James Clark Ross — Week 1, 22-28 February 2008Census of Antarctic Marine Life diary 2008By Jan StrugnellBiologist Jan Stugnell is onboard the British Antarctic Survey's research ship RRS James Clark Ross in the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Seas, Antarctica. Scientists onboard are studying tiny marine creatures from the ocean shelves and slopes from this little-known region. Their investigations will help determine the biodiversity of this extreme environment and provide clues to evolution and past history of climate, geology and oceanography. The research cruise is a key part of a international interdisciplinary studies including the International Polar Year's Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML) and the Antarctic benthic deep-sea biodiversity (ANDEEP).
In her diaries Jan describes what it's like to be part of a research team.
18-20 FebruaryBoarding the James Clark Ross!
Today we all joined the RRS James Clark Ross (JCR) at Port Stanley, Falkland Islands, to get ready for our cruise! The JCR is almost 100m long and seems enormous when it is docked at Stanley. The hull is painted bright red and the words ‘James Clark Ross’ are written in large white letters at the front.
The JCR was named after Admiral Sir James Clark Ross, R.N. (1800-1862) who discovered the North Magnetic Pole in 1831. During 1840-43 he also made three voyages to Antarctica in an attempt to reach the South Magnetic Pole, and to undertake a range of scientific studies of the region.
The JCR can hold 80 people, and for our cruise we have 24 scientists and 28 crew onboard. We are heading to the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Seas for 50 days for geological and biological sampling.
The scientists for this cruise, known as JR 179, comprise 11 geologists and 9 biologists. The geologists are mainly interested in sampling the sea floor for evidence of past glacial features and past climate change (but more on this later) and are supported by the BAS core projects PEP-G and QWAD. The biology team (of which I am a part) is focusing on benthic (bottom) sampling and also epi-benthic (just above the bottom) sampling to obtain of idea of the marine life which lives on and above the sea floor. This work is part of the BAS core project BIOPEARL and is supporting the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML) IPY project by having me (Jan Strugnell) and Stefanie Kaiser on board.
We spent the day being very busy unpacking all our kit and assembling trawls and bits and pieces in preparation for the cruise. It's much easier to do this while the ship is steady and in port and so we are trying to do as much in advance as we can. Everything has to be tied down and safely secured before we leave to stop it being thrown around when we are at sea.
The weather has been spectacular in Stanley and many people have even got sunburnt!
22 February 2008Today we set sail for Antarctica at 5pm. Everyone was very excited to finally get going and we all climbed up on the monkey deck as we sailed out from Stanley and started to cross the Drake Passage. There were some seals playing in the water and they were as interested in us as we were in them!
It is pretty windy (about 35 knots) and so the ship is rocking a bit, but not too badly. I've managed to avoid seasickness, but have been quite sleepy (a symptom of sea sickness) and so have been sleeping very well despite the rocking.
Today we have been getting ready for trawling, which will start in a few days time. Everyone is pretty excited to see what we will catch as very little trawling has been done in this area and there will almost certainly be some species new to science!
24 February 2008We have now nearly made it through the Drake passage (the tip between South America and Antarctica). The conditions have been really quite rough for the last few days (typical for the Drake passage) with winds over 40 knots! This has made for quite a bumpy ride and a few people on board have suffered from sea sickness — thankfully I have not been one of them!
Today we have done our first bit of science! This took the form of deploying a CTD. This stands for conductivity (this is a proxy for salinity), temperature and depth, and these are some of the parameters that the instrument measures. It can also measure oxygen concentration, current speed, fluorescence and a range of other parameters. The CTD is deployed over the side and lowered to the bottom. It can measure each of these parameters from the waters surface all the way to the bottom and this enables the scientists to build up a picture of the water masses around Antarctica. The CTD also can sample water at specified depths throughout the water column. The microbiologists (part of BAS's long term monitoring programme) are collecting these water samples to study the composition of bacteria in the water column, and specifically to compare the bacterial diversity at our current position (which is a relatively long way away from land) to regions which are closer to land, and potentially subject to run off.
It was exciting to finally get our science part of the cruise underway. Now we are on our way to the next station!
26 February 2008This evening the geologists did their first bit of coring of the seabed as part of BAS's QWAD (Quaternary Western Antarctic Glaciation) project.
To determine the consistency of the sea floor they send sound waves from the ship to the seafloor using a piece of kit called TOPAS. The sound waves bounce back to the ship where they are received. Some of these sound waves penetrate the sediment and allow a profile to be built up of the sea floor. This allows the geologists to find areas where there is good sediment to sample. If they tried to sample a rocky bottom for example, this would damage the very expensive coring equipment!
They used a piston corer to sample the sediment. They were targeting a sediment drift in which they hope carbonates are preserved. This was in 2300 m of water and they managed to obtain a 10 m long core. Carbonates are critical for isotopic work but unfortunately they are very rare in the Southern ocean. The geologists are hoping that they were able to obtain some carbonates and then they will use these in isotopic studies to build up a picture of past climates (palaeoclimates) and ocean circulation patterns.
27-28 February 2008Today was an exciting day for the biologists as we had our first day of trawling in the Bellingshausen Sea as part of the BAS core BIOPEARL project. We deployed the Agassiz trawl to sample the benthic marine communities and did 2 x 15 minute trawls at 1500 m depth, 3 x 15 minute trawls at 1000 m depth and 3 x 10 minute trawls at 500 m depth.
an acorn barnacle (Verruca cf. gibbosa) from 1500 m. This is only the 4th record of acorn barnacles from the Antarctic. This find is of particular interest for the BIOPEARL team as they are currently working on the molecular species relationships of Antarctic barnacles.
An Antarctic deep-sea shrimp (Nematocarcinus lanceopes) from 1500 m. Specimens of these have been seen in more than 4000 m depth on video images from the Weddell Sea. Before spawning, the females swim up through the water column and release the eggs. The young crustacean larvae can be found in surface waters where they feed on phytoplankton.
Buccinid gastropods (from 1000 m). Species of the family Buccinidae are scavenging and predatory snails that can drill holes into their prey.
An unusual fish with a worm-like lure from its bottom lip (caught from 500m). Presumably the fish uses this lure to attract prey close to it.
As well as catching animals, every Agassiz trawl apart from one also managed to
Next week — Week 2
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