Week 9 — 24-30 January 200824-25 January 2008Brigitte Ebbe, Senckenberg
The computers on board are working overtime. The tasks are to prepare posters and presentations for the reception on 5 February and to start with the cruise report. What can we report about the things we wanted to find out? Not too much. We all have had to limit our research activities a lot, and we have done so in the spirit of community. Now the shadow of an upcoming storm is hovering over everything. It is going to unfold its force exactly during the days that we wanted to do the only station revisit still left in the programme, trying to find out whether and if so, how the animals on the deep-sea floor react to plankton blooms in the upper water column. Ideas are thrown back and forth — how do we use the station time optimally? The meteorologists office is one of the most visited places on the ship, and the news emerging from there is not good. This time the ocean really tries to hide its secrets from us.
All that becomes temporarily unimportant when, during the night from Thursday to Friday, about half of all scientists fall ill. Food poisoning? The ship seems all but deserted all day Friday, and healthy colleagues, doctor and nurse are busy indeed trying to help the stricken to get back on their feet with good advice, loving care and medication. I am among the affected, and only the fact that I am not alone helps me through 24 long hours. Now we have to muster all our strength and optimism for our last big benthos station — we have not lost yet!
26 January 2008Nils Brenke, Senckenberg
Hi, and good morning. Yaaawn... it's me again, Nils. Yaaaawn... We had a long night here on board FS Polarstern, followed by a cold, wet and stormy morning. Now it is 11 a.m., I am frozen to the bones, my stomach is unhappy about the waves, and I have been on my feet for 27 hours. Well, about that long. I should tell the story from the beginning.
We are on our way home, at a station at 52° southern latitude. Two months ago we have already been here once to take samples. Now, on our way back, we are taking samples again at the same spot to see if anything has changed in the meantime.
Last night we had fine-tuned the gear deployments ahead of us. And then it was already time to start. The first multicorer was sent down to 3,000 m to get sediment cores for oxygen analyses and other studies. While we were watching the sampling, we could see the wind speed increasing slowly. Then, at 2 a.m., a box corer and another multicorer followed.
After all these weeks without darkness south of the Polar circle I was really glad to have a normal dark night. And even though we have had many days of overcast skies, cold air and icy water, and a storm ahead of us, all of a sudden we got a starry sky for a while. And then the moonlight poured a soft, silvery-black shine over the water, making the sea look like the skin of a large lizard. Uncounted shimmering scales on a softly moving velvety blanket. Really beautiful.
At four o'clock we lowered the epibenthic sledge on its 4,500 m-long cable to the water and then to the seafloor. And while we were waiting yet again, the sun rose over a rough sea. A long night and a beautiful morning. Many of us are tired, wet and cold, and the exhaustion lets us freeze quickly in the rough wind. And as the wind has picked up considerably, the waves affect me and some others quite strongly.
The work we do can be rather exhausting, especially when wind and seas are against us. That is part of our job. But when nature around us is as beautiful as during this night, when the sun rises again and wind and waves are turning in a powerful dance, we are delighted and feel rewarded for many hardships. And even though in moments like these we are tired and done with the world, there certainly is no other job on this planet we would rather do.
And now I am going to bed.
27 January 2008Saskia Brix, Senckenberg
What an exciting day! Not only because of the storm, but especially because of the amphipod traps which we had almost given up and left on the seafloor for two months. Today we got them back. This was due to the Captain's great expertise, the board electrician's genius and a good portion of luck with the storm allowing us a little time before it pushed the wave heights over 7 metres. The whole story was not an easy game. When we worked on our first station near the beginning of this voyage, the trap did not respond to the ship's signals. At that time, they had been on the ground for some 12 hours. There was nothing we could do, time was in short supply, and we proceeded without retrieving the trap. We had planned from the very beginning to revisit this station to answer the big SYSTCO question concerning the effect of plankton blooms on the seafloor. And we did return, with a large storm at our heels. The retrieval of the trap was a race against weather and time.
When the trap finally responded to the ship's signals, the waves had already reached a height of 4 metres. We knew now that it would come to the surface. We were a little bit relieved already, but to spot the small trap in the churning seas would be difficult.
While the trap was travelling toward the surface, our epibenthic sledge META had nearly come back from sampling. The waves entered the deck from the stern and nearly washed our buckets and tubs off the deck. The boatswain and deck's crew were very much aware of the difficult conditions and did their very best to get META out of the waves and provide safe working conditions for us. When the sledge was nearly on board, it started to dance on the waves just like the ship and crashed noisily against the board wall before the men could secure it. A few more bumps in her steel frame…
We rushed to secure the samples and take them inside for sorting. The crew was needed urgently to retrieve the trap. As soon as META was securely fastened to the Polarstern, everybody went to look out for the trap, and the ship was brought into position. The Captain and his first officer worked a small wonder in manoeuvering the ship as close as possible to the trap to allow the crew to fish it out of the heave seas without getting into danger. Just shortly before the work deck had to be closed for security reasons, all gear had returned!
29 January 2008Brigitte Ebbe, Senckenberg
On my way to breakfast I meet a smiling Svenja. “Looks like a benthic station today!” she exclaims and disappears in the stairwell to the labs. My heart skips a beat. How wonderful! We start around half past ten, I run a multicorer, the winch control room is humming with happy busy people, outside a bright blue sky spans over a sea of a like colour. The mighty foam-crested swells look beautiful in the sunlight and are not the least bit unnerving anymore. Together with Annika I lower the gear gently on the seafloor (actually, it is Otto at the winch who does it). It’s looking good. Some time later the multicorer is back – three cores of twelve are filled, several did not close, one is broken into two, several holding structures are twisted – what on earth has happened? “Seen this before around here”, the expedition leader says comfortingly. “Brickhard sediment.” The box corer is next, and following my intuition, I decide in the last minute to lower it gently as well, and it pulls strongly on the cable when retrieved again. Maybe a huge stone, we all guess jokingly. But no. The result: a sample like in the movies, very fine, soft sediment! Then it is Angelika’s turn on the bridge, the Agassiz trawl. Will we have another mud party on the aft deck? The cable tension varies wildly, but then we still have high seas which will only lay down toward the evening. By half past nine the trawl is back. Everything was done as usual. When the gear is on deck, we realise that the net is twisted tightly around the frame and in itself, and the fine-meshed inner net is hanging out turned inside-out. Any sample that might have been in there has been completely washed out. Only the small Rauschert dredge caught something, but the something fits into a single Petri dish. It seems that we fell victim to one of Poseidon’s practical jokes, and that he pulled our leg for a gleeful good-bye. Isn’t that a soft echo of his rumbling laughter I am hearing? Or was is just the stern thruster after all? 30 January 2008Olli Sachs, Alfred-Wegener-Institute
There are days when you don’t quite know how to begin. Some days ago there was a series of events that are not easy to describe. One is simply at a loss for words. That day has become an indelible mark in my brain. Just like, or maybe even more than, my encounter with penguins on the shelf ice. But let’s start with the beginning:
I was busy analysing my data when an announcement by the Second Officer Holger came through the ship’s speakers: 'No rush&38230; a forest of whale blows ahead'. My cabin mate Eberhard and I grabbed our cameras and quickly went up to the bridge. Some people were already there, and the first thing I noticed was that we were in a field of icebergs and there were lots of birds around. I took one of the binoculars and surveyed the horizon. What I saw happening was just incredible. Whales and whale blows as far as the eye could see. And we were moving directly towards them! Single animals and small groups of three or four, sometimes up to eight whales were on their way. Back fins, flippers, flukes and heads broke the surface again and again. Sometimes even half a whale’s body came flying out of the water and disappeared again into the dark sea in a cloud of foaming water. Only a few days ago I had been sad to have missed jumping whales. On that day I became witness of a brilliant performance of nature. Bram and Jan, who normally count seabirds and mammals from the top deck, counted to 52 and gave up. There was simply no way to count them all. Later they estimated that we had seen far more than 100 humpback whales. And they came closer and closer. On the port and starbord sides small groups of two or three animals went by. For reasons unknown to me, they splashed the surface with their flukes or their whole bodies many times. If there are moments that make you cry with happiness- this was one.
I filmed and photographed like there was no tomorrow. But the feelings moving me when seeing these magnificent animals, the goose bumps that came inadvertently when hearing the whistling and swishing sound of their breathing, these impressions can not be stored on photographs or movies. So I finally stopped photographing and just enjoyed the show. Only when I went for a late lunch did I realise that I was frozen to the bones.
During the whole afternoon humpbacks surfaced, although not in such high numbers. Of course this event was the topic of the day on board. I was told even by members of the crew who have been here for many years that they had never seen anything like that in all their years of service. This incredible day was ended by the appearance of a snowy white fairy tale castle of unreal shape. The beautiful iceberg with its two pointed towers, the two plateaus, the courtyard with a portal and the crescent shape in the wall drifted slowly past the Polarstern and to me was a symbol of this day which will probably happen only once in my life.
During the science meeting in the evening we agreed to refrain from publishing these sightings with exact position. The sense behind this action is in the protection of these beautiful marine mammals. We want to prevent whaling fleets from becoming aware of our whale community. A publication without announcement of our exact position seemed the most sensible method to protect the whales and at the same time share this truly magnificent experience with all those people who, like us, care deeply for life in the sea.
Previous week — Week 8
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