Southbound and Tourist Season
November 20, 2019 | Dr. Wade Jeffrey, Director of CEDB | wjeffrey@uwf.edu
Travelling South
We crossed the Drake Passage in pretty good shape. This unique place in the oceans is often thought of as the roughest seas in the world. Here the entire southern ocean is squeezed between the tip of South American and the Antarctic Peninsula and it's known for the formation of very large storms. It’s always a roll of the dice when you come across – the first trips I did we had what we called the “Drake Lake” where it was so calm you could have water skied. Then I came home from a trip one time and we had 45-foot seas for three days. If it wasn’t nailed down, it went flying… people, furniture, you name it. We were pretty fortunate on this crossing and the seas weren’t too bad except for one day. Due to a low-pressure system we had beam seas, so rolled pretty good for about 12 hrs. Once we crossed 60 degrees south latitude, often considered to be the entrance to Antarctica, the seas calmed quite a bit.
During the crossing, we try to keep busy. We have written out our protocols, figured out how we need to sample (for the work that we do, this mostly revolves around how much water do we need for which experiments), and made a list of all the things to do immediately when we can start working. My graduate student and I will mostly be working in the “Radvan” which is a converted shipping container transformed into a portable laboratory (the blue container in the photo). In our case, its where we isolate the use of the radioactively labeled compounds we use to measure bacterial and phytoplankton growth. On this ship, it’s bolted up on the “helo deck.” This is essentially the 02 level (two decks up from the main deck). This ship does have the capacity to have small helicopters land on it (I did this once when the ship was in Barrow, AK). Since its way off the main deck, its free of deck wash and we can get in there and set up pretty much whenever we need to.
We have also had our various orientations – safety drills including the abandon ship/lifeboat drill. If that were to happen we all pile into two sealed lifeboats, where in addition to carrying in your life jacket and survival suit, you get a hefty dose of Dramamine to ward off seasickness in the lifeboat. You are pretty much stuffed in there like sardines. It’s got food and water stored in it, but spending any time in there sealed up would be pretty miserable. We learned how to put on our survival/immersion suits. Here is a photo of my graduate student learning how fun it is to put that thing on. It’s necessary, as the water temperature is often close to 29 degrees F – you won’t last more than a few minutes in water that cold without the suit. We have had several presentations on the National Science Foundation policies in Antarctica. We were also trained in small boat safety and how to climb a Jacobs’s ladder for getting into and out of the small zodiac boats we will use for setting up the radar array and perhaps sea ice work. This is the rope ladder with wooden steps lowered over the side of the ship.
And food. So far the food has been pretty good (always important on a ship as meals are about the only pleasure). The two cooks are from New Orleans so the flavors have been great. Owing to cargo issues, we did NOT get peanut butter and a shortage of ice cream. Fortunately, the cook has been making home-made peanut butter (pretty good, actually) and we will just have to see how long the ice cream lasts. There is a concern that all the Pop-Tarts, however, are unfrosted.
Site seeing and tourists
During the trip down from Chile to the Palmer Deep, we went down a passage called the Gerlache Straights. The first two oceanographic trips I did to Antarctica in 1995 and 1996 worked in these waters. It's protected and beautiful and in the end you travel through the Neumeyer Channel. This place is spectacular and never ceases to impress and amaze. In April and May, I think I went through four times, and each time was different. The other day was sunny and clear, and spectacular. But I saw something I had never seen before – as we rounded one of the turns there was a tourist ship sitting off to one side. I knew they came down so wasn’t too surprised – but what totally threw me was that people were skiing down the side of the mountain on the other side of the channel. It was kind of crazy.
And of course, we have seen whales, seals, and penguins – none too close yet, so still waiting to get good photos – but we will keep looking!
