The Photographer’s Dilemma
[This post written 6/24/08; position: lat -57’45”, long -43’10”; temp 0C; wind chill -13C]
It’s been another interesting day aboard the NBP. I think I mentioned that yesterday we passed through an area where there were a lot of free-floating chunks of ice in the water, many with a distinctive brown stripe running through them. Tim Shaw captured a piece that included this peculiar stripe. Last night, while the sample was still frozen, he theorized that the stripe might be a layer of ash or dust from a volcano. But today, after it thawed, it became clear that the stripe is composed of biological material of some sort. Tim says it smells like fish, and is probably a layer of algae. He gave the biologists a sample to work on, and they will try to determine what it is. The picture above shows one of these chunks. This particular piece was about the size of a small car.
The ROV did its final dive of the cruise today, and it went beautifully. Brett, Paul, and Bruce Robison guided it 56 meters down along A43K’s underwater surface. They got some great pictures. I hope to post a few soon, but as of tonight, no still shots have been rendered yet. The underwater ice is striated and beautiful, but much cleaner than the similar surfaces the researchers saw on their summer voyage a few years ago. Very little, if anything, is growing on the surfaces we saw today. We think this is due to seasonal differences in the amount of available light, which all plants need in order to grow. The ROV also captured some good footage of salp chains, a medusa jellyfish, and a squid about 8 inches long.
I’m embarrassed to admit that I was caught without my camera today during one of the most amazing photo opportunities of the voyage. I went out to the aft control room to see how the ROV dive had gone. The light was not especially good today and it was snowing on top of that. I didn’t expect to be out long, so I left the camera lying on my bunk. The moral of this story is that in a place like this, you never know when you’re going to see something you’ll want to remember for the rest of your life. As I stood there, a section of iceberg A43K’s cliff face simply dropped away and fell into the sea. The calved section looked to be several times the length of the ship. We were well away from the iceberg when this happened, and neither we nor the ship were in any danger. But it was quite a breathtaking sight, watching the ice majestically disappear into the water, then shoot back into the air in a spray of brine and ice crystals. The resulting wave was large enough to rock the ship, but not large enough to leave any decks awash. If I can find someone who got a picture of it, I will try to post that soon, along with stills from the ROV.
Tonight at midnight, we’ll deploy the MOCNESS one last time, retrieving it at dawn. Then we’ll travel around the iceberg in a final circumnavigation for John Helly. We’ll do some water sampling. And when evening comes, we’ll head back toward Punta Arenas, a trip of several days.