Saterday is upon us.

Our plan for the day is to go dive as far south as possible. Other than saying that we dove pretty far south the real point was to dive as close as possible to the Ross Ice shelf to see what the benthic community is like there. Unfortunatly, there is no time to use the HOTSY (ice melter), none of us want to use the chainsaw for the requisit hours (a lot) to get a hole through the thick ice, the drill rig can't make it or be flown, and no one in their right mind would give anyone in our group dynamite. So the solution is to look for seals and dive through their holes. Our vehicle for the day was a helicopeter and we flew up and down the coast around Cape Chocolate (this is south of New Harbor but on the other side of the sound.) The views on the flight were spectacular although the only seal we saw was dead, probably because it got out of a tidal crack and then the crack disappeared and then there was no more seal.

After the breathtaking yet unsuccessful search we abandoned the coast in hope of finding something around the Daly islands which lie in between MacTown and Cape Chocolate. Sure enough we saw a seal, landed and found an ample tidal crack for us to dive through. The helo dropped us, a scott tent, all of our dive gear, and our dive tender for the day, Peter.

We set up the tent, put our gear on, and stacy jumped in the water. She was standing up because it was so shallow before she did a belly flop to see what it looks like. After puttering around for a while looking for a good route to get from our dive hole to the open sea, she grabs the safety line and strobes to lead the way to open water. We (Kathy, Peter, and myself (Andrew)) wait with rapt attention as the line feeds out. I even put all my gear (i.e. my mask and gloves) on so as soon as she says its clear we can dive. But it was all for not. She pops up a minute latter saying, "we can't dive here." It turns out the slope was so gradual that the end of the 100ft down line was only enough to reach 15ft of water and we need to sample at 60. It is unsafe to leave a down line lying on the bottom which is pinned up against the ice and then hope to find it again after the dive. I am already suited up so I jump in anyway just to see what I can see. The water is 6 ft deep in the hole. Right next to the hole the ice starts and there is only about 1.5ft of space between the ice and the sea floor. Not my kind of dive in any case. I surface and get out. My dive computer informs me that I dove to 7ft for 1 minute.

At this point Stacy and I go in search of another ice hole but instead all we find is places to fall down. When one walks around the ice where there are ample tidal cracks and a light covering of snow it is very dangerous. You should always poke in front of you with a shovel or bar to make sure your next foot isn't going to make you very wet. This is of course not true if you happen to be wearing a drysuit. We stumbled and slid all over the place. I was at one point rambling about something to Stacy, looking at her and then she disappeared. She really just found a little crack that was enough to make her fall face first into the snow. I started laughing, slipped myself and took a similar header into the snow. We fell down probably ten times on that walk.

Stacy was not to be out done though. While reloading the box's of dive gear she fell over five times in one minute without even moving a foot forward. As for the diving, well that was a loss. We have to leave it to the seals to make their way deep but unfortunately they can't sample for us.

We ended the day with the helicopter ride home and then I dragged Aaron on a bout of water sampling to get an idea of bacterial abundance around the outfall. Dan made it off the ice today to meet his wife Joan in Aukland. We all miss him even though we will see him back in Moss Landing in a couple of weeks.

Aloha,
andrew