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October 30 2003
After stumbling to the lab at 0730, we split into two groups. Jen (who had lost the lottery again) and Craig took off towards the ice edge to do a CTD cast. The high point of their trip was when a seal popped up in the hole during the CTD cast.
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A coy seal inspecting the CTD cable. |
Dan, Jonna, Stacy and I loaded up the trusty Bully and headed out towards our new hut at Turtle Rock. After (surprise) shoveling and dipping out the 4 dive holes, we scouted around a bit to get a feel for the layout of cracks and seal holes.
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The Turtle Rock crack array, with our open-air dive hole in the distance (marked by black flags). |
We had several tasks in mind. Jim and Dan were going to be searching for some of Paul Dayton's old settling experiments. There was a crack in the ice that prevented the drill rig from getting on top of the location, so we were going to have to search a bit to locate the site. We debated about whether to do the work in two dives (one to locate the stations and one to do the photography), but opted to be optimistic and haul the camera gear along while we searched. Since the hut was positioned over the other Turtle hole, we would be diving in the open, but it was a nice day, so we anticipated no problems. When we got in the water, we had several sets of underwater landmarks (seamarks?) that we could use to navigate, including some cracks and our 2 dive holes. It was an obvious place to use a compass, but unfortunately compasses don't work here. It was a beautiful location underwater, with many shades of light and shadow, and a small iceberg that went down over 50 feet. We ended up swimming directly to the site, getting all of the still and video pictures taken, and were out of the water in record time. Huzzah!
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| Jim, assisted by Dan and Stacy, about to slip into the water at Turtle Rock. | Stacy and Jim triumphant over a supine Dan, who has just clambered out of the hole. |
Jonna and Stacy went in next at the Turtle hut: Jonna to collect starfish for a population genetics study (see 10/29), and Stacy to collect some of the experiments that were put out last year. They got all their work done with no problems, so we all celebrated with hot chocolate and munchies, and then headed back to town. In keeping with our "shovel-dive-sieve" mantra, we spent some time sieving and transferring samples in the lab. We were beginning to get coordinated for our upcoming field excursion to New Harbor, so people scurried in several different directions doing organizational stuff. Craig had the biggest job, since he was in charge of getting all of the food that we would be needing for the next two weeks. He had a huge list of possible items, and he had spent the last couple days going through it, with occasionally helpful input from the rest of us. He and Jen and Stacy headed off to the Food Room for some "shopping". They ended up getting 450 pounds of food. We're not going to starve at New Harbor.
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The Food Room, where your culinary dreams can come true (or not). |
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| Jen and Stacy holding up the scanner used to track what we were taking from the Food Room. Unfortunately, the scanner crashed before the data could be downloaded, so it all had to be re-entered. | Craig agonizing over how much chocolate to get. |
Dan had spent most of the previous day reading manuals and assembling our brand new underwater time-lapse camera system. It will be placed on the seafloor after we get back from New Harbor to monitor the Beggiatoa experiments. The time had come to test it out, so he and Jen suited up, and the 3 of us headed out onto the ice. Jen and I tried really hard to convince Dan to test the camera at the Jetty, since it had a nice warn hut and a lovely open dive hole, but Dan decided that he really wanted to go in at the Outfall A station, since that was were the camera would be deployed. The problem with Outfall A was that the hole hadn't been maintained in about 5 days, and the Polarhaven wasn't over the hole. After moving the polar haven, we spent an exhausting half hour trying to beat our way through the steel-hard ice to get to the water. We finally got a hole big enough for Dan to fit through, and down they went, trailing the power cable for the video. Dan took a bunch of picture series at different shutter speeds, aperture settings, and light intensities. Jen hung around and watched him, looked at the trash on the bottom (Outfall A is not one of the more scenic sites), and was generally cold and bored. When they got out, the first good news was that the camera wasn't flooded (always a big fear with new gear). Dan was optimistic about the quality of the pictures (which turned out to be very good), and we made it to dinner with 5 minutes to spare. After dinner many of us went to see a talk about the history of the Ross Sea area, which is part of a lecture series for which people can get college credit. We slept the sleep of the exhausted.
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The new underwater timelapse camera, with Dan's (the large ones) and Jen's (the petite ones) feet for scale. |
On our "Day of the Penguins" (see 10/26), there was one more episode which was not originally mentioned. On the way back from the ice edge, we stopped in at "Penguin Ranch". The penguin people, now lead by Paul Ponganis, are strapping "critter cams" onto the penguins so they can actually see what the penguins are doing on their deep dives (Emperor penguins can dive to over 500 meters!). The extremely small video cameras can be programmed to take pictures at regular intervals, and when combined with pressure gauges and other instruments, can give astonishing insight into penguin behavior and physiology. Penguin Ranch is quite a ways from the ice edge, and has the only breathing holes nearby, so once in the water the penguins must return to the hole they went in (preventing them from swimming off with the expensive backpack). The penguins are initially caught by letting them wander up and walk into the pen, or by bagging penguins meandering about on the ice. The penguins seem to take their temporary confinement with dignified aplomb, and when released sometimes stay around the vicinity of the Ranch for a while.
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| Penguin Ranch, with the penguin corral in the foreground. |
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| Jim about to go down into the observation chamber. | Dan squeezing down the tunnel to the chamber. |