Rime of the Modern Mariner

[This post written 6/19/08; position: lat -57’49”, long -43’40”; temp -1C; wind chill -19C]

Today has been another triumphal day for the engineers, and so for the scientists as well. My own day started early, as I pried myself out of bed at seven to go out and watch the MOCNESS being retrieved, and to take a few pictures. I noticed yesterday that photos of the MOCNESS seem nonexistent. Or it might be that some exist, but none are good enough to put on the shared drive. I discovered it’s hard to get good ones of that activity, which involves people doing hard, fast work in the non-ideal light of dawn and the ship’s big work lamps. I haven’t edited the photos yet, so I will save them for another day. There was plenty of excitement of other kinds.

The photo sequence at left is a series of still shots taken from the RC plane’s video footage — mostly from the second flight, and from the third flight, which happened this morning. As you can see, we are getting wonderful birds-eye views of the iceberg. The top photo shows one of the underwater ice shelves that surround iceberg A43K (the bluish green area). The middle photo is an odd thing indeed, and takes some explaining. It shows the GPS beacon in it’s protective Nerf football about a second after it was released from the plane, before it hit the iceberg. I keep meaning to ask Brett or Paul what those rods are that are sticking out. I suspect they are meant to further cushion the fall, or to increase the chances of the beacon landing in a particular position. But I’m not sure. The third photo shows a small lagoon — a notch in the iceberg’s shoreline. You can see the underwater ice shelves in this one, too. It’s also clear that, at least at this time of year, this iceberg is very smooth on top, just like the previous one. This may very well change from season to season. It’s quite possible there are lakes and crevasses in the iceberg during the summer when temperatures are warmer.

Flight number 3 for the RC plane was our most successful so far. Not only was the beacon successfully dropped on the iceberg. Steve E. piloted it back onto the deck with only a tiny bit of damage to one wingtip — an especially amazing feat given the wind, which was almost high enough to keep the team from trying to fly at all today. Steve couldn’t resist doing a victory roll after the successful drop. 🙂

Our Phoenix ROV made another successful run today, too, moving in very close to the iceberg and staying there for an hour, collecting video footage of the iceberg’s underwater surfaces and pumping a large water sample for the chemists. At the science meeting later in the day, Ben Twining reported that his preliminary results show more than the usual amount of iron in this sample, which would support the theory that icebergs may be adding nutrients to the seawater surrounding them. We continue to be impressed with the performance of this handmade ROV. None of this sampling would have been possible without it, after the loss of the Phantom.

I will conclude my entry for now. I’m not quite sure why, but the ship is traveling fast — faster than my Meclozine can quite keep up with, so I’m feeling a little woozy from the increased wave action. Checking my notebook to see what’s on the schedule now…ah, synoptic surface mapping. That explains it. We’re going back and forth in the lawnmower pattern, grabbing quick water samples to test salinity, temperature, and florescence as we go. Trying to detect patterns. Goodnight, all you princes of dry land.

Tags: Icebreaker by NancyE
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[This post written 6/18/08; position: lat -57’49”, long -43’40”; temp -14C; wind chill -28C]

Believe it or not, it is actually warmer now than it was earlier today. I am in the habit of doing my writing in the cabin I share with Joanna, who spends most of her time down on the main deck. It works out well. So after breakfast, I came back to the cabin to check email and get a shower. While I was at it, I glanced at today’s temperatures and wind speeds. It was frigid out there. And a peek through the porthole revealed that an inch or so of snow blanketed the ship. I’ve chosen two pictures I hope will help convey the shivers I felt.

There was not a lot of visually exciting stuff on the agenda for today. The engineers were going to try to launch the ROV again, but that was called off due to rough water. We were running the high volume water pumps at times, and doing periodic CTDs (Continuity, Temperature, and Depth) to keep a running record of water salinity and temperatures at various locations and depths. And John Helly was still busy analyzing his data to come up with more precise measurements of the iceberg. (Captain Mike told me today that the old 16 mile figure for the length of the iceberg has been scrubbed. And just now, between the time I wrote this post and the time I send it off, I’ve heard from Ken Smith that the size of A43K is now confirmed to be 20.5 nautical miles by 7.5 nautical miles.) At any rate, there wasn’t much to photograph or report on today. So I decided to spend my time working on the endless task of organizing and appending metadata to my photographs.

I’m not quite sure how many I have taken on this trip so far. About 1,800, I think, just looking quickly at the Mac’s file info for my “Antarctica Photos” directory. And that is after trashing at least a third of what came out of the cameras. Digital photography is incredible, in that it frees you from worries about the expense of what you’re doing and allows you to click away at will. But it can easily yield up a hundred nearly identical pictures of the same object or scene.

I took a break from this work to go down to lunch, and after eating I went up to the bridge where I took yet more iceberg photos (indeed, photographed them until I could no longer feel my fingers), and had a good conversation with Ron Kaufmann, who has spent quite a lot of time in Antarctica and is also an avid photographer. He said, “When you see your first iceberg, you take lots of pictures of it because…well…it’s your first iceberg. But then you find that every iceberg is unique and has its own beauty, so you take pictures of every iceberg. But then you notice that the light is constantly changing, so any given iceberg looks different from moment to moment, so you photograph each iceberg at many different moments.” We laughed, because it’s so very true, and it’s so easy to see how it could go on ad infinitum.

Later I looked through the pictures other members of our cruise have put up on the shared drive of the ship’s server. And I see that Ron and I are far from alone. In aggregate, we must have thousands of iceberg pictures, all taken within the last two weeks. Some of these are so breathtaking I’m sure they will end up printed and framed, or perhaps even published. I even found pictures of one or two icebergs that I myself missed. But my overall impression, after a day of poring over iceberg photos, is that each of us should resolve to spend no more than a week or two obsessing over them when we get home. Down any other road madness lies. Sweet dreams. 🙂

Tags: Icebreaker by NancyE
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[This post written 6/17/08; position: lat -57’49”, long -43’40”; temp -11C; wind chill -33C]

I’ll begin by seeing if I can address our latest crop of comments and questions. First, from Orchardgirl (on “The Bridge Wing Catwalk”), who wonders why “it seems that the majority of living stuff in the water is transparent.” I’m guessing that, especially for small organisms, transparency is a survival trait. It certainly makes them harder for predators to see. But I will need to check with one of the biologists to make sure. No idea whether those worms in your garden are related to the Antarctic ones. The Antarctic ones are arrow worms, Chaetegnath, if it’s any help. 🙂 Nick wonders if Qi Gong would help me get going in the morning. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Qi Gong is a form of Chinese exercise. I think of it as sort of a preliminary foundation for more complex forms, like Tai Chi. It is designed to get one’s chi (or energy) moving, and it does a very good job of that. Nick, I have been doing Qi Gong the last few mornings, because it’s something I can do right in my cabin. It takes very little space. And yes, it does help. Thank you for that thought. I observe that most people seem pretty quiet at breakfast. With the exception of Tim Shaw, who is one of the most effervescent people I have ever known. 🙂 LisaB, thanks for your thoughts about Scopolomine. I intend to avoid it like the plague for the rest of my life! Phil asks if we have seen any striped icebergs. Icebergs with blue water stripes or green algae stripes are indeed very common in Antarctica. Toward the beginning of our voyage, when we were further south, we saw a number of the green striped ones, though not close up. I have a few pictures I’ll be bringing home with me…an understatement, heh heh.

My grandfather checked his barometer every morning. It was part of his daily ritual. He drove a delivery truck for a living, and much of his route was in the mountains. He liked to know as much as possible about what Mother Nature had in store for him. For us, yesterday’s falling barometer presaged a big drop in the temperature, and a whispery fall of snow on an icy black sea. This being launch day for our homemade ROV, the Phoenix, I have spent most of the day outdoors in the cold, and am consequently enjoying a hot cocoa and feeling drowsy, so I’ve decided to make tonight’s blog mostly pictures. Above is A43K as it looked this morning, apparently going on forever. It reminds me of a science fiction story I read about a world where the only land on an ocean world was a thin strip that went on forever, encircling the globe. It looks quite surreal. Yesterday’s circumnavigation of the iceberg took over six hours at 12 knots. We have now determined that A43K is about 16 miles long and about 8 miles wide.

Above is a picture of the Phoenix in all its glory, waiting to be deployed. I am still completely astonished that the MBARI engineers — Paul McGill, Alana Sherman, and Brett Hobson — managed to make something this sophisticated on the fly from what amounts to a box of spare parts and a lot of imagination. Add to this yesterday’s victory with the plane and the GPS locator tag, which is currently transmitting the iceberg’s position to us via satellite every six hours.

As you can see above, almost everybody wanted to be involved in the launch. Excitement was at a fever pitch as the Phoenix was brought out of the lab and onto the A-frame deck for deployment. The sea was not particularly friendly, with large, rolling swells and a stiff wind. But many hands made good, steady work, and the Phoenix was soon in the water and on its way.

Even the birds got into the act. Antarctic and Snow petrels swooped low to check it out, and I believe I saw a few Cape petrels as well. I’m guessing they wondered if it was some new kind of fish. In a way, it was, I suppose. Upstairs in the control booth, we watched as the video pictures came in. The Phoenix performed beautifully. We saw portions of the submerged areas of the iceberg today — not in the kind of detail we got with the old ROV, but very serviceable. It’s beautiful down there! We enjoyed a view of horizontal blue striations, and at least one jellyfish. Plus, the Phoenix collected water samples from much closer to the iceberg than the ship could ever get. An extremely good day. And another big round of applause for our engineers! Amazing folks.

Tags: Icebreaker by NancyE
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[This post written 6/16/08; position: lat -57’49”, long -43’40”; temp -6C; wind chill -20C]

We have a few comments since my last post. First, from Jill (on “Long Nights, Short Days”). Thank you for your thoughts. Glad you’re enjoying the blogs. I’m not reading any blogs, since we have no Web access on the ship. I meant that the writing of the blogs has been helpful for me. It’s a type of work I very much enjoy. Also, I didn’t mean to say that depression is a problem on the ship. Not at all. In fact, there is general good cheer. I only mean that it’s a bit of work to maintain it in the cold and dark. So we exercise and we work hard, and we celebrate our triumphs when they come. (We had a special chocolate cake tonight, for example, to celebrate the good day I’m about to describe.) Until a few days ago, I was feeling glum because of seasickness, but that probably would have made me gloomy even in Taihiti. 🙂 I’m happy to say it has abated now. Phil, about the amount of sunlight so close to the solstice. There’s more daylight than I expected, too. This is partly because we are several degrees further north than we expected to be. The icebergs further south have not obliged.

I recall thinking as I awakened today that the sea seemed almost impossibly smooth. I wondered if I had somehow been transported back to dry land in the night. I could detect almost no motion in the ship. A glimpse through our porthole confirmed this. The water was smooth. Rising up from it like Moby Dick on steroids was A43K.

A43K, the next iceberg we’ll be studying, is roughly 15 miles long, 2 miles wide, and a hundred feet high. As Antarctic tabular icebergs go, it is good-sized, though not enormous. Think about that. 15 miles long. We spent three hours circumnavigating it at a reasonable clip. It has bays and inlets and shores where the waves crash like thunder. Many cities cover fewer square miles. Many islands are smaller. And it is not particularly large.

As I edged my way out on the catwalk again — for this was where the best views could be had — I wondered if any human being had ever seen this iceberg before. It seemed unlikely to me. The sea is so vast and so empty, and these latitudes so seldom traveled. And none of these icebergs have been here long in the larger scheme of things.

Though the sky was leaden and the barometer falling, the weather was perfect for flying. So, seizing the moment, our engineers got the second of our little RC airplanes aloft. As a pod of Minke whales grazed on krill nearby, and snow petrels, apparently indignant at this invasion of their airspace gave chase, Kim Reisenbichler guided the plane through a perfect takeoff and a beautiful delivery of the GPS payload. Video footage from the camera aloft shows breathtaking scenes of a blue-green shelf swooping down from the iceberg’s face into the sea, and the padded beacon dropping down onto the smooth, snowy surface of the berg. (I’ll see if I can get a few stills from Paul McGill to post tomorrow.) The rocky landing, which damaged the plane, was the only imperfect part of the flight. The mission succeeded. What once required the danger and expense of a helicopter is now proven to require considerably less.

Tonight we will cast the MOCNESS into the water and see if what it gleans differs from what it gleaned in our previous hunting ground. Tim Shaw, Ben Twining, and the microbiologists are already hard at work gathering water samples. And tomorrow, the new ROV (which the engineers have christened The Phoenix), will have its maiden voyage, weather permitting.

Tags: Icebreaker by NancyE
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[This post written 6/15/08; position: lat -57’49”, long -44’28”; temp -6C; wind chill -26C]

The sea has been a dark, seething mass today, whipped up by 25-knot winds. With the wind chill down around -26C, it doesn’t take long to get cold out there.

Thanks to the miracle of Meclozine, I was in good form today. So when I learned at today’s science meeting that John Helly would be out on the bridge wing catwalk this afternoon at 1:30, I made up my mind to go out, too, and see if I could get some pictures. I’m a bit shy of that catwalk. It scares me, as it hangs out over empty space with nothing but the Antarctic waters below it, and the railing is canted outward. But the possibility of a good photo was compelling.

John has been going out there daily to take laser measurements of the iceberg’s freeboard — that is, the part that is above the water. Using this and circumference data he gathers by tracking the ship as it circumnavigates the berg (and then correcting for the fact that the ship must stay a safe distance away), he’ll be able to compute the mass of the iceberg.

“But how do you know how much of the iceberg is underwater?” I asked, when he explained his process to me.

“The nature of water. If you have a chunk of ice floating in water, one-eighth of it will be above the water, and seven-eighths will be below.”

So I donned my Antarctic parka and climbed the multitude of stairs to the bridge. John and an assistant were already outside on the catwalk working with the laser. So out I went. I wish I knew the speed of the wind coming around the outside corner of the bridge wing. As it is, I only know it nearly picked me up and carried me off, after it had finished freezing my face. The catwalk was icy and slippery, too, which added a little extra suspense. I did get some decent photos. But I don’t recall thinking about much of anything except where I put my feet as I crept back along the catwalk, clinging to the railing, resolutely not looking down at the heaving swells. Good thing. It’s not a great situation in which to let one’s imagination run wild.

Was I ever in real danger? Probably not. It’s just that it doesn’t take much to scare me, which is probably a piece of what makes me good at writing horror stories. For all those fathers out there, including my own, Happy Father’s Day on this, the halfway point of our journey.

Tags: Icebreaker by NancyE
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[This post written 6/14/08; position: lat -57’49”, long -44’28”; temp -6C; wind chill -28C]

There’s a lot of interest in the penguins, so here’s a picture, courtesy of Rob Sherlock, one of the MBARI research techs.

We’ve had a few comments with questions in the past day or so. First, for Katie, who mentions that the water around the new iceberg seems very dark and asks whether it’s cloudy. No, the water’s not cloudy. When the sky is overcast, you can’t see very far into the water, but I think that has more to do with the light than with stuff in the water. Sometimes the melt water from glaciers is cloudy from ground up terrestrial matter the ice releases as it melts. But I didn’t notice anything like that in the water around the new iceberg. Judy, thank you. I am beginning to feel a little better, largely thanks to Cooper, one of the ship’s med techs, who gave me some Meclozine. Good thing, because the water’s kind of rough today! Nick, hi, nice to hear from you. I am making an effort to get outside each day. It really is an effort, too. There are so many good reasons to stay in.

It has been days since we last saw the sun. Among the iceberg denizens, sensitivity to the lack of light seems to vary a lot. Many are not bothered at all. Others seem irritable or glum. Some are bothered by it, but are mounting efforts to counteract it in various ways. I suppose what we are currently enduring is not much different from mid-winter in Seattle. Well, probably fewer hours of daylight. At this location, the sky begins to brighten around 7:30 a.m. By 2:30 p.m., it’s getting dark. So that’s about six hours of light. The cloud-cover has been extremely thick, though, sometimes with fog. So most of the time, it’s a sort of twilight. As if the day never really gets underway.

Speaking only for myself now (as I can’t really know how others are feeling) it’s hard to get up in the morning. Some of this is probably due to my seasickness. I’m fairly comfortable as long as I am horizontal. As soon as I get up, I begin to feel queasy. So, knowing what will happen and overcoming the resulting aversion, is always my first big project of the day. But I think it would be hard even if I were feeling better. It seems partly physical — maybe Circadian rhythms messed up, but to be honest, it’s more like a wish to hibernate.

Once I’m up, it’s hard to get going. Things happen slowly, and there’s a feeling of brute effort. Most of my compatriots are making diligent efforts to spend some time in the gym each day, which helps enormously. I haven’t felt well enough to do it for the past week or so, but I do try to climb up to the bridge (about six flights of stairs) once or twice a day. And I take my camera out and snap pictures of whatever seems most interesting. Even those who are getting plenty of exercise outside in the cold seem to benefit from planned workouts on a regular basis. Those of us who are spending most of our time inside make an effort to get out into the fresh air for at least a few minutes each day. This is no small act of willpower. There are layers of clothing to be gotten into and then out of. Stairs to be climbed, etc. It would be oh so easy to give into inertia. But cabin fever is real, and it makes you feel awful. So girding one’s self is well worth the effort.

The blogs keep me going, as the science keeps the researchers going. Having something worthwhile to do, and a real connection with the outer world, is a big key. I think I might go nuts if all I had to do was read and loaf. As someone who occasionally writes science fiction, one of the reasons I wanted to be part of this voyage is so I could better imagine what it would be like to live on a spaceship, or in cramped quarters as a colonist on some other planet. I think back to the old movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which no one seemed to have much to do beyond keeping an eye on things (and arguing with HAL). This, I think, would be incredibly difficult.

Tags: Icebreaker by NancyE
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[This post written 6/13/08; position: lat -57’49”, long -44’28”; temp -1C; wind chill -19C]

First, we have a couple of questions and comments to address. Katie and Mike, I am surprised at how far and wide Cthulhu’s fame has spread. 🙂 And Mrs. Betz, how wonderful to hear from you! I’m glad to know you are well and doing art, and let me say I’m not much surprised to learn that you’ve done your share of skydiving. Phil, we will be changing our location on June 15, moving to a much larger iceberg. That’s the current plan anyway. I’m not sure whether that’s further south or not.

You might notice that the temperature has decreased since yesterday. Rough weather is approaching, and the researchers are adjusting their plans accordingly. Some of the sampling, the MOCNESS, for example, will be placed on hold in favor of other activities that can be done no matter what is happening on deck. Sometime in the next 24 hours, we hope to begin a methodical program of water sampling for salinity, temperature, and fluorescence in the vicinity of the iceberg. This can be done using the ship’s intakes, with the ship traveling a prescribed “lawnmower” path around the berg. In this way, the scientists hope to confirm various phenomena they have observed in the past few days concerning effects of the iceberg on the nature of the surrounding water.

Also a couple of days ago Paul McGill shared with us the video footage the ROV collected just before we lost contact with it. As with the plane, it managed to send back some tantalizing and useful information before the end. The photo above shows the underside of the iceberg. Amazing, isn’t it? We don’t know what causes this exquisite pattern of dimples in the ice. There are theories, mostly mathematical in nature and having to do with turbulence, but nobody really knows. Nature is more imaginative by far than we are.

Meanwhile, our amazing engineers are at it again, this time roving through the ship scavenging parts with which to build a new ROV. They have found a couple of thruster motors, a video camera, and some other useful items they will mount on a frame and send out into the deep. This machine will, of course, be rough n’ ready compared to the old ROV, but as we’ve seen, it is possible to get useful data from even fairly primitive tools.

The change in the weather means we’re unlikely to be able to use the second plane to plant a GPS beacon before we have to leave. So Steve E. and Kim have been working on a kite. What a lovely, simple idea. The available materials are far from ideal — plastic hose and heavy duty garbage bags. But it just might be crazy enough to work. 🙂 Also, Jake is hard at work on his more powerful slingshot. We shall see what the future holds.

Tags: Icebreaker by NancyE
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[This post written 6/12/08; position: lat -57’49”, long -44’28”; temp 0C; wind chill -14C]

Still not feeling very well — though some Sudafed supplied by Bruce Robison has helped a bit. However, today’s events waited for no one. The iceberg broke apart in quite a big way last night. John Helly estimates (roughly, he emphasizes) that 10-15% of the iceberg broke off, probably in the wee hours this morning. The smaller chunk is quite a different shape from the original. You can see in the picture above a tongue of the ice that used to be underwater, but is now above it due to the transformations in mass.

This new iceberg, it turns out, is just the right shape and size for a penguin playground. We got to watch a mob (yes, a mob, not a flock) of penguins doing their penguin things — waddling, squawking, clapping, sliding — at fairly close range. My lens would not zoom enough for a really good photo, but I suspect there’ll be more opportunities before our voyage is over. Identifying the variety was not easy, because we weren’t really close enough. But the consensus is that these were probably chinstrap penguins.

Later, I went down to the lab on the main deck and watched as the biologists sorted through the latest haul from the MOCNESS contraption. It’s fascinating, the variety of tiny creatures that live, free-floating in the upper reaches of the sea. There’s an astonishing number of gelatinous organisms of various sorts, mostly salps in these waters, it seems. But Danny Garcia also showed me some sort of jelly worm whose main defining feature, as far as I can tell, is a set of unpleasant-looking teeth at one end. There are krill, too, of course, and sea worms, like ocean-going centipedes. It’s quite a wonderland of the weird and unimaginable.

In other news of the day, I managed to do my laundry, hooray. After three weeks on the go, it was high time. You might wonder, in fact, how I managed to go this long. The thing is, in Antarctica, one doesn’t sweat. 🙂

Tags: Icebreaker by NancyE
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[This post written 6/11/08; position: lat -57’49”, long -44’28”; temp 1C; wind chill -13C]

I have had a very low-key day, still dealing with lack of equilibrium due to this head cold. Didn’t make it down to breakfast this morning. I dined on crackers in my cabin. Outside, the fog was so heavy that the iceberg was nearly invisible. Temperature read-outs on the monitor showed it was barely freezing outside — unseasonably warm to say the least. General mood was subdued, as the loss of the ROV is now confirmed. It is well and truly gone, which is a blow to everyone. Still, there was some exciting science going on down on the main deck today, I knew. Last night, they launched the MOCNESS, a water sampling device spoken of variously as “a monstrocity” and “a very clever invention, when it works right.”

MOCNESS stands for Multiple Opening-Closing Net Environmental Sensing System. I have not actually seen this thing, but from what I hear, it is several meters square and is towed from the ship’s conducting cable through the stern A-frame. It has six nets, each with a 10 square meter mouth opening, and each of these can be controlled separately to gather samples at different locations. It’s used mainly to collect krill, and I knew several scientists, including Ron Kaufmann, were very much looking forward to seeing what came out of it. The previous night, the planned deployment didn’t happen because getting the device ready is such a process.

So I was hoping to get down there and see what the MOCNESS yielded. But never could keep my balance well enough to do it. Late in the day, word came down that the iceberg had split apart. I made it up to the bridge to see what was up, though I didn’t manage to stay long. It was very eerie up there. The fog is so heavy, nothing is visible from the big windows. It’s easy to imagine anything coming out of that curtain, even Cthulhu himself. A good, big chunk of the iceberg has indeed broken off. Don’t know yet whether this will change our plans or not.

Tags: Icebreaker by NancyE
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[This post written 6/10/08; position: lat -57’49”, long -44’28”; temp 1C; wind chill -13C]

Today we have had a change in the weather. The morning dawned gray and foggy. I was up on the bridge at 7:00 hoping to catch John Helly using his laser to measure the iceberg’s freeboard dimensions. I missed him by an hour, but did get a chance to watch the sea, which was oddly calm. The wind soon picked up, though, coming from the north. In this topsy-turvy place, the north wind brings warmth, which you’ll see reflected in today’s temperature readings. Suddenly, we are above freezing. One big result of this is that the iceberg has begun to melt and calve. Large chunks of it have been coming off today — at least twice, maybe more. It’s hard to say, because even with people watching from the ship, sometimes we are on the wrong side of the berg to see the action, and we rarely catch it while it’s going on.

One result of the wind is rougher waves. I guess I stayed out in the cold too long yesterday, because today my cold has moved into my head. I would probably be dizzy today even on dry land. As it is, I am seasick again, even though these are not big waves. So, I apologize, but this will be brief again.

This morning Paul showed us footage the RC plane took before it crashed. See above. It actually got some pretty good (and quite useful) pictures. We now have a decent idea what the top of the iceberg looks like. As you can see, it seems very smooth and flat. So in a way, the flight was a success after all. The team will try again with another plane as soon as the weather permits.

Whew. Off to bed.

Tags: Icebreaker by NancyE
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