The Meetings
At the end of February, I threw a few things in a bag, hopped in the car and headed down toward Monterey for two days of “icebreaker cruise” meetings at MBARI. The main purpose of the meetings was logistics, of which there are many on such a voyage. Each researcher has his or her own goals, but there are areas where they overlap, space and equipment that need sharing, and myriad details to work out — the assignment of lab space and event numbers, the locations of doors, power outlets, bolt holes in the deck, and so on.
The more basic matters, such as provisioning, engaging a competent crew, and making sure that the Nathaniel B. Palmer is shipshape, are all handled by Raytheon Polar Services,. RPS is employed by the National Science Foundation to do the unromantic groundwork that makes science possible not just on the icebreaker, but also at Palmer and McMurdo Stations and many other NSF facilities in Antarctica.
It is possible to drive from San Francisco as far south as Big Sur without ever losing sight of the Pacific for more than a minute or two. There are places where the view of high cliffs and foaming surf goes on for miles. If the sun is out, the colors of the sea and the green-topped land are so vibrant that they look like illustrations from a fantasy. MBARI is situated on that road, California Highway 1, overlooking a beach of white sand, guarded by terns and gulls. The satellite photo above shows the facility’s location, at Moss Landing. One look at the sea floor and you’ll see why it’s one of the most desirable spots on the coast for oceanographic studies. An enormous submarine canyon (some 3,000 feet deep in places) lies just offshore.
When I arrived at 8:30 a.m., the big conference room was already full of people enjoying a continental breakfast and a spectacular view of the bay. The entire west wall of this room is composed of 8-foot windows jutting out over the beach, and the weather was perfect — clear and breezy, with a glorious, powerful surf. Most people seemed to be friends already. Over pastries, fruit, and coffee, some two dozen expedition members were catching up on the news about each other’s spouses and children, travels, and latest projects. The community of Antarctic oceanographers is not large. I felt a little awkward, as if I had crashed a reunion. But that went away soon.
Dr. Kenneth Smith, leader of the icebreaker expedition, called the meeting to order at 9:00. The first item on the agenda was a round of introductions and brief presentations about the part each of us will play. The main purpose of the mission is find out more about how free-drifting icebergs affect the environment around them. One question of particular interest in this age of global warming is whether icebergs are affecting the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, and if so, to what degree. This is an interest all of the researchers share. But there are, of course, specialties:
Drs. John Helly of UC San Diego and David Long of BYU will be studying the size, shape, and movements of the icebergs.
Drs. Timothy Shaw and Benjamin Twining of the University of South Carolina will be studying nutrients, radioactive isotopes, and trace elements (especially iron) in the water around the icebergs. Their goal is find out how much of which substances the bergs are adding to the surrounding seas.
Drs. Maria Vernet of Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UC San Diego and Alison Murray of the Desert Research Institute will work to determine how communities of microscopic organisms affect the amount of organic carbon in the seawater around the bergs.
Drs. Ron Kaufmann of University of San Diego and Bruce Robison of MBARI will be studying the communities of larger organisms living in, under, and around the icebergs. These include everything from plankton to fish, sea mammals, and birds. They, too, are interested in how these living communities affect the amount of carbon in the ocean.
Drs. Ken Smith of MBARI and Tim Shaw (mentioned above) will be studying the question of whether icebergs affect global warming, and if so, how. One key to this is the amount of carbon in the surrounding waters.
To do all this, the researchers will use a bewildering array of equipment and techniques including a high-resolution sonar device, radar recordings, GPS beacons, a video camera mounted on a radio-controlled airplane, a Phantom DS2 remotely operated underwater vehicle, a special high-volume water pump, and one or two prototypical contraptions that I’ll describe in better detail when I understand what they do. To support all this equipment, there will be a number of technical experts and research assistants in our ranks as well. A number of these are graduate students, but many are engineers who have found their place in the labs of scientists. Add to these a group of ten Raytheon Polar support personnel and the crew of the ship, and I reckon we will be about 50 in number.
We’ll be doing this work in the northeastern Weddell Sea, somewhere between the 60th and 70th parallels. On June 20, the sun will rise at noon GMT and set three hours and 45 minutes later. Four hours of sun and an hour of twilight out of each 24. Next entry, perhaps, an answer to the burning question of why we’re doing all this in the dark of winter, and a rumination on the nature of science and scientists, which is what I thought about on the long drive home through the kindly beauty of temperate latitudes.
This week I have also filled out paperwork detailing my clothing, hat, and glove sizes. In Punta Arenas, Raytheon Polar will issue us a couple of bright orange bags full of standard Antarctic clothing that includes: