Elephant Seals on Station

 There were two elephant seal hanging out near the pier today. One was a large female just hanging out in the intertidal zone. And the other was a just weaned pup that was napping on the boat ramp.

 Here he is heading back into the water.

 He hung out near the floating dock for a little while so I got my zoom lens out.

 Super chubby, super cute little guy.

A very large ice bridge opened up near station yesterday. We've all been waiting for it to collapse, it will probably happen pretty soon.

Thanksgiving on Ice

Little bit late on posting about Thanksgiving, but it was a busy week so here it is:

We set the galley up all nice like usual. The boys smoked two turkeys and the chefs made two more traditional turkeys. This is what a meat eaters late looked like:

And the dessert table full of community made pies, tarts and other confectionery wonders:

This milk tart from a guy who got the recipe when he was living in South Africa was especially good:

NSF's Antarctica Day

For Antarctica Day (Dec 1) the National Science foundation asked me and the Krill scientist on station to do a live interview from Antarctica. You can watch the video here: https://www.facebook.com/US.NSF/videos/204260977145270/

This is how we set up outreach skype calls. Usually we are in a slightly more scenic location, but it was very windy so we had to go on the aquarium deck to stay out of the wind.  

Orcas

 Last week we saw some orcas in the harbor! It was a pod of 5 or 6 whales. They did a quick swim by and poked there heads up through the brash ice looking for seals and headed out of the harbor.

 The whole station stopped work for 10 minutes to run outside and see them. Orcas are a pretty rare sight here and usually only happen once or twice a season so this was pretty special.

Baby Wedell Seal

I haven't had any luck getting a photo of the baby Weddell seal in the backyard. Everytime I go out my camera dies or runs out of space so here is someone else's photos of the seal when it was a few weeks old:

Gentoo Tracks

This is a Gentoo penguin track in comparison to my hand. They a bit over knee height, they are not a small bird but they aren't outrageously big either. They have been touring around the back yard lately looking for new breeding grounds. I even saw one that walked all the way over the glacier (a half mile or so), he even stayed inside the safe flagged area!

Ice Fish Science

There was a fish science group here over the winter. They manage to get some ice fish eggs and watch them develop and hatch. The ice fish are pretty cool they have interesting adaptations that allow them to live in the freezing waters of the Antarctic. Here is what an artist and writer from last season had to say about them:

Here are some hatchlings.

Frozen specimens.

Some eggs that are about to hatch.

And an ice fish in a tank!

Sea Ice Imagery

Part of my job is make sea ice observations and to provide sea ice imagery to the scientists and to the Lawrence M. Gould (our vessel). The observations are encoded into a 5 digit number where each number describes one of the following:

1. The concentration or arrangement of sea ice (e.g. 7/10 to 8/10 close pack ice or strips and patches of sea ice with open water in between).
2. Stage of development (e.g. new ice, young ice, first year or old ice)
3. Amount of ice of land origin (e.g. 1-5 icebergs with growlers and bergy bits) Gowerlers are almost clear ice that floats at the surface. Bergy bits are pieces of iceberg that do not rise more than 15 feet above the surface of the water.
4. The direction of the principle ice edge. (e.g. the edge of the ice faces west)
5. Present Ice Situation and Trend of Conditions (e.g. Ship in open water, ship in easily penetrable ice: conditions worsening)

Some of the imagery I provide to the station and vessels helps with knowing how hard it will be for the ship to get into our harbor or if it will be possible to have zodiacs in the water to drop off scientist at certain areas around the Antarctic Peninsula.

 Here we can see Anvers Island just right of center with a large amount of sea ice south of station.

After just one day of strong winds from the south south west the full southern face of Anvers island accumulated at least 6 miles of sea ice. No zodiac boating for a while, unless we get a good strong wind storm from the north. Our vessel won't have any issue with this amount of ice, their final approach will just take a bit longer than usual. 

Back Across the Drake

Now that I'm back across the Drake and settled back into my job I can start this blog back up again. We had one rough evening on the Drake but the rest of the passage was fairly smooth sailing. Mostly just a lot of reading, napping and watching movies for four days. It was cloudy through the Neumayer Channel so nothing too spectacular to see on the way down this year. I did help with making temperature profile measurements and water samples on the way as well.


The winter electrician made this time lapse of our ship coming into the Palmer pier. The Lawrance M. Gould isn't a full ice breaking vessel but it can cut through thinner ice with her bow.  

The Latest Adventure

If you want to see what I'll be up to this summer follow it here: Circuitous Summer

Back across the Drake

On the way back north we took a detour south about 40 nm to drip off some Ukrainian sciencyosts at Vernasky station. And then took the Gould through the lens Marie channel. It too bad it was snowing really hard but it was still amazing to see what we did see. These are the mountains I have been looking at out my window for 6 months. Too bad we didn't see the big ones. 

 The snow stopped once we reached the Drake and it was a nice easy lake of a crossing

 we were visited by a Wilson storm petrel, which I've never seen not on the wing. Poor guy must have been really tired.

 I had an eastern facing cabin with a porthole in my bunk so I watched the sunrise every morning.

It was a great end to a good season, fingers crossed I'll be back next year, until then I'm out adventuring. Bye, bye!

Cache barrels

Every year the cache barrels get swapped out. The emergency food inside them gets changed and clothing and tents get looked at and or replaced. I was able to help on a few of these swap out adventures.

Another beautiful Antarctic sunset

We have a new iceberg in the front yard and it was beautifully lit by the amazing sunset we had a few nights ago.

The amazing light gave the glacier an unreal glow.

 And the mountains across the Bismark Strait were amazing.

 The Gould was in town for that last north bound voyage before I leave.

 A bunch of people in the crows nest over looking the harbor.

What a nice night!

NPR Talk

A scientist who was down here for the summer had an interview on NRP today, here is the link: https://www.npr.org/2018/03/15/593812865/botanist-studies-climates-effects-on-adelie-penguins

The Gosslers

 The Gossler's are a set of island is the north west of station, about nine miles or so. The Palmer is looking into putting up another weather station there so we have another reference point to the north if scientists want to go boating up around the corner of Anvers island where there are more penguins.

 The communications technician and I went out a couple times to do some reconnaissance on which islands would make the best weather station locations.

 THis ones a bit too high for a weather station.

 This one has too many seals and is protected from the wind on many sides by the surrounding islands.

 The big one is pretty cool.

 I really like the crack in this rock.

 A really big berg was off in the distance.

 A balanced rock!

It was a good reconnaissance trip on a beautiful day!

 The second trip out we brought a zodiac out as well and made a landing on an island to check it for a good location for a tower.

 This island was a bit more rugged than it appeared from the water.

 And have a lot of thick moss beds.

 Giant petrel chick! Which means even if there was a nice path up to the top (there wasn't), and with the chick and the moss this island isn't the greatest option for a tower site just due to environmental impact.

 These moss fingers were almost an inch long.

 There was a weddell seal hanging out with a bunch of fur seals on the  rocky beach.

Lots of moss. It was a fun trip, even though we didn't find a place for a tower.