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.

Time Magazine Online

My photo of the eclipse made it into a TIME Magazine online article about the eclipse in Antartica, how exciting! Here is the link: http://time.com/5188349/partial-solar-eclipse-antarctica/

Up a tower

 I have been working on clearing a tower of an old decommissioned weather station. With the nice weather today I finally finished the project up and took my camera up for the view.

 What a beautiful day!

Home sweet station!

Giant Petrel Chicks

I was able to go out with the birders to Humble island to help/watch them with their rounds. This time I got to see the giant petrel chicks, I think they are my favorite of the birds around Palmer.

There were a bunch of elephant seals hanging out on the beach in a big pile.

 These giant petrel chicks are not quite the size of small turkeys yet but they are getting there.

 Once a giant petrel couple is able to lay and hatch an egg they have a near 100% success rate of fledgling their chick.

 They are so dinosaur like. 

And fluffy!