped establish this in me. And third, I got to experience the beauty of Antarctica from a perspective that I could only dream of. There was a point when I walked away from the camp and had some time to myself to take it all in. This place is amazing and I feel so fortunate to be here. This time alone allowed me to reflect and to think about the many other things going on in this world and I am just one of them, living on a frozen continent for the next 10 weeks…
Nicholas surviving Happy Camper School.
Friday, October 5, 2007:
Happy Campers School
We seem to have found our rhythm, more or less. We meet for breakfast at 7, are in the lab at 7:30, and try to reach everyone we need to talk to/arrange stuff with before they leave their desks for their days work. This morning Marcus and Bob were talking with Woody in the carpenters shop about modifications to our track vehicle and to the trailer for all our gear. Bryan was trying to make the printer work, Mindy was fighting the slow internet posting pictures to her PolarTREC journal, and Nick was making sure that housing knew when we were leaving for our field camp at New Harbor. I was making arrangements for the traverse to New Harbor; much of our heavy field gear will be hauled across McMurdo Sound rather than flown by helicopter. But at 8:45 all the FNGs (Nick, Mindy, Bryan and Marcus, the people who have not been here before) packed up their Extreme Cold Weather gear and headed out for Happy Campers School.
(continued...)Happy Campers School sounds great, doesn’t it? What it actually is is survival training for anyone who will be traveling away from McMurdo. I will let Nick, who will write tomorrow, tell you the details of their experience, but it culminates in spending the night outdoors in Antarctica in a structure you’ve built yourself! This may be a backpacking tent protected by a snow block wall, an igloo, a snow mound, or a snow trench.
Buckets over your head are used to simulate white-out conditions while conducting a search for a "lost" team member during Snowcraft I training.
In the meantime, the “old folks at home” (that would be me and Bob) continued on, warm and snug indoors. I went to the Crary Lab stockroom and got all the remaining equipment we will need – the current meter, the microscope, the dissecting tools. The stockroom here is an amazing place – they will organize and provide everything you need in terms of lab supplies, from oceanographic sampling equipment to lab pens.
All this glassware is on just one wall of the Crary Lab stockroom, which supplies all the lab needs of the scientists at McMurdo Station.
Just before lunch Bob and I did a quick “skua run” Skuas are amazing birds that look like large seagulls; they will be migrating south and showing up in McMurdo in another few weeks. Skuas are pirates, they will scavenge food even if you are not done with it, and they make carrying a sandwich from the galley back to your dorm a harrowing experience. You may have seen the cartoon rendition of them in Happy Feet; they were Boss Skua and Dino, Frankie, and Vinnie. But the term skua has another meaning here, for salvaging or scavenging gear that others are done with. As people here are leaving, the set the things they no longer need out in designated areas for others who may want them, Bob and I got a lovely purple velour shirt, a bathroom shelf, extra water bottles, and a small bottle of shampoo. This last item was indispensable, since only 3 of the 8 crates we shipped down here have arrived so far, so we have no other toiletries yet.
Real skuas in front of McMurdo Station.
After lunch Bob and I attended the brief refresher course that reminds us of all the things we learned in Happy Campers School and in Sea Ice training many years ago. A quick rundown of field survival, cold injuries, communications, helicopters, how to set up a tent and light a stove, filled the afternoon. We watched the wind build out the window and wondered how cold all the campers were.
Nacreous clouds out of our office window. These iridescent clouds form when there are ice crystals in the atmosphere. Not a bad view!
The sun is now dipping just below the horizon – twilight is the darkest it will get here this time of year – and there is ice fog on the sea ice in front of Cape Armitage, hiding the route to where the campers are spending the night. I hope they have remembered to put hot water bottles in their sleeping bags and have lots of chocolate to eat, and have built good snow mounds!
Thursday, October 4, 2007:
Wicked Cold
Nick and I took a hike this evening up Observation Hill behind McMurdo Station, and in addition to taking in an amazing view and reflecting on the fragility of the human condition, we learned an important lesson about electronics in the cold: they don't work so great.
(continued...)
It's very easy to lose perspective and orientation in Antarctica, both because the air is so clear that distant objects are clearly visible, and because those geographical objects are frequently gianormous. It's also easy to get slammed with a total whiteout blizzard in a matter of minutes. In any case, the global positioning system is an invaluable tool to know where you are and how far you have to go to get back into a warm bed at the station. My personal GPS doesn't have any predefined maps or waypoints for the Antarctic region, so I brought it along on a hike up Ob Hill to record its position. When I got the top however, the device barely powered up, couldn't connect to satilites, and after showing some strange streaked messages on the LCD screen, shutdown in less than a minute.
Pretty much any type of battery performs poorly at temperatures around -23 degrees celsius (-10 fahrenheit), and the old alkaline batteries (unfortunately non-rechargable) from the last trip I took with the GPS wimped out fast. Good thing we could see our way home!
In contrast, the cross memorializing the last expedition led by Robert Scott (all members perished, most a mere 11 miles from a supply depot after a several hundred mile trek to the south pole and back) which was erected in 1903 was in remarkably fresh condition, preserved by the cold dry environment. Wind has eroded the wood a few millimeters, but the paint used to inscribe a message was tougher and is now raised up from the wood.
A couple seconds after snapping these shots the batteries in my camera died as well, so no more photos for today!
In addition to draining batteries, extreme cold can explode capacitors, cause microchips and clocks to lose timing, and freeze up motors; doesn't sound like a welcome environment for SCINI, which is packed with all these electronics components. Fortunately, SCINI will be submerged in liquid salt water, the temperature of which averages around -2 degrees celsius (29 fahrenheit; the salt lowers the freezing temperature of water). If the water was any colder it would freeze, so we are assured it won't get so cold our electronics would be seriously harmed. We do have to watch out for fresh water crystallizing on our camera or around the waterproof o-rings, but this temperature actually has some real advantages: most electronics waste less power when running at low temperatures, and the excellent cooling means we don't have to worry about overheating.
So SCINI will be happier in these near freezing waters, but I think our divers will be wishing they were high and dry in their Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear on the surface: water wicks away heat much more efficiently than air, so they'll be chilly even inside insulated dry suits.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007:
We arrive at McMurdo!
I miss my wife and kids already!
Today we woke up early and got on a C-17 military flight to McMurdo!
Here we are with our ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear waiting to board.
(continued...)
Here we are on board this awesome heavy lift air cargo aircraft. We have to have all our ECW ready to wear to get off the plane.
They even let us up in the cockpit. It’s “all glass” meaning all the instruments are computer screens though they do still have the old gauges for backups.
After 4.5 hours we can start to see some land and lots of snow! We only have 3 tiny windows we can look out of but what a view!
As you can see there isn’t any nice, warm ramp to get off the plane. The temperature was around 0 F which didn’t sound too bad but it was also windy and that cold air cut right through any exposed skin! I took my hand out of my special glove to take this shot and it was very cold by the time I got it back in the glove.
And here we are at McMurdo! It’s basically a bunch of buildings (about 70) on the side of a mountain. Everything is very industrial looking with pipes and wires you have to step over everywhere.
Here’s one of the bridges over the pipes – and there’s even a metal troll under this one, though he's hard to see!
Have you ever walked into one of those huge walk-in freezers? Many of the doors here look just like those walk in freezer doors – kinda funny but very practical.
Stacy gave us all Tie-Dye pillow cases as a welcome gift. And, just so you know, Bryan is smiling under his.
Here’s a sundial indicating 7:00 pm. We did have a sunset but it never got really dark all night. After the sun set behind the mountains the temperature rapidly dropped to -12 F and that felt really cold!
Tuesday, October 2, 2007:
It is springtime in New Zealand!
When we crossed the International Date Line we changed the date, and when we crossed the equator we changed the seasons! When it is fall in the Northern hemisphere, it is spring in the Southern hemisphere. Penguins only live in the Southern hemisphere but not usually on the tops of vans.
Do you still have your orange? Then keep reading!
(continued...)
Draw a belt around the middle of your orange for the equator. Now tilt it so the top of the orange is a little away from your face and more of the bottom of the orange is facing you. When the earth is tilted like that, the southern half gets more sun and is in summer and the northern half gets less sun and has winter. Right now we are in transition from summer to winter (our fall in the northern hemisphere) and the southern hemisphere is in transition from winter to summer (their spring in the southern hemisphere). The tilt of the earth is constant (at least in your lifetime!) so as the earth rotates around the sun over the course of a year, the seasons change! They change the most at the north and south poles and the least at the equator. Can you see why?
Our flight from Los Angeles landed in Auckland, New Zealand. Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand and is on the north island of the two largest islands that make up this country. There we went through immigration and then picked up all of our bags and went through customs. New Zealand is very careful about not letting exotic species into their country. You are not allowed to bring food or even soil on your shoes that might be hiding worm and insect larvae in it. Both Nick and I had to have our shoes inspected and they scrutinized my curry ingredients before I was let into the country.
Exotic species are a real concern in many places. Even Antarctica is not immune from organisms hitching rides and coming to live here. But more on that later…
We flew from Auckland to Christchurch on the south island of New Zealand, and went straight to the CDC – the Clothing Distribution Center – and got our ECW (extreme cold weather) gear.
Near the CDC is the Antarctic Centre where you can take a tour and learn all about Antarctica in a relatively warm setting! That is where the first picture of the penguins on the van came from.
After we were done with all of our responsibilities we walked around Christchurch which is a beautiful city with a river and many parks – all bursting with flowers. But one of my favorite places was the cheese shop. Stacy and I treated ourselves to some cheese slices there and then bought some to take for treats to Antarctica.
Monday, October 1, 2007:
The Day that Never Happened
Somewhere between the 12 hour flight from California to New Zealand the 1st of October was lost. I’m not sure where the day went but we left California on 30 September at about 9 p.m. and arrived in New Zealand on 2 October around 6:30 a.m. After putting some thought into it a calm came over me and the answer was clear. The loss of the day was due to the International Date Line. The International Date Line sits at 180 degrees longitude and when you cross the line from right to left you advance one calendar day ahead. And the opposite is true when crossing the International Date Line from left to right.
(continued...)
For example, if you were to fly from the United States during the early morning on April 1st you would arrive in New Zealand on April 3rd during the evening. The next morning, April 4th, you hop on a plane to go back home only to find yourself arriving on the evening of April 3rd. This all may seem a bit confusing but I have some nifty pictures to help us through this.
So, the orange ball thing is an orange but it will represent the world. The pork chop looking thing is the United States (I never said I was an artist!)
This line represents the International Date Line which lies at 180 degrees longitude.
These two islands represent New Zealand.
On the day of our flight we left from Los Angles, California and flew across the International Date Line from the right side of the line to the left side and landed in Auckland, New Zealand. In this process we lost a whole day.
And that is how the day that never happened didn’t happen. Any questions?
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This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ANT-0619622 (
http://www.nsf.gov).
Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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