Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999
Subject: Ice Station-Frozen Ocean
Pictures: Violin on Ice

Dear Karen: these two pages are the ones which do not show up on the list you sent 6/30/99, so I'm sending them again, just in case! thanks. pix goes with page #9.

I'm starting to have trouble keeping track of the date, especially since on the ship, we go by Greenwich time, which means half of the time, the day given on the clocks is different from our own time (same as East coast), and of course different from California!

Since yesterday morning we have been stopped at an ice station (that simply means a spot in the middle of the ice, where it is thick enough for us to get off the ship and do research) slightly north of the first one we stopped at. We were going to stay longer at that first one but overnight, the swell under the ice got so strong that it opened up many leads, and it became unsafe to walk around. Here, so far, the weather has held, and we've been out yesterday and today, hopefully same thing tomorrow. It remains an amazement to me that we are trekking on frozen ocean!

There has been quite an amount of discussion as to what, in fact, constitutes "ice safe to walk on", but since nobody has fallen through, it seems that's the best definition! From the measurements taken yesterday, the thickness varies between 15 and about 50 centimeters. At the previous station, we had measured up to 90 cms. When the ship is moving, the ice thickness is visually evaluated in an interesting way: a big rubber ball has been hung over the side of the ship, fairly close to the surface of the water/ice: when the ship cracks the ice, sections of it are turned on their side, and by comparing their width to the diameter of the ball right next to it, you can estimate fairly accurately the thichness of a given piece of ice.

The temperature, after warming up to minus 10 degrees centigrade (it literally felt warm!) has plummetted back down to minus 18. Luckily there is very little wind, and the skies have been pure since solstice day. On that occasion, we got e-mail greetings from all the Antarctic stations, Russian, German, Chilleno, etc... which was neat. Apparently, and for obvious reasons, Winter solstice is celebrated quite happily at all of them.

I continue to work with chlorophyl, though that has slowed down since we have been staying in one place. It gave me a chance to catch up with the processing of past samples, which had accumulated faster than I could work on them, and I am now up to date. Sharon and Michael have been busy recording the data on the computer.

I have also been down on the ice taking pictures, and observing the different tasks going on there: yesterday, Ray's group did a 75 meter transect, ie a line along which samples of ice, water, records of thickness, temperature, salinity, etc.. are taken every meter. The divers' group dug a hole and two of them went under the ice. They are mostly looking for krill, but so far have been unsuccessful in their search. This morning, several groups were out, some taking water, others ice, some drilling cores: it seemed everyone wanted to go out, stretch their legs and breathe fresh air! I went out with the optics group, but they had trouble with the computer and instrument, and we ended up coming back without accomplishing much. It is strange to see someone sitting on the ice, poking away at a keyboard set up on a sled! I think there is a potential there for some good ads for the computer companies! Despite the cold, as long as you move around, you manage to stay warm and comfortable. The only problem are fingers, which tend to get cold quite fast, because they have no contact with each other: mittens would probably be warmer, but then it's hard to do anything with your hands. Today, I put some little chemical hand warmers in my gloves, and they really helped, when my finger tips were too cold, I curled up my hand in a ball inside the gloves over the warmers, and that took care of the problem.

A few seals have been checking out the holes we made, and poking their nose through. Most of them are leopard seals, which are not very attractive, and can even be dangerous, because they have a big set of teeth: they've been known to take a bite of a zodiac and deflate it! I hope the divers do not come face to face with a hungry one!

Despite all of the serious work, humor also has its place on board: for example, since the "bird people" have been frustrated by the absence of birds to record, some people last night made some very cute penguins out of plastic bottles covered with black and white plastic, and they put them on the ice by a hole: when I looked out this morning, not yet quite awake, I was fooled for thirty seconds! The same people also made penguin tracks in the ship's hallway, leading to the bird people's room...

This afternoon, Tim, who is a violin maker and player, took out a violin he brought along, sat on a cooler on the ice, with the ship and sunset behind him, and played a tune for us: it was quite surrealist! Of course, we got the cameras out and took pictures...

Talking about pictures, Ray has been in the cold room (it's as cold in there as it is outside!) taking polarizing pictures of very thin slices of ice cut from the cores drilled outside. I don't know what the scientific benefit of them is, though I am told they clearly show the difference between frazil ice and columnar ice, but I know that looking at them from an artistic point of view, they are beautiful: the different crystals show up as different colors, greens, yellows, purples, etc... and it looks like a detail of an impressionist painting, maybe a close up of Monet's "Water Lilies" (I told you I would never get a scientific frame of mind!). I was quite amazed that you could, without destroying it, manage to cut such a thin slice of ice, barely one millimeter thick: Tim said he first sawed the core in length, made a slice about 7mm thick, put it on a slightly heated glass plate where it stuck, then with a wood plane, shaved it down to 1mm. Right now, he and Ray are trying to take pictures of the ice with the digital camera: if they succeed, I will send one.

So, that's life as our voyage continues. I was just told that an Adelie penguin had been spotted wandering around the ship... sorry, see you later!

PS: picture: Tim: violin concert on ice!