|
|
|
|
|
| The last couple of days have been full of work, though diving is always nice no matter what the job. With six divers, our Pisten Bully gets loaded to the hilt. Being the smallest in the group, I expected to be loaded into the airspace between ceiling and baggage, my head out the escape hatch. But so far I’ve gotten the cushy driver’s seat, which has a seat warmer (I want to take it home for my car) and John has ridden along with me with Stacy, Dan, Aaron and Andrew screaming past us in the skidoos. With all that stuff you think there wouldn’t be a thing forgotten, but yesterday morning I drove John and Stacy to Cape Armitage to dive tend them and realized I’d forgotten my jacket, hat, gloves, the works and had to dash back to town while they got cold picking the hole open. Then on our afternoon trip to Cinder Cones, Stacy forgot her dry suit. Everyone has agreed, however, that the crucial item not to forget is your tubies, which are little tubes that we run under our wrist seal to enable air from our suit to connect to our gloves. Without those tubies, our gloves squeeze tight underwater and are not only painful but lose their insulating power. |
On my first dive at Cinder Cones yesterday, I came through the hole to see what looked like a frilly lady’s parasol drifting along the bottom. As I approached, the parasol gradually closed, then opened again. I realized that it was the giant jellyfish, Desmonema glaciale (you can see a photo of it on: http://scilib.ucsd.edu/sio/nsf/fguide/cnidaria2.html ) with its brown manubrium scraping the seabed. It has been known to pick up ribbon worms and starfish off the bottom. But I’ve seen smaller jellyfish become the prey of sea anemones living on the bottom, which will grab them with their microscopic harpoons and consume them whole (you can see a photo of this at:http://scilib.ucsd.edu/sio/nsf/fguide/cnidaria5.html ).
We have the fence up and the sediment dishes installed at Cinder Cones now. We decided to add a skirt to the bottom of the fence to ensure that the bottom of the fence is flush with the seabed and will exclude the stars. While picking up stars to toss over the fence, I discovered two "starfish earrings", tags that Stacy and I had used to measure starfish movement four years ago. Neat to discover them again! Each Sunday the Mactown newspaper, "The Antarctic Sun" comes out with the latest on what’s going on in the US Antarctic Program. Here’s a few exerpts: - a former McMurdo Station worker has developed a new Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavour called "Roald Almonds-en", named for the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who was the first to make it to the South Pole. Knowing the necessity to travel light to make speed, Amundsen used the strategy of eating what was not entirely necessary, in this case, extraneous sled dogs. The ice cream consists of chocolate ice cream with toasted almonds, toasted coconut and chocolate chips. There was no explanation given of how that relates to Amundsen’s lifestyle, but let your imagine run! - Weddell seals drop their heart rate by 90% when they deep dive. They maintain blood pressure by restricting the blood flow to the heart, lungs and brain. - The 51 winter-overs at South Pole are still waiting for the first flight to make it in. When the weather was good, the two LC-130 Hercules had to turn back due to mechanical problems. Then bad weather struck. - Over on the Peninsula, Raytheon staff opened up a small science camp for the Polish base on King George Island. While motoring back by zodiac to the main Polish base, called Arctowski Station, they encountered a group of Brazilians adrift in a zodiac that had blown far offshore of their station, Ferraz. The Brazilians had been out there some time, unable to raise anyone with their small VHF radio, and were very thankful to be rescued. - The big B-15 iceberg lodged at the edge of McMurdo Sound is still creating havoc on the Emperor penguin colony at Cape Byrd. Recruitment was disastrous, with adults leaving early and chicks abandoned. I took my last two training courses today, ski-doo and Pisten Bully, so now I formally know how to do both. Looking forward to getting out on a ski-doo again, though! Stacy and I are trying to figure out what to wear for this Saturday night’s Hallowe’en dance, so we’re heading up to the skua bins to dig around (so named because skuas, the only bird that we see around here, are notorious scavengers). I have to top being a corn pile queen, though that may be hard! Cheers! Kathy