Dan writing

Today was a big day for many of the people in our group: the first dive under Antarctic ice for Craig and Jennifer, and the first dive of the new season for Jim and me. Rob Robbins the dive safety officer was kind enough to take everyone down and evaluate our poise and composure in the face of water so cold that it causes your lips burn within minutes, and to lose all feeling whatsoever soon thereafter. Worse than that perhaps is the fact that you must wear three layers of rubber and neoprene hoods that make it seem impossible to draw breath as you are struggling to move in 100 pounds of cumbersome dive gear with hands as dexterous as clubs thanks to thick insulated rubber gloves. As I remember my first dive from last year, I was completely convinced that if something drastic was to happen, such as having a regulator freeze up, or getting tangled in a line, I would be completely helpless. After a few minutes in the water this feeling goes away, and you are left free to take in the awe inspiring world you have entered. Light, when the ice is not too thick, comes through in patches from above and is filtered by the green and brown algae growing on the underside of the ice giving everything a surreal glow. The water is so clear that you can make out underwater hillsides far off in the distance. At first this is a bit disconcerting because you have no idea of perspective, and can’t tell if the seafloor below you or distant objects are tens or hundreds of feet away. Then there are the animals; colorful sponges, soft corals and anemones, and strange worms and crustaceans that grow to gargantuan proportions compared to their cousins in temperate waters.

After diving Jim, Jennifer and Craig went off to complete their sea-ice training which was cut short yesterday by the snowstorm. Thankfully the weather remained benevolent until the late evening, and they were able to practice drilling to measure sea-ice thickness, and determining whether cracks in the ice are safe to pass in vehicles.

Aside from diving, today was also a big day for drilling holes. Obviously before we can go diving and collect samples from different sites, we need to have holes in the ice to dive through. Luckily there is a huge piece of machinery here in McMurdo called a Reed drill with a four foot wide drill bit that can go through 14 feet of ice in a couple minutes.

Stacy and I spent most of the day with the drill rig crew locating our long term sampling sites around McMurdo using GPS, making small holes with a gas-powered drill to sound the bottom, and then shoveling and dip-netting ice-chips from the big hole to leave it clean and ready for diving. Hard work, but we were rewarded at the end of the day with 7 dive-holes which will be enough to keep us all busy for the next several days.

At the end of the day we met up in the Coffee House to celebrate our (re)introduction to Antarctic diving over wine and hot chocolate.