One of our helicopters flying from the ship over the mountains of the Antarctic Peninsula at Barilari Bay. These rides can be a thrill a minute in the downdrafts of the catabatic winds coming down off the mountains!
65-foot French yacht we met cruising in Antartica. She is dwarfed by the icebergs. On a day like this, the Antarctica Peninsula scenery is otherworldly. However, when the winds pick up, every bergie bit (small chunks of glacial ice) is a potential reef!
At long last, two developments have brightened our prospects. The first was the recognition that much of the glaciology work atop the Peninsula could be conducted by Twin Otter (or ski plane) flights from the British Base at Rothera, on west side of the Peninsula. This allowed us to drop our 5 glaciology colleagues off at Rothera, freeing the ship to head back for the Weddell without compromising the terrestrial components of LARISSA (even if the ship gets stuck in the ice!). Our trip south to Rothera passed by whimsically named islets (including Beer Island and Hennessey Island, to torment our teetotalling ship!) and through narrow passages, included the Tickle Channel (picture below), which fortunately failed to tickle our ship’s bottom. At Rothera Base we received a warm welcome from our British colleagues as well as the wildlife. At the end of our 12-hour visit, we had an international soccer match (in which the Brits exhibited their World-Cup prowess) followed by a party in Rothera’s lounge which ended as midnight tolled and our ship departed Rothera Harbor (with moons up)!
Early morning passage through the Tickle Channel on the way south to Rothera Base. Seals and penguins dot the bergie bits in the channel. The icebergs tickle the sides of the ship.
The residents of Rothera Base are so friendly that even the crabeater seals will offer a kiss! "Don't show my wife!!"
The second positive development for LARISSA came from satellite images of the Weddell Sea -- the ice is starting to break out! This has been precipitated by long-awaited southwesterly winds combined with warming summer temperatures in the Weddell Sea. We are now racing around the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula once again, hoping to find, at most, broken ice flows and leads (i.e., channels) through which the ship can maneuver. If all goes well, we still may have time to complete our oceanographic program, exploring animal colonization and cold-seep biotas at the seafloor under the recently broken out Larsen B Ice Shelf.
Because of our scientific difficulties, the cruise thus far has been bittersweet. Normally, after a month at sea, one falls into a rhythm characteristic of the ship’s routine, the scientific sampling program, and the unique suite of shipboard companions. This cruise has remained rythmless through forced changes in plans and shipboard companions on nearly a daily basis. One clear message is that research expeditions to Antarctica must be, if anything, flexible and opportunistic. Modern oceanographic technology is still no match for a frozen Southern Ocean. However, as the sea ice wanes we now all hope to address our core oceanography program, and to begin sampling intensively around the clock. Despite the ice delays, the sea ice will become our friend once on we reach our oceanographic stations because it calms the seas, allowing our sampling devices (such as box cores, megacores and yoyo cameras (picture below) to work at high efficiency.
We have just entered the fast ice – a featureless plain stretching white to the horizon. The scraping and growling begins anew! We hope Poseidon allows us to pass through the sea ice to our stations!!
The intrepid Yoyo Camera being lowered into the ocean in Barilari Bay. This camera is raised and lowered (or "yoyo-ed") near the seafloor, allowing the lead weight on the end of the line to trip the camera. In this way, we get about 100 high quality pictures of the seafloor and its denizens over a distance of about 1 km (see picture a few posts earlier).
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