25 November 2002
Goodbye from Stacy and BO 010 O
It was our last dive day today. Andrew and Aaron were scheduled to leave tomorrow and Kathy and I on Thursday. However, tomorrow's flight was cancelled and the doctor won't let Aaron fly until Thursday...maybe. So while we don't know when we will really leave, we're saying goodbye now.
| This morning Kathy and I went to Cape Evans for a dive on the ice wall nearby. We took along two "newby" dive tenders, Sean and Sarah, who work in waste management. We need people to help us with all the dive and sampling gear, and when our other team members are busy we try to take people from the community who otherwise don't have as much of a chance to get away from MacTown. It was a gorgeous day, with Erebus first shrouded in fog but then appearing in full glory, sun on the mountains shoulders showing crevasses like the wrinkles around smiling eyes. |
 Sean takes a few minutes to enjoy the nearby scenery after the dive. |
 The intense blue of the water in the dive hole near the ice wall. |
The dive near the ice wall is a gorgeous one. The blueblue glacier color suffuses everything, and there are huge white sponges and pink soft corals and trailing anemones on the steep face of jumbled volcanic boulders. There is a flat-topped rock with a garden of corals on it that is one of our favorites. The slope is so steep it looks extremely unstable, but the large sponges show that it has been around for quite a while. As you swim a little away from the hole, you come to a huge ice overhang. Columns of ice hang from the ceiling and you swim among them, looking out from the darkness under the thick ice to the neon blue of the surrounding annual ice. At the far end of the overhang you come to the ice wall of the glacier. It is an indescribable color, a soft electric blue, but the surface is deceptive, the transition from water to ice can't be seen and the sudden hardness is always surprising (especially when you swim in to it head first as I did once again). It is magical and awe inspiring and it would take a better artist than I to capture it in words or images. But the miraculous feel that seeing it inspires is one of the things I treasure so much about working in the Antarctic. |
| On the return we swim among brine tubes that extend up to10 m below our ice ceiling. Kathy looks tiny beside them. Rose colored amphipods nestle among the crystal plates and icefish peek out at us between them. It is a lovely dive to finish on. |
 Stacy near the ice wall above water. |
 Leaving for the season. |
On our return to the lab I have to rush off for our outbrief. This is a meeting with the NSF representative and various department leads to see how our season has gone, and what we plan for the next season. I have only good things to say - the support has been exceptional and we have achieved everything we set out to do. Tremendous thanks go to Rob Robbins, the dive officer and my point of contact, who has worked hard for long before we got down here to be sure everything was planned well and we had everything we needed. Aside from his professional capabilities, which I cannot praise enough, Rob is a good and fun friend who I value immensely. There are many others to whom I owe thanks, including every person on the station (all 1100 odd of you) and many off the ice who made this possible. Forgive me if I can't name you all here, but know that I am grateful for everything you have done. And of course none of this would have happened without the dedication and patience and hard work of the BO 010 O team - John, Kathy, Dan, Andrew and Aaron - who put up with my morning enthusiasm and evening energy and worked their butts off to make it all work. |
Looking forward to next year -
Stacy Out
