Week 4 — 20-26 December 200720 December 2007Brigitte Ebbe, Senckenberg
In the pack ice
2.3 knots...2.0..1.9...1.2...0.0. A glance at the screen in the red saloon during tea reveals it quite unambiguously: we are still stuck in the thick packice near Neumayer station.
The courageous Polarstern moves forward and backward and forward again, listing slowly to one side, shaking as if under a heavy burden — again a few meters gained. It is a lovely day, the ice gleaming white under a pastel blue sky, like lightly dropped dollops of meringue — but the nice picture is deceptive. The imposing pieces that Polarstern forces out of the closed ice cover hardly move, and we can only guess how impenetrable the ice is. For the first time I feel like it is becoming something of an adversary. Turning back in the track that we generated on the way to the shelf ice edge has turned out to be impossible, unfortunately. We push those 30 hours to the next station, impatiently awaited by everybody, ahead of us all day long.
In the labs the samples from the last station are being processed, DNA extractions are being prepared, but nonetheless the scientists are beginning to feel that it is time for something unusual to happen.
The idea of pushing the ship is quickly dismissed — but we all want to help!! So after the evening seminar we gather on the uppermost deck in the evening sun to join forces to help our ship in breaking the ice by carefully practiced and coordinated jumping. The bridge blows a thank-you with the horn, we deliver an impressing performance — and it works!! At least for a little while, Polarstern glides forward, with renewed courage, as one can feel. Except that it seems to me that our expedition leader is still looking rather sorrowful across the bough over the ice, even though he participated in our courageous effort without hesitation!
How the Naja Arctica is faring we do not know. Two days ago, she arrived in the ‘parking spot’ that we had vacated, and we got a message from her crew thanking us for the sculptured snow woman we left in the ice.
21 December 2007Gritta Veit-Köhler, Senckenberg
A Triceratops in the ice
What is a Triceratops doing in the ice? It is the logo on one of the containers aboard Polarstern, coming along with seven scientists from the Senckenberg Institute on an expedition!
The equipment which the Senckenbergians brought with them on board the Polarstern did indeed fill a whole container: lab equipment, chemicals and sample jars were purchased by Annika Henche and packed into aluminium boxes together with microscopes. The large equipment of the DZMB — epibenthic sledge and multicorer — were tested and made ready for action. The container was shipped from Wilhelmshaven to Bremerhaven to the harbor storage building of the Alfred Wegener Institute, transferred onto the Polarstern, and off it went via Cape Town to the Southern Ocean.
The Senckenberg Institute, with its main location being in Frankfurt/Main, is one of the largest German natural history museums with research departments distributed throughout Germany. Marine research has always been of prime interest to Senckenberg, but with the foundation of the DZMB (German Centre for Marine Biodiversity Research) in Wilhelmshaven and Hamburg Senckenberg has expanded once again.
While the colleagues in Frankfurt take care of different collections as part of their scientific work, the new colleagues from the DZMB provide services for the German marine sciences. That means that the precious samples taken on German research vessels during expeditions like this one are worked up completely, stored and catalogued. This way, specialists interested in a certain expedition or a certain animal group can borrow material and work with it.
On board of Polarstern, the Senckenbergians are devoted to deep-sea investigations. From the program CeDAMar, which is part of the Census of Marine Life, specialists for large, medium sized and very small animals are on board who live sort the seafloor samples immediately and then process them for biochemical, genetic and biogeographical studies. This is the largest group of people from Senckenberg to work south of 70°S. The Triceratops sends its regards!
22 December 2007Mark Olischläger, Alfred Wegener Institute
A day with water samples
A quick cup of coffee, then I am off to work, one flight of stairs down and along a long hallway. The night shift is looking forward to a well deserved time off, I myself sit down in front of the control screens and keep an eye on the sensors in the deep. Every single data point has to be surveyed and protocoled in detail to be suitable for later analysis.
The sondes and water samples come back on deck after their journey through 1,000 m of water. Many steps must be taken now quickly and accurately. The details of the processing depend on the fate of the water from the deep down. Some samples are sensitive to light and have to be transferred quickly to dark bottles, others have to be stored in airtight containers, and so a whole hour can pass before a few litres of water are processed, but without this much care the results of this expedition would be useless.
The seemingly crystal clear water now goes along many paths into the different laboratories. The samples coming with me have to pass through a filter to show results that are no longer surprising: the originally white filter is now tinted green. It has been known for a long time, but is nonetheless amazing, that even though the water was clear, one can see with the naked eye the traces of organisms so small that they are nearly invisible, yet are potentially influencing the fate of the whole planet.
My shift was over after filtration, and until the next shift I have some time to enjoy the warm sunshine of the polar day. There is nothing but water and ice as far as the eye can see, one could think that the area here is hostile to life, but I can see every day that it is not true.
23 December 2007Dorte Janussen, Senckenberg
Fourth Sunday in Advent
The Antarctic summer shows its most beautiful side, the sun is shining out of a deep blue sky, and the water is glittering like a thousand diamonds. I walk up to the uppermost deck and enjoy the warmth of the sun for a little while until the cold wind chases me indoors. We are enjoying a quiet ride of a steady 8 to 10 knots, so for the scientists this is a comfortable day. The quiet after the hectic of yesterday’s benthos station is much appreciated; many people have worked until the small hours of the morning or followed the successful maiden voyage of the underwater video camera from the winch control room.
For me, the day had a peaceful start, as the gear that I was torun, the Agassiz trawl (AGT), was not on until the afternoon. At 7 in the morning I peacefully went to the fitness room for my early morning exercising. No sooner had I finished my workout, when the loudspeaker produced a call for me to phone the bridge, the result being that the AGT was going over the side in 15 minutes. Help!!!
Five minutes later, after having dressed in no time and with a makeshift hairdo, I fly up to the bridge to quickly re-calculate the times for the winch. Instead of the 1500 m that we had planned on, we now have a depth of 2000 m. While I am pressing buttons on my calculator hectically, the boson smiles at me and asks whether he could possibly help? “No, thanks, I just need a moment of quiet and concentration”, I answer more crossly than intended. Sometimes I wonder how the crew copes with such periodical moments of hectic and stress, which we scientists bring into their regular life on board every now and then, so patiently and friendly.
I am nervous for sure because this is my first deployment of the big trawl on my own, and the slope here near Kapp Norvegia is steep, and stones are likely to lie on the rough bottom. If the AGT gets caught up on such a rock, chances are that we lose the gear, which would be a catastrophe.
My eyes are glued to the screen that shows the wire tension during trawling and heaving. But everything works very smoothly; only once does the tension go up, only to drop again right away (I guess that was the large rock which we later took out of the trawl). When the AGT leaves the bottom, the tension rises again and then stays constant: apparently the net is well filled. I am glad about that because we know this location from previous expeditions and the literature to be very suitable for catching benthic animals.
And indeed we are not disappointed: the net is filled to the rim. Fish, red shrimp and numerous sea cucumbers — including a real giant of 2 kg — all mixed in with a whole lot of mud, roll onto the deck. We are hard pressed to get everything off the deck into large tubs to free the stern for the next deployment, the epibenthic sledge, and afterwards there are hours of washing and sieving. But for us benthologists this is pure joy, again and again there is cheering over particularly beautiful or rare animals.
I myself am a little disappointed at first as there are only a few sponges in the catch. But later, in the lab, I recognise under the microscope a specimen of 6 cm length belonging to the carnivorous sponge family Cladorhizidae. I had hoped for a while to find a large specimen of these relatively rare and usually mm-sized deep-sea sponges. Now I finally have enough material to perform taxonomic, genetic and biochemical studies. That was a very nice Christmas present from Njord (or is it rather Poseidon who is in charge of this ocean?).
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and we have a last rehearsal of the Christmas music. It is a bit hard to get into the spirit with the sunshine lasting 24 hours a day. At least the stewardesses have decorated everything so nicely that it might be easy after all once the trees are put up.
24 December 2007Angelika Brandt, University of Hamburg
Christmas Eve
I look out of the window and I see snow and ice. We will have a white Christmas in the literal sense, except that the days are bright rather than dark and grey like they are at home.
The benthoslogists have a break today, as the ‘large station’ was sampled the day before yesterday and yesterday. Today the planktologists are working, employing a whole array of gear in the water column to collect krill, arrow worms, copepods, salps and other animals for their investigations. Several types of nets are put into the water, such as the multinet which brings samples from different depths to the surface and the large RMT which is towed through the water column, a huge net that fascinates me as this is my first expedition together with planktologists. The physical oceanographers are on station since 5 am, measuring parameters in the water column, including temperature, salinity and density. The CTD (conductivity-temperature-depth) takes water samples at the same time which are filtered in the lab and analysed for chlorophyll. This gives the planktologists an idea how much food is available in the water column for their animals.
Those who can find the time make themselves available to decorate the Christmas trees. We brought three of them in bales in the +4°C cool room to the Southern Ocean. This morning they had their big appearance. The crew put one tree each in the crew’s mess room, the scientists’ mess room and the blue saloon, our library, where later tonight there will be a Christmas reception.
After that the program books with lyrics for the choir and the reception in the blue saloon and the celebration in the large equipment room have to be printed and stapled. After two hours we are done and I wait for the time to pass until it is 3 p.m. For that time (which is 4 p.m. in Germany) I have arranged a telephone call with my family — just to be on the safe side as yesterday there was a long queue of people wanting to call home in front of the radio office. I could hardly wait to hear their familiar voices, and I was strangely excited when the radio officer established the connection. All afternoon Santa Claus was secretly walking abut the ship — or was it the Christ child, since it can fly? In any case, the only sledge I could discover was the Epibenthic Sledge on the aft deck, but of course we still need that for sampling.
We are surrounded by gleaming whiteness, the ship breaks its way through the ice to the next station, and our track takes only a short time to close again behind the ship.
After a quick dinner, traditionally Wieners and potato salad (the big feast will take place tomorrow) the time has finally come. Everybody dresses up for the big reception in the blue saloon. The Christmas committee has prepared everything well. Songs were practiced, and to give everybody on board a feeling of home, we sang ‘silent night’ in seven languages (some of which we had translated by experts;-)). The translation into Russian was a bit more challenging than others. I therefore wrote to my Russian friend and colleague Marina Malyutina in Vladivostok and asked her for a translation of the first verse. However, she did not know the song, and she asked her colleague. Who did not know the song either. But, as her son was a musician living in New York, she asked him if he could help. He could. He translated the lyrics, sent it to Vladivostok, and then Marina passed the message on to the ship. What a small world indeed!
In the blue saloon we listen to a short introduction by the choir setting the mood by singing festive and joyful German and English songs, and then we hear official addresses by Captain Pahl and the expedition leader which are complemented by lectures and songs. The blue saloon is filled to capacity, as 53 scientists and 44 crew are on board. After about an hour and a glass of champagne everybody moves to the large equipment room which has also been decked with Christmas decorations and equipped with several chairs. A sketch named ‘Erna, the tree is losing its needles’ is performed in German und English, and the choir sings the song ‘The twelve days of Christmas2’ with customised lyrics. In this traditional Christmas song the loved one sends a present on each of the twelve days of Christmas (Christmas Day through Epiphany). We changed the text so that everybody gets something. The persons given a particular present have to raise their hands each time it is their ‘turn’ in each verse. Each group of scientists and crew is given a present this way, causing a joyful chaos lifting everyone’s spirit. And last not least, there is ‘yulklapp’. It is really amazing how thoughtful some people were in preparing a gift, ranging from photo collages to handcrafted items and beautiful small presents. Santa Claus, looking suspiciously like Michiel from Holland, spread good holiday spirit all around! Afterwards there was dancing until after midnight. However, then everybody had to sleep very fast, at eight the following morning we are back on station. The work has been interrupted only for a short while and is resumed during the holidays.
25 December 2007, Christmas DayMatilda Haraldsson, Federal Fisheries Research Institute
Warmest wishes and a merry Christmas
When I woke up this morning and looked out the window snow was slowly falling trough the air. Even though we are located at 67°S in the ice and cold, snowfall is quite rare at this time of the year. Perhaps a little Christmas present form above.
As described in the log yesterday, we had a very beautiful and special Christmas celebration, officers, crew and scientists, all together. It’s quite special when everyone is sharing the same feeling, a wish to be home with loved ones at this very day, but still being able to have a very happy and cheerful evening together.
To share these special moments brings people closer, something which, aside from creating friendships, has a great value when working together on the boat. Like today, when ice conditions where quite heavy, at least in the perspective of setting a trawl in the water without filling it with pack ice, close teamwork is important. Not only the cooperation between scientist and scientist, but especially between scientist and crew and officers. This teamwork can make a difference.
As has been told earlier we have many different science teams on board with different working objectives. My group is focusing on lrill, an animal with a significant role in the Antarctic food web — the role as a link between the smallest phytoplankton and zooplankton, to fishes, birds and mammals. Also, this is a species that humans fish for and it belongs to the third largest crayfish fishery in the world. In particular our task is to estimate the number of this zooplankton, Euphausiids, here in the Lazarev Sea. To complete this task we trawl through the water column with a big net down to a depth of 200 meters, and to cover the big geographical area we have an intense station schedule with continuous sampling day and night. For a benthologist, who brings up a huge amount of mud from the deep sea floor, a plankton sample may not look like much for the world. Still, with a closer and careful look into the sample it is filled with many different life forms.
For me personally it is my fourth cruise on Polarstern, and still it is just as amazing to join the expedition to Antarctica together with this big group of people. As a biologist it is a Mecca! Having time to work with your own research, but also to see and learn more from other people’s areas, both by following their work on deck and in the lab, but also with the seminars given every evening covering other people’s work, all this surrounded by the stunningly beautiful nature.
Now at this very moment the next station is approaching. Perhaps another present is waiting, this time from the deep.
26 December 2007Craig Neill, University of Bergen
Of flights and water samples
The phone in my cabin rang at 8:00 this morning — two or three hours earlier than I would normally get up for my noon to midnight shift in the chemistry lab. Normally when the phone wakes me up it’s because there’s a problem with one of our instruments, but today I was pleasantly surprised that this was not the case. It was the chief scientist calling to say that it was my turn for a helicopter flight, and could I be on the flight deck in an hour. The daily flights are done so that the biologists led by Jan van Franeker (AKA, The Flying Dutchmen) can count the wildlife in the area. They take along one extra person each day to help spot animals and enjoy the view.
Today the view was not so good. There were low clouds around the ship when we took off and visibility shortly got worse and we had to return to the ship. We did get a great view of Polarstern as we circled the vessel several times while they prepared for our unexpectedly quick return. The flight was not all I had hoped for but still definitely worth getting out of bed for, and another chance will come.
After a nice lunch it was time to start my shift and the day became more like a normal one. The average work day of a marine chemist at sea is not as exciting as it might sound and does not involve helicopters. I measure carbon dioxide in water samples taken from many different depths by the CTD. Our instruments require 20 minutes to analyse each sample, which means that we need to keep them running 24 hours a day to keep up. My favorite part of the day is when, just after the CTD comes on deck after taking a profile of water samples, we go and take our sub-samples along with other chemists, biologists and physicists who all measure different things in the water. It’s nice to get out of the lab and get your hands wet (and cold) taking water samples.
Now I’m just back from dinner. The meals have been extra good these last few days because of Christmas. Tonight it was lobster. Later tonight I might have to go to the gym ...
Previous week — Week 3
Next week — Week 5
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