Brian Powell

Today is both Chilean and our independence day from the ship. There are celebrations all around. Yes, this morning, we stepped onto land for the first time in 2 months. Tonight we are going to a seafood buffet and enjoying the ability to walk further than 100m at a time. I'll write again after making it back to Colorado. I'll also update with plenty of pictures... Cheers, Brian

We had a Füßball tourney over the past few days (single elimination brackets) and today, my partner and I won the championship. We received a kiss from one of the lovely Raytheon techs. Füßball is quite fun on the ship with the table moving around and the ball making strange arcs. We sailed through a storm for a couple of days, and it made for very rough seas (and slow going). Because of this, we were not able to go to South Georgia island which is a disappointment. We are scheduled to arrive in Chile on Sunday the 18th, and then a nice bevy of festivities as it is a national holiday in Chile (similar to the 4th of July). Other than the first day when I lost my breakfast, I have been feeling fine. Some people are still having a hard time getting used to it, and they are ready to get back to terra firma. Actually, all of us are ready to get onto land. We haven't been on land in over 2 months, and I really look forward to being able to take a walk. Now that we are in open water, we always have a plethora of birds following, but the albatross is the most fascinating to watch. They rarely flap their wings, just glide in the little turbulent eddies that came off of the ship.

Sorry that I haven't written lately. We finished the science mission on Sept. 5, and have been making our way to the end of the ice. We entered the open ocean on Thurs. night with heavy seas (and 45+ knot winds). Friday morning, I woke up, ate breakfast, went back to my cabin, and my stomach immediately began heaving in tune with the boat. After losing that breakfast, I laid down for most of the day (after having put on a scopolamine patch). By Friday night, I felt well enough to get up, eat some dinner, and lay down in the lounge to watch "A Perfect Storm." Today, the scopolamine seems to have taken full effect and I am feeling fine. We should arrive in Chile in 9 days. Our trip to S. Georgia might be cut short, we'll have to see if we can make up some time in the open water as we cross the ACC.

The cruise has turned quite somber (and I think most of us want to get back to the states soon) since the hurricane that devastated Louisiana and Mississippi. We do not get video or pictures here on the ship, and we can only imagine what is happening through short summary articles we get thanks to the New York Times. The ship is owned and operated by Edison-Chouest, a company based near New Orleans, and many of the crew have family, friends, etc. in the region. As for the scientists, we all know and work with people at Stennis (a NRL and NASA facility) at Bay St. Louis, Miss. We hope that they are all doing well. We've heard that Stennis suffered very minor damage; however, the homes in the area are all destroyed. We will be leaving to get back on Monday, the 5th of Sept; however, it will take another 17-20 days before we get back to the US. It is rather surreal in this day and age to be out-of-touch with the happenings in the world other than to simply know the basics.

It's been quite a delay since my last posting; however, that was due to a lack of change to our schedule. We have been continuing our drifting/sampling sessions and I didn't have much to report. On Tues., that all changed. We saw an iceberg field on the radar and decided to sample the upstream and downstream influences of the iceberg fresh water melt on the mixed layer. So, we steamed to the largest iceberg and pulled up as close as we could to it on several sides, performing a survey at each stop. The iceberg (at least what was above the water) was roughly 60m high (~17 stories) and probably 300m wide. It had a large "lagoon" where a portion of the middle had calved away previously. It was absolutely amazing to be about 100m from such a large iceberg. While the instruments were sampling, we would run about the decks taking pictures of the iceberg. The fresh water influence (since the water is relatively warm--about 0.08 to 0.1 degrees away from freezing--it melts the iceberg from the bottom which introduces a large amount of fresh water) was very prevalent with a sharp drop in the mixed layer depth downstream from the iceberg. Although this iceberg was very stable (due to the ratio of its width to height), it is common for icebergs down here to "flip" when the bottom has melted away enough such that the bottom buoyancy can no longer support the part of the structure that is above the water. Anyhow, we decided to do some research of opportunity and it turned out very well. We will be finishing up our science mission this upcoming Monday (Sept. 5) and begin our long trek home. We have put ourselves a long way from any place (we are about equal distance to Punta Arenas, Chile or Capetown, South Africa). We have also been given (and accepted) an invitation from the British research station at Grytviken, South Georgia Island. There are 4 people who work at this station during the winter so we will go into the harbor there and spend a day visiting and hiking on Sept. 12. That will be a nice little diversion on the way home. It is a very large breeding ground for seals and penguins. We are scheduled to return to Punta Arenas, Chile on the morning of Sept. 18 and then I'll be heading home a day or two after that.

8/25: Our email was down for a day, so there was a delay to getting a new entry out. Last night, we were able to witness our first Aurora Australis. It was quite a sight and different from the images I have seen of the Borealis. They were long, vertical strings in the sky that would light up for 30 seconds or so before fading away. Very impressive.

Every day, we seem to have 1-8 penguins hanging around the ship. This morning, one was very interested in the balloon we launched. Sometimes, it can be tough being a flightless bird. Actually, one afternoon I watched them from the bow chasing each other and "flying" around under the water, and they are incredibly quick and maneuverable in their environment. The leapord seals have a difficult time catching them when they are under full swim: the seals tend to grab them when they stand near the edge of the ice or when they first jump in. The penguins are quite enjoyable to watch, they always huddle close together if there are more than 1 on the ice. Whenever one makes a move to go somewhere, the others will invariably follow. They are quite the plump little weeble-wobbles and it can be humorous watching them try to get out of the ice. There were 3 large whales swimming down a lead we were drifting near; however, I missed those having been asleep at the time.

We have settled follow into our Phase III plan: we launched two Lagrangian buoys with localized acoustical trackers that we can use to follow the particular water column we launched them into. We will track the buoy and go 5-10km upwind of the buoy. We then park the ship, "mow the lawn" (clear the ice away from the ship for a large pond around the starboard side), deploy the micro-structure instruments and drift toward the buoy. Once we have passed over it for some distance, we pull out all of the instruments and repeat the cycle.

And now that time of the show---Questions from the comments:

1) Petting/Taking Penguins: Well, as part of the Antarctic treaty, we can't do anything toward the wildlife. They can come to us, but not vice-versa. Penguins--not having a natural tendency to shy away from humans--are curious as to what we are doing there (we aren't part of their normal life) and come to us. The closest one has come to me is about 5 meters. Up close, they are much more bird-like, their head bobs around, they squawk, etc. Biologists can get permits to capture and dissect some number of penguins; however, we don't have any biologists on board so we don't have to deal with that.

2) Evil penguins: Fortunately, I can rule out a penguin conspiracy based on the empirical evidence that simply shining a flashlight near a group of them will send them slip & sliding the other direction. I don't believe they have it in them.

Today is the 30th day of the cruise: exactly half-way through. We were planning on still being on ice station today; however, due to the lack of cooperation from the ice, we have resumed surveying the water in the area. We will probably study the region for another 18-20 days before setting off on the voyage home. We are searching for an area to begin what we call, "Phase 3." During this time, we will place a Lagrangian float at the bottom of the mixed layer and using an acoustical transducer to follow it around for awhile. From the ship, we will have a number of instruments measuring the microstructure of the water column searching for turbulence. To celebrate hump day, I have sent a number of new pictures that should be added to the website. Life aboard the ship has really settled into a normal routine. I tend to sleep from 2am until 8-9am, and I eat four meals a day: 9:30am, 12pm, 6pm, and 12am. That has given me a 7lb gain from my pre-cruise weight. We still have plenty of fruit which is very nice. Vegetables are all from the can now. We must have a flock of chickens somewhere because the cooks seem to use hundreds of eggs per day. We always have 2-3 new desserts each day. Astonishment of all, being a cake lover, I have become rather tired of cake. At least for the short term. Thanks to Nancy Reagan, all US research vessels are dry, and I miss a nice glass of wine with dinner at times. Today being Friday, we will have an emergency/evacuation drill after lunch I can almost guarantee. They try to make them at "random" times so that we remain "sharp"; however, random seems to mean an hour after changing shifts at noon friday. With little in the way of entertainment (mostly working), it was disappointing that the ice station broke up as we had been planning a soccer game. A couple of people had brought cross-country skis and did a little bit of skiing. I had the kite flying expeditions to open water regions, which if it sounds like a boondoggle, it sort of was (even though we were able to measure some incredible data)--the beauties of being a remote sensing person. We are having a bit of a warm spell (which is trouble for the experiment as we need ice formation, not melt) with temps getting to around -5C. It hardly requires a jacket when going outside.

8/17: Well, after evacuating the camp again last night, we decided to begin another exploration phase for a few days to follow the warm water "halo" around the rise. I don't have internet access, and I cannot view this site; however, Lisa has forwarded me some of the questions that have been left in the comments: 1) What is a CTD? It is short for Conductivity/Temperature/Density. It is a generic term for a device that measures the salinity (via the conductivity of the water), temperature, and density (a function of the pressure, salinity, and temperature) of seawater. 2) Queasy heaving? Well, once we got across the southern ocean, we reached the boundary of the ice extent and by comparison, the water is very, very calm under the ice. So, the only rough seas are crossing the open ocean in a due north/south course, while in the ice, the ship sort of bounces around like a truck driving across a field. So, the only time I felt queasy was when the ship was pitching (forward and backward) and that only lasted about 1.5 days. If you lay down and read, it goes away. Rolling (side to side) didn't affect me. 3) Is the ice thickness related to global warming? No. Global warming is a large-scale climactic change; whereas, us experiencing thin ice this year is simply bad luck. Sometimes you have years where the winter isn't so bad, sometimes it is colder. Climate is a long term average, not a localized event (in time and space). So, feel free to leave questions in the comments and Lisa will forward them to me. They will be answered in the order in which they are received. Your approximate wait time is ... 3-4 days.

8/16/2005: Well, after the emergency evacuation of the equipment on Sunday night, we waited until Monday morning to decide on whether to leave. A large leed had been created with other cracks having opened up; however, the decision was made to stay. We now have the oceanography equipment back on the ice (albeit closer to the ship) and will remain until Friday. Where we had originally set up our equipment is now a piece of ice that has drifted well away from where we are. Monday and Tues., I flew kites with radiosondes over the open water to measure heat fluxes from the water and compare with the ice. The sun has been out without many clouds so it has been quite pleasant; although, it does tend to get cold after a couple of hours in the breeze. Today, while on my way to fly a kite, I watched another emperor penguin climb from the water and slide along on its belly for a while before reaching one of the equipment huts. It stood around and inspected the cables, etc. leading into the hut before deciding to head back to the water. Something larger than a seal lying on the ice is quite foreign to them so they seem to always stop and see what is going on before getting back on their way. We aren't supposed to get very close to them unless they come to us so I don't have a picture of a penguin by me. This one, however, was probably close to 3ft in height. It made a few calls to the three of us there watching it. When they are up close and chattering, they seem much more like birds rather than little waddling tuxedos. UPDATE: Well, just after 7pm here, another large crack developed in the ice, so we are extricating the equipment once again. Fortunately for me, I don't have any equipment associated with me out there right now, and I am sitting comfortably on the ship... I suppose we'll decide tomorrow what to do about this latest crack.

8/14/05: Well, I hadn't updated in a couple of days as we were busy with our ice camp. When I last wrote, we were going to continue CTD casts to the west of the rise; however, on Friday we ran into a floe which seemed perfect. We set up all of our equipment both Friday and Saturday. Everything was working well all day Sunday. In fact, Peter Guest and I had time to go out and fly a kite with a radiosonde attached to it to take profile measurements over a number of areas. It was a beautiful day for kite flying: temps were only about -16C, no clouds, just enough wind to provide the forces required for successful kiting. We came in about 4pm. By 6pm, I was in the sauna, and at 8pm, the emergency ensued. A large crack had formed and split the ice creating a sizable leed which was heading for all of the equipment. A number of us donned our suits and rushed out to take down all of the instruments (or pull up depending on what they were measuring) and get everything back to the ship before the ice separated. What took nearly 2 days to assemble was dismantled in a mere 90 minutes and lifted back onto the ship. A number of hairline cracks (where the snow separates but the ice does not separate) formed around us while we worked (we weren't in danger, it would take 1-2 days of strong wind to separate the floe at those cracks) which was fascinating to look at up close. After 3 days of a winter wonderland atmosphere, we have to spend a night of quiet reflection and make decisions tomorrow about where to continue. It wasn't necessarily unexpected. Typically in this area, the mixed layer (the upper portion of the ocean that is homogeneous) is about 120-150m deep. On this ice floe, the measurements we took over the last 3 days showed a mixed layer of roughly 12-20m. This means that very warm water was being brought to the surface from below. As soon as a strong mixing event (wind) occurs, the mixed layer will be formed again, but equalizing with this warm water, which will melt the ice from the bottom. So, the moral is that we realized the floe was not going to last, but we were hoping for another 3-4 days rather than the 3 hours we got after discussing it. Well, it no longer exists, but I have included a picture of one of the huts in the ice camp for your enjoyment (for scale, the hut is about 8 ft tall and the ship is about 400m away)...