| October 29 |
I arrived at McMurdo Station yesterday and can't do much of anything until I complete my field trainings allowing me to go out in the field away from McMurdo.
I just got done seeing the other three off on snowmobiles to travel to the sea ice edge. Norb is going to use his pole camera setup which is used to stick a still camera into the water using a video camera focused on the still camera's viewfinder. This allows for underwater photography without diving. I spent 1 1/2 hours digging out a snowmobile sled where a storm had drifted snow over it. So the exercise will do me good.
I can't go along for awhile. I have to take a waste management briefing tomorrow, go on an overnight survival camping outing on Friday and Saturday in order to get briefed on the basics, take a sea ice training session, and then a diving checkout. So I am helping out with gear meanwhile (loading, etc) and Norb has left me some to-dos.
It is very pretty to look out across the frozen sea and see the mainland mountain ranges, glaciers, etc. There is a fair amount of dirt showing on closer look but it still looks all snow covered. The sun is up 24 hours; sunset isn't until February.
| October 30 |
Errands to run etc. Went to machine shop to get an external battery mount fabricated for Nob's underwater video camera. Some other stuff. Went to a Waste Management orientation: they recycle 70 per cent of their material; the best US city is Seattle at 20 percent or so. Very ecologically conscious here at McMurdo. Learned how to E6 process slide film last night by hand and did two rolls in order to double check Norbert's exposure setting.
Tomorrow I go to Snowcraft School (called "Happy Camper School") where I learn how to survive in the field in case sudden weather comes up forcing us to stay where we are rather than return to McMurdo. It's a two day training including camping out overnight. Should be good preparation since we will be camping out in the weeks ahead.
On Monday there is a sea ice training workshop where I learn how to judge the lay of the sea ice and avoid danger. On Tuesday I get my first dive -- a checkout dive. After that I am up to speed and learn how to drive the two-track Sprytes (snow cats); I've been riding in one already and cannot wait to get behind the dual sticks (no steering wheel since it is a two track vehicle). It was sad to see them jet off on snowmobiles yesterday and not go along. I can't wait to zip out across the frozen ocean on those puppies.
I know I am making this sound like a playground but there is a lot of work ahead. I am helping out already and there is a fair amount of gear loading and unloading: dive gear, survival equipment and food, survival clothing, tools for opening or keeping open ice holes, etc.
Today is a "warm" day meaning it isn't too far below zero. If this weather holds for my overnighter, I will have it relatively easy. One class got caught out in severe conditions and had to stay in the hut rather than camp out.
Some of my fellow US Antarctic Program travelers I met at my bed and breakfast hotel in Christchurch NZ are still around. They are slated to go to the South Pole station and work construction there. South Pole has had bad weather and has not been able to fly in the summer people. So there are a few familiar faces about and I am meeting some others.
| November 1 |
I'm not diving yet but I finally went off base to start my training before I can join Norbert Wu in the field. I got back late this afternoon from an overnight campout in the open on the Ross Ice Shelf east of Scott Base (the NZ station) out beyond the end of the Hut Peninsula.
The Field Safety instructors drove a group of us trainees out in Hagglunds tracked vehicles onto the the Ross Ice Shelf which is the permanent ice shelf on the Ross Sea. It was a spectacular setting because looking north I could see the peaks of Ross Island. Mount Erebus is the highest and to its east was Mount Terror: both were totally snow covered with glaciers flowing down their slopes into the Ross Ice Shelf. Mount Erebus is the southernmost active volcano and it has steam clouding from its summit. Looking east I saw a flat horizon of the Ross Ice Shelf; it's over 500 miles to the eastern shore of the Ross Sea. Looking south, I can see two large high islands in the Ross Sea (White and Black Islands) and the continental mainland beyond with its high Transantarctic Range; Mount Discovery is over 10K feet.
They taught us how to use the emergency equipment one takes along on forays away from McMurdo: three kinds of tents, radios, stoves. We cut snow blocks and built wind barrier castle walls within which we pitched the two mountaineering tents. I went for a two hour walk after dinner and turned in at 10pm. The air temperature was five degrees below zero Fahrenheit with a slight breeze making it somewhat chillier. We had all our survival clothing along. You had to stick bare fingers out occasionally for some tasks but you didn't leave them out long. The glacier glasses came in very handy particularly today since there was bright sunshine. Being on a flat ice shelf with tall snow covered peaks nearby meant that it was bright out there.
I slept well and warm in a two man mountaineering tent. I opted out of sleeping in the two-man snow mound cave we all built; I left that for the younger, more adventuresome fellows. Actually when it was time to claim a sleeping spot, it was pretty obvious from running chatter from the hours before that the snow cave was less desirable than the tents. No one moved to claim a sleeping spot; I read the situation perfectly, strode over to the gear pile, grabbed my two bags of clothing and sleeping gear, walked over to the two man tent and threw them in without saying a word. I'm capable of making an executive decision without shared decision making when it's five below zero out in the open with a bunch of strangers in Antarctica! It was a fun camping trip and it was nice to get back to McMurdo and hit the hot shower.
Tomorrow I am accompanying my diving friends into the field though I cannot dive yet; I'll help out with gear. Monday I spend in sea ice school and then Tuesday is my checkout dive with the Scientific Diving Coordinator.
| November 2 |
Today I accompanied my friends Norbert and Dale in a Spryte snowcat maybe ten miles north along the west shore of Ross Island to Turtle Rock. We drove quite a distance offshore along the frozen ocean and the shoreline/mountain scenery was magnificent. It was fairly clear and we could see Mt Erebus and its steaming as well as the mountain ranges of the mainland.
Turtle Rock is a large rocky island and where the ice shelf butts up against it is cracking apart. Therefore you couldn't walk around much for fear of falling in a hidden crack with snow drifted over it. However the Weddell seals use the cracks to haul out of the water and jump in. We went to a dive shack there which is an insulated container building with a square hole in the floor with a round hole bored into the ice shelf. We could dimly see the bottom fifty feet down. Even saw a jellyfish drift by. I cannot go diving yet so I went along to help out with gear, etc. The Weddell seals were laying about in the below zero Fahrenheit air temp with 30 knot breeze. There was snow drifting and blowing along the surface. Pretty chilly. Some seals were mothers and had baby seals laying alongside them in the lee so that the baby was sheltered a bit from the wind. It was visually ironic seeing them lay there soaking up the sun's rays while it was cold and blowing. Snow was blowing onto them, coating them and drifting against them. It looked like summer at the beach though. There were maybe forty seals spread around a large area and some birds (skuas) about. It was interesting to see how a dive is managed and I can hardly wait to jump in myself.
Tomorrow I have sea ice training and then the day after tomorrow I have my checkout dive with the Scientific Diving Coordinator.
| November 3 |
Today I went out for sea ice training in a group with one of the field safety instructors that lead the overnighter. We departed in a Hagglunds snow cat plus trailer that held eleven people plus gear. We learned some basics about pitching tents on hard sea ice using ice screws or anchors made with augurs. We learned about the different types of cracks in sea ice and how to spot them to avoid stepping onto thin ice and falling in (or driving onto a crack and falling in). Sea ice has to be at least thirty inches thick to support a vehicle; it is weaker than freshwater ice which has to be only four inches thick. A crack of thin ice or open water cannot be wider than one third of the SnowCat tread. Nice things to know as you can imagine. You can spot cracks as roughly straight raised features on the sea ice. The crack can be jammed closed or still open with snow drifted over obscuring its presence visually. The Weddell seals exploit these cracks to find breathing and haul-out holes. They are far inland from open ocean and thus far away from predatory orca killer whales. Pretty smart. They keep holes open by gnawing at them if necessary. We saw small groups hauled out here and there. Some were very incongruous; you would be several miles offshore on the frozen sea ice and there would be a few seals hauled out sunning themselves. Visually you cannot see how they got there unless you walk up close and see their hole. I watched a seal or two come up for air in a hole for awhile; they would take several deep breaths and then dive away.
Driving out from McMurdo, we could see a mirage called fata morgana when we looked across at the distant shore of the Antarctic mainland across McMurdo Sound. The landforms right above the sea ice were stretched vertically in appearance as if there was a cliff running along the distant shoreline opposite us. Objects like the top of an island reappeared as an inverted shape over that same island. It was crystal clear looking south toward Minna Bluff, the critical direction in which to look for approaching weather. Looking north, the clouds were darkened a bit on their bottom end far away; this is called water sky and is a reflection of the blue color of the ocean on clouds overhead. This cloud phenomenon indicates where open ocean lies.
We drove north along the west shore of Ross Island on the frozen sea ice for about 18 miles. We stopped at Cape Evans and went inside Scott's historic hut that he built in 1911 or 1912 for his trek to the South Pole. He reached the South Pole one month after Amundsen and perished on the way back only a few miles from one of his food caches. The hut had all original stuff as they left it but spruced up a bit by the Antarctic Heritage Foundation. There was ample food supplies of that era, a chemistry/science lab in one corner, a kitchen in one corner, a photo darkroom, horse stables along one wall but entered outside the inner door, stored slabs of seal blubber they used for fuel (and yes, it was a tad stinky having laid there frozen for 85 years), etc. It was like a step back into time. everything under one roof for warmth. Stuff was scattered around outside just as left. We studied tidal sea ice cracks and pressure ridges on the snow covered frozen seashore just downhill from Scott's hut.
Driving further north, we went to Barne Glacier, a glacier from Mt Erebus flowing into the ocean. The front of the glacier was almost 100 feet high with a spectacular blue ice color. Weddell seals lay here and there at the foot of this deeply eroded blue ice wall. Sea ice cracks with the holes they use to haul in and out were scattered about. There was a mother and baby seal and the other were adults (unless I missed seeing a baby tucked in close next to its mother).
Looking north the clouds about fifteen miles away were darker in color. This indicates the presence of open ocean; the clouds reflect the darker color of the ocean and indicate the edge of the ice shelf. The day was fairly clear with spectacular viewing of Mt Erebus and its wisps of steam from volcanic vents. The wind picked up, misty clouds were drawing closer so we left. All in all, a spectacular day for a coastal drive with the highway being the frozen ocean.
Tomorrow I do my first dive, a checkout dive with the Scientific Diving Coordinator. Finally I go under the ice and enter another world.
| November 4 |
Today I went diving...finally after one week here. We drove north along the west coast of Ross Island to Turtle Rock which I described previously. Even more Weddell seals were laying about. I struggled to get into even more dive gear than usual and made it into the water. The water was 28 degrees Fahrenheit, below freezing. Felt very comfortable with no shock on impact. You drop down from the dive hut through about six feet of ice through a round hold bored through it. Down elevator. Then the view opens up and WOW ! It is dark since the light is filtered through the sea ice and reduced by snow cover on the sea ice. The sea ice from underneath is mounded with a crystalline look due to recently crystallized ice floating up from the bottom. The ice forms on the bottom on things like sponges etc as clear ice plates, break loose and float up. The bottom was carpeted with this anchor ice in groupings all over like crystalline bouquets. Small fish shelter within it. The sea ice is shades of dark blue looking up at it and the cracks used by the Weddell seals to breathe and haul in and out let in bright light in beams illuminating areas of sea floor. It was very shallow about 24 feet. The bottom was black lava rock with no plant life/algae growing on it since there isn't enough photons to go around. Animal life included sponges, lots of red sea stars, urchins, sea spiders, etc.
Oh, oh after five minutes both of my dry gloves started leaking in water slowly and steadily. Since the water is 28 degrees, I am headed for a problem. I decided to tough it out as long as I could since there was nothing to be done. I continued looking about and turned back when my hands didn't flex so well anymore due to cold; they had been screaming at me for six minutes maybe and it was time to listen. Chilling slowly in San Diego diving for years is good training; I lasted fourteen minutes on that dive which has amazed several people here including the diving officer. I stripped off my gear when I got out of the dive hole, stuck my very cold and screaming hands in wool socks and started breathing on them. They came back to life after five minutes. The dry glove sealing rings were incorrectly installed and I fixed that back at the dive locker with the supervision of the diving officer. So it was a great dive but too short.
The second dive today was in the evening at Cape Armitage. A blizzard was blowing up but we could still travel. We wore our drysuits since the drive was short to the dive site. It kept me warm out in the blizzard. The dive was of 24 minutes duration with a max depth of 54 feet. It was very dark with the sea ice very dark blue looking up. I could see far off into inky darkness everywhere; my dive light seemed to go on a long way (underwater visibility can be 500 feet here). The bottom was black lava (Ross Island is volcanic). I saw white aeolid and dorid nudibranchs, small blenny-like fish, sponges, large white anemones, an anemone eating a jellyfish, jellyfish floating about, long purplish-orange nemertean worms looking like weird flattened intestines on the bottom. The nemertean worms were often piled up together doing something unmentionable I'm sure. It was a dive with some macro photography possibilities but not spectacular like Turtle Rock with scenery and Weddell seals.
| November 5 |
It's noontime and we have to stay on base at McMurdo due to blizzard conditions. Air temperature is 16 deg Fahrenheit above zero but the 35 mph winds put the wind chill to minus 25 deg Fahrenheit below zero and visibility is limited for driving due to whiting out from blowing powder snow.
Norbert is meeting with people about upcoming multiday trips to remote sites for photography and diving. We take food, sleeping gear, scuba gear, scuba tanks and air compressor, etc and fly off in helicopters and set up a diving camp or move into a single Jamesway hut at a remote location. It sounds like there are possibilities to visit Granite Harbor on the Antarctic mainland and also visit a NZ (Kiwi) hut at Cape Bird on Ross Island. It sure sounds fun -- sort of an extreme version of the self-contained Baja diving and camping trips I have taken with Bob Bayer and friends.
I went to a two hour snowmobile training class this morning about snowmobile operation with most of the time spent on troubleshooting problems in the field and repair. When you zoom off on snowmobiles, you take a lot of repair parts along so you aren't stuck out somewhere. I have helicopter training this afternoon.
| November 6 |
The blizzard blew all night and all day. Air temp is 15 deg Fahrenheit above zero, wind speed is still 25-30 mph and wind chill is 25 deg Fahrenheit below zero. It feels kind of warm if you don't turn into the wind. The powder snow blowing about is drifting up everywhere and we will have to dig out Spryte snow cats when the storm lets up so we can drive off and go diving,
Norb wants to go to Cape Royds on the northwestern edge of Ross Island many miles away. At Cape Royds there is a penguin rookery and the sea ice edge. Norb wants to get shots of penguins diving into the ocean and swimming about. He has a pole mounted underwater video camera so he can watch and see and then remotely trigger the shutter release on an underwater still camera. He is also talking about snorkeling for shots and maybe using a small 30 cubic foot pony tank to get shots. So this should prove to be my first look at penguins on Saturday.
Since we couldn't dive today due to the blizzard, Dale and I spent the whole day on trip planning. The station here has two story warehouses where you can sign out for winter mountaineering gear and camping gear and food. It is like a fully stocked outdoor store for Antarctica. Since Norb plans three multiday field camps, there is a lot of food and details. Everything has to be inventoried and weighed so that the helicopter pilot can load the helicopter appropriately. Ice axes, winter mountaineering tents, ice screws for tent pegs (since we have to set up tents on sea ice), sleeping bags (long one for Peter please), fleece sleeping bag liners, ensolite pad, therma rest pad, MSR whisperlight stoves, water jugs, emergency dehydrated food, shovels, toilet tank, pee bottles if you have to pee at night so you don't have to get out of your sleeping bag (hey, it's cold here; you'd do it too if it was you, believe me, you don't want to get out of that warm sleeping bag until you absolutely have to), ice saws to saw snow into blocks to build wind sheltering walls for the tents, scuba diving gear, scuba diving tanks, air compressor for filling scuba tanks, full load of cold weather clothing issued to each of us in New Zealand, ice drill used to drill anchors in the sea ice for tent guidelines and check for ice thickness etc, sledge hammer, on and on and on. Everything inventoried and weighed. Food shopping took some time since this is camping by committee. Each of us has personal food preferences and dislikes. A common dislike is pea soup.
The weather station here says the blizzard will let off tonight or early tomorrow (but they said that yesterday). At least I got my first two dives in and we do need some days to arrange the logistics for our field camps. So our time is being well spent.
| November 7 |
We went diving today to Turtle Rock, the location of my first Antarctic dive. Turtle Rock is a large rock offshore of Ross Island (McMurdo is on the south end of Ross Island). Sea ice cracks and forms pressure ridges around islands so Weddell seals hang about since they have access to the water. On the drive north along the frozen ocean to Turtle Rock (it really is convenient driving along the ocean to get to places along the coastline), we spotted two Adelie penguins moving in close formation south toward McMurdo. Since we were about 18 miles south of the ice edge where penguins live, it was rather surprising to see two penguins on such a dedicated journey far away from where they usually live. This may well have been survival of the fittest in action; however they move along pretty fast so they could get back if they turn around at some point. They were walking and tobogganing. To toboggan, a penguin lays on its stomach and paddles its short wings along just like it is swimming. They move pretty quick this way. It looked very incongruous to see them in the middle of nowhere with miles of unbroken sea ice around. They walked and tobogganed right through the middle of the sea ice training center: one hut and an outhouse. I got a shot or two of a penguin standing right in front of the outhouse like it was waiting to go inside. Then they went right through the middle of a small group of people totally unconcerned at the presence of humans. I heard at dinner time that those two penguins trucked right through the sea ice runway with its huge cargo jets, cargo trucks, and people running around. That would have been a good shot.
At Turtle Rock, I did a 42 minute dive to a max depth of 119 feet. At 115 feet there was a fairly large crinoid, a feathery echinoderm related to sea stars, attached to a sponge. This was a rare sighting since crinoids are deeper water organisms in Antarctica though they are seen across McMurdo Sound at New Harbor on the Antarctic mainland (which is known for having deep water species in shallower depths). The Turtle Rock terrain was pretty flat down to 25 feet and then a relatively steep slope down to whatever; I only went to 119 feet and was happy to turn around and head for shallower water due to a measure of nitrogen narcosis. The sloping bottom was covered with sponges of various colors, polychete worms with long thin spines, brachiopods, buried geoduck-type clams showing only their siphon pairs (exquisite green coloration against the black volcanic gravel), sea spiders (pycnogonids), urchins, small red sea stars, an occasional huge white sea star, and some blenny-type fish. On the flat shallower part, I was close under the six foot or thicker sea ice. One can look up and see the different color streak of a sea ice crack and see occasional holes of light which are the holes maintained by the Weddell seals to breathe and haul in/out. I watched a seal swim up to a hole, hang out and breathe for quite awhile. The sea ice is fairly flat over the deeper water; over the shallower water, the sea ice is highly irregular underneath. The seafloor in shallow water is covered with the clear crystalline anchor ice plates about the size of teacup saucers but all jumbled around. The ocean is starting to freeze and starts forming anchor ice on something on the bottom. As the anchor ice plates grow and increase in areal extent, they become buoyant enough to break free of whatever they are anchored on and they float up to the sea ice. So the sea ice is highly mounded underneath with fat stalactites poking down. The sea ice undersurface is crystalline too so there is a crystal cathedral effect on the sea floor and sea ice ceiling as one wanders though passages and chambers. Some stalactites are actually supercooled brine tunnels extending down to the sea floor and it looks like a rough pipe of ice sticking down from the sea ice ceiling to the sea floor. I watched the seals for awhile and poked around. My hands started feeling cold at forty minutes mostly because I need to remember to shift warm air from the body of my drysuit through the little air tubes I have inserted under my drysuit sleeve seals to let air get into my dry gloves. I must remember to do that next time. I drove the Spryte snowcat back to McMurdo which was fun.
What I am describing in these dives is pretty much what I see the scientific diving groups do except they gather animal specimens or do other work in addition to looking around. We have shared dive huts and ice holes with them. The support workers here at McMurdo have a slang name for the scientists: beakers or beaks. Even if you are a scientist who doesn't use beakers, you would be generically called a beaker.
| November 8 |
We had a long and fun day. In the morning we went to do a scuba dive at Arrival Heights which is just north of McMurdo. The dive hole is located over 110 feet of water so when I dropped down through the 6 foot ice hole shaft, it was like dropping down into a huge immense room with the bottom far below. As I descended the bottom always appeared visually close yet it wasn't. The underwater visibility is so clear that it is deceiving. When I reached 60 feet and descending on the hanging drop line, it looked like the bottom was 20 feet away. Nope. Down and down I went. When I hit bottom I adjusted the buoyancy of my drysuit again and took a visual survey of where I was. My task was to follow Norbert down deeper carrying a second camera that he would take from me. There was allegedly a photogenic sight down deeper that he wanted to see and photograph. At 125 feet I paused to adjust to the nitrogen narcosis and catch my breath from the swim down slope. I continued on and stopped up slope from Norbert. I looked around and up. The sea ice ceiling was fairly flat and had a brownish tinge to its usual blue tonalities. Some algae can function in the lower light level and the brown color was due to that. I could see a fairly straight sea ice crack that was whiter in color. A large single Weddell seal was cruising about the area mostly staying along that sea ice crack. I could see him/her silhouetted. Weddell seals are very vocal underwater and provide an eerie running soundtrack throughout the dive. Their sound can be a chirping or a long eerie tone starting at a high frequency and sliding gradually down to a low frequency. It's wonderful to hear though eerie and a discomforting soundtrack when you are trying to keep your mental act together during a deeper dive. I handed the camera off to Norbert and took off swimming back up slope to shallower water to avoid a decompression obligation and bring back some clarity by reducing my nitrogen level. Since I didn't have an underwater light and was swimming along on a mission, I couldn't stop to look at details. Looking at the bottom, the substrate was black volcanic gravel and due to low light anything white colored popped out to the eye dramatically. It was like swimming through a black light room with white sponges of various shapes arrayed out below me. I saw three very large vase sponges and lots of smaller white branched and encrusting sponges. I saw much more as I ascended the drop line and spent many minutes doing a safety stop at 20 feet. Brownish jelly fish of various sizes were floating through the water under the sea ice. One was six feet long down to the tip of its tentacles. I could see numerous juvenile Trematomus fish just under the sea ice; I think they feed on crustacean swimming/crawling about under the sea ice. The Weddell seal was still in the area singing its songs. I surfaced after a total dive time of 28 minutes; I couldn't stay down much longer because almost all of my air was depleted. Diving at deeper depths really runs through the air quickly.
After lunch Dale and I gathered gear, jerry cans of gas, and a Spryte snowcat. We were all going to Cape Royds which is 20 miles north of McMurdo. We were going to drive with a larger Hagglunds snowcat with trailer in a convoy with another group of people. Off we went but why go to Cape Royds? It is the southernmost breeding rookery of Adelie penguins and also the sea ice edge had extended to there (open ocean) at this time of year. Norbert wanted to get penguin rookery shots and also do some photography above and below water at the sea ice edge. The drive north along the sea ice took two and a half hours and the scenery was spectacular. We had full views of the western coastline of Ross Island, distant views across the flat sea ice of the Ross Sea to the Royal Society Mountains on the Antarctic mainland sixty miles away ( massive, tall range of mountains with glaciers flowing down into the Ross Sea, part of the Trans Antarctic Mountain range), Mt Erebus on Ross Island, Mt Erebus' glaciers sloping down to the sea iced ocean, ice cliffs at the sea edge of glaciers, icebergs that drifted onto the shore and have gone aground becoming surrounded by sea ice, the offshore rocks and islands of Ross Island, Weddell seals laying out on the ice shelf in the open in the middle of nowhere, etc. At one point I spotted a single Adelie penguin tobogganing along north towards Cape Royds. Dr Dale Stokes, the marine ecologist in our group, insisted that it was a trash bag and I insisted that it was a penguin. It was some distance away but I was correct. We are now teasing Dale about the rarely seen Trashbag Penguin, a new species. The penguin was heading to Cape Royds in the same general direction as our Spryte snowcat; when we stopped, the penguin noticed and walked over to take a look at us. He/She was some distance way so we watched as the penguin approached and stood directly in front of our Spryte snowcat about five feet away. I am certain the penguin was trying to figure out what type of penguin we were in our bright red-orange two-tracked Spryte. After the penguin satisfied its curiosity with a long look, it took off towards the shoreline.
We drove north past Barne Glacier (my previous northernmost travel) and went to Backdoor Bay which is on the back side of Cape Royds. We gathered our gear and walked up a snowy hill with black volcanic rocks sticking out. Topping the ridge and looking west, we could see on our left the hut that Shackleton built and used during the 1909 British Antarctic Expedition and further west past a flat area, the low hilly rocky penguin rookery. The rookery was covered with 3600 mated pairs of Adelie penguins, all chattering away, squabbling, pecking in the dirt for pebbles, a lot of commotion. There were maybe six Emperor penguins scattered about in the rookery; I imagine they would gradually come to the conclusion that they were attending the wrong party. There were a few skuas flying about probably trying to scavenge dead animals or something worse; I couldn't see any chicks through the long lens of my camera (no one is allowed to walk through the rookery). It did look like many penguins were sitting on eggs but you couldn't see the eggs of course. The wind was blowing constantly and a refreshing smell of penguin poop was in the air --- INVIGORATING! We could walk on the outskirts of the rookery and be quite close to the penguins at the northern edge. There were some dead penguins and penguin parts lying about and lots of penguin poop. Beyond the penguin rookery hills, there was the sea ice below covering the Ross Sea and to the right (north) the sea ice ended with open water about a mile away. It was great to see open ocean. We could see penguins standing at the sea ice edge and a few traveling back and forth to the rookery. It appeared though that the vast majority of penguins preferred to hang out at the rookery. We staying around a long time viewing, smelling, and taking photos and then decided to have something to eat before hiking to the sea ice edge.
I took a closer look at Shackleton's hut on the way back. For the life of me, I have a hard time visualizing the delight of early Antarctic exploration when I see one of these huts. Seems like a great place for a bunch of sweaty smelly guys to hang out in a small clubhouse atmosphere and bitch about their marriages all winter -- not for me. We didn't have a key to go inside but outside everything was as left. There were food stores in crates stacked outside, crates were falling open and tin cans inside were rusting. One was open and had beans inside. One side of the hut was a horse stable that is now broken down and without its roof. Shackleton used ponies for hauling supplies to depots along the sea ice. At the vehicles, Buck Tilley, the sea ice surveyor, decided the approaching weather dictated that we head back rather than hike out further and get caught out in a blizzard on the drive back. We headed back to McMurdo and arrived there at 1:15 am (a long day).
| November 9 |
The blizzard blew in after we went to sleep last night and we are grounded on station.
Dale and I spent the morning gathering more supplies for our upcoming helicoptered field camping trip and shifted those that can go out ahead of us on flights of opportunity to the helicopter operations hanger. All the helicopters were tucked inside the hanger with their blades removed to weather out the blizzard. The blizzard is doing the usual: air temp is warm at 18 deg Fahrenheit but winds of 30+ mph bring the wind chill down to minus 25 deg F or lower. Visibility is restricted from blowing snow so we couldn't drive off to go diving.
We spent more time on trip-related preparation this afternoon and I had a rare afternoon nap to catch up on lack of sleep from the day before.
| November 10 |
Today was a long one; we got back from the field at 7pm. We went to Turtle Rock again because Norbert wanted to shoot 16mm movie film of the Weddell seals underwater using surface-supplied underwater movie lights. We set up a generator at the edge of a sea ice crack and hooked up his 250 feet of underwater cabling and lights which I personally brought to Antarctica as part of my luggage (actually it was most of my luggage). Norb went down first with his movie camera in its underwater housing; it is pretty heavy to hoist in and out of the water (he calls it the "widowmaker" but it is neutral in water). He swam over from the drop line to the 12-15 foot deep shelf area right under the sea ice cracks where the Weddell seals breathe. The drop line from the dive hut's ice hole hangs down over 55 feet of depth; you go down and head over without dropping to the bottom. I finished gearing up and dropped into the water. I could see him far over there on the shelf and I swam over and picked up the video lights. My task was to stay next to or right above him casting light either on the foreground or up onto a seal. It took some doing because the seals were not too curious about very bright lights and tended to shy off. We did get some great footage of seals nosing up to the ice crack holes and breathing several breaths and then dropping down to swim slowly away. We also got some footage of what it is like to swim under sea ice in shallow water. The bottom was twelve feet deep and the sea ice takes up the top six feet. That leaves six feet of clearance for us plus or minus depending on the mounded nature of the glittery sea ice ceiling. The sea ice is sparkly crystalline in appearance due to the anchor ice plates that form on the bottom and break free floating up to the ceiling. The water is colder than freezing but needs something to nucleate on in order to start forming ice. So a poor sponge or a polychete worm or something ends up being the starting point for ice formation. An ice plate (anchor ice) forms and grows out and additional plates form at tilted angles to the first plate. You see rosettes of ice plates formed on things and sometimes slow moving animals are trapped to death. When the anchor plate mass is buoyant enough, it floats up to the ceiling of the sea ice. It may break up a bit releasing whatever started the nucleation. In this way some animals like sponges are dispersed by a physical process. Carrying the movie lights between film sequences afforded me the best underwater lights for seeing the bottom creatures one could ever hope for. I saw sea spiders, long spined polychete worms the size of two-thirds of a hot dog, a chiton, lots and lots and lots of urchins, brittle sea stars, various species of sea stars, small fish, geoduck-type clam siphons in the black volcanic gravel, sponges, etc. The dominant animal was the sea urchin which differs from the usual. The sponge dominates the underwater landscape in Antarctica and one sees predators on them such as sea stars and nudibranchs. Urchins are detritus feeders and usually not so abundant as at Turtle Rock. Why? As Dr Dale Stokes, the marine ecologist on our dive team, says, it's the fecosystem. The seals poop; I won't characterize the size or color but there is a lot of it. It is a feeding frenzy on the bottom as the invertebrates thrive with this constant food supply. Around the Weddell seal ice holes, urchins are very happy and busy feeding on seal poop detritus; I also saw swarms of amphipods, polychete worms, and sea stars feeding on seal poop. Once this facet of this ecosystem becomes apparent, it was fascinating to swim around looking at the signs of this rich ecosystem. Norbert got the footage needed and I ended my dive after 67 minutes with a max depth of 38 feet. Yes, 67 minutes is quite awhile in 28 degree water even with my drysuit et al. I had to flex my hands regularly to generate some muscle warmth to slow down the chilling of my hands. My torso felt the chill around it but due to extensive diving at depth in San Diego and chilling myself there regularly with friends Bob Bayer and George Spalding, that wasn't so bad. My feet were fine; it seems my hands will be my limiting factor.
The second dive was a fun dive with no work objective. I headed down to 124 feet max and turned a right angle staying at that depth looking for various animals particularly soft coral (which is found deeper). I found them in shades of pink and looking just like pictures of soft coral in the South Pacific. I saw two dorid and one aeolid nudibranch. One of the dorid nudibranchs I saw in profusion on a large boulder. A marine natural products scientist working here who studies defensive chemistry of nudibranchs among other things was unfamiliar with this particular nudibranch as I described it to him this evening. I described its appearance and location to him and he will go diving and retrieve them, grind them up and study their defensive chemistry for possible drugs from the sea. My extensive nudibranch hunting with George Spalding in Scripps Canyon and with Bob Bayer off Point Loma paid off since I was able to describe the nudibranch in sufficient detail and with technical terms. This dive lasted 28 minutes. At 120 feet, I knelt and looked slowly all around and up. I could clearly see the sea ice ceiling stretching out above me toward shallower water up the slope. Down the slope behind me was darkness and deeper water. The sea ice ceiling over deeper water was bluish with a brown caste due to algae. There were softer whitish sea ice cracks running along the ceiling. Light was streaming down from our safety hole which is out in the open and softer light was streaming down from the hole inside our dive hut. Seal breathing holes were also letting light stream down. A seal or two was swimming about far away and up slope from me with their eerie and interesting sounds filling my ears. The slope up was black volcanic gravel dotted with lighter colors of sponges, nemertean worms, urchins, shells, etc. There were a few jellyfish scattered about higher up above me; they were brownish in color. The highly mounded sea ice ceiling on the shallow shelf up slope from me was sparkling with a whitish-blue caste. It was pretty outstanding! The two dives were great and as I drove the Spryte snowcat back to McMurdo for one and a half hours, I was pretty happy from the experience.
| November 11 |
This morning we shagged gear around for our upcoming helicopter flight to the sea ice edge to photograph/film penguins (and other animals if we are lucky). It seems to take an increasing amount of logistical preparation for any work away from McMurdo; however Norbert hopes it will be worth the effort in photographic payoff. We started out in the Spryte snowcat in late morning and drove way out on the sea ice about 6 miles away from Ross Island to photograph the work of some seal researchers. It was a clear sunny day; air temperature was just below freezing and the sunshine was melting snow. It was great to walk around McMurdo in shirts and pants with no long underwear or extra clothing; 30 degree weather feels like a heat wave here. However to travel out into the field we have to wear a few layers of our "extreme cold weather" (called ECW) clothing since we have to take the complete set of ECW clothing along in our ECW bag whenever we leave McMurdo. You never know what might delay your return e.g bad weather, Spryte breakdown, etc. It was great to be out on the frozen white sea ice plain and looking at both shores on either side of use. We could see the full array of islands sticking up here and there. the snow cover drifted over the sea ice looks just like windblown sand which is another aeolian process. There are ripples, striations, and other features etched out with the snow.
I drove us out to a field camp where three scientists plus some research and technical support personnel were encamped. They had a complex of three buildings out in the middle of nowhere on the sea ice. They had weathered winds of up to 85 mph during the recent storms and were no longer sleeping in one of their buildings since it was literally shaking apart so loudly in high winds that they couldn't sleep (they said that building was good up to 60 mph winds). In one of the Jamesway (quonset-like) huts, they had a hole in the sea ice and a Weddell seal using it for breathing. Since they were way out in the middle of the sea ice, the seal was a prisoner of theirs for research since it couldn't swim away to sea ice cracks/holes that were miles away. The seals stick to areas where they can have breathing holes generated from ice cracks; this tends to be near land, capes/points, or islands since the ice sheet is under movement stress near land, capes and islands. So the Weddell seal had to use their breathing hole in the hut. They had a head-mounted video camera and various physiological monitoring instruments mounted on the seal's back along with depth and time instruments. Batteries lasted for six hours and they would have to swap out instrument/battery unit on the seal's back. The seal did not seem bothered by these units on its back and head. There was a fleet of data logging computers running in the hut and they could place a cover over the hole to measure how much oxygen the seal took in and how much carbon dioxide it breathed out. I sat down and watched the seal do several dives and rests between dives. It didn't mind my presence and seemed somewhat curious at times and other times ignored me. The water under the hole went down 1800 feet deep. The seal was an adult weighing over 1000 pounds and maybe 7 feet long. It was wider around than a 55 gallon oil drum by far. A Weddell seal is an impressive animal with a very stout blubbery body to withstand the cold Antarctic conditions. Before it went down for a dive, it would exhale and its body reduced in diameter. They probably need to do this to get down since air-filled lungs would make them very buoyant. It probably also helps them avoid decompression illness and other problems with deep diving. It would be gone for quite awhile like 15-25 minutes. Previously recorded head-mounted videos using infrared light showed it cruising down and about; you really couldn't see much other than the top of its head until it came back up. Then you would see the sea ice ceiling and see the ice hole and the room we were in as the seal surfaced. It wasn't really hunting for food yet having only been doing this for 36 hours; the people there said you would see a fish occasionally. When it surfaced, it would take very deep breaths. Sometimes an exhalation was in my area and Weddell seal breath didn't smell very bad at all.
What was really interesting was that after a few dives, it started hacking something up and then white foamy liquid streamed out of its mouth. The scientists said that this was lung surfactant and that deep diving Weddell seals do this naturally. One scientist said it was similar to what a human would do when out running hard in very cold weather. Interesting, I'll have to read up on this. It looked pretty disgusting actually but the fact that it was lung surfactant made it pretty interesting. If it was seal snot, I wouldn't be so intently interested; I have my limits on observing nature. Norbert Wu has his limits too. When he was shooting with his long telephoto lens camera at the edge of the penguin rookery a few days ago, he had his sunglasses off and the wind blowing straight from the rookery into his face. He came down with an eye infection in the exposed-to-the-wind eye and no infection in the eye looking through the camera viewfinder. Remember I mentioned the strong smell of penguin poop? Well, we are all certain he got some penguin poop flecks in his eye and it got infected. So much for the wild, pristine beauty of Antarctica!
We got back in the Spryte and I drove off. I noticed that there was no oil pressure at the same time I heard the engine making some unusual rattling/knocking sounds. I shut it down. We checked the oil -- no oil. Looked around in the Spryte -- no oil and no funnel/hose to put some into the filler hole. We radioed back to the seal scientists and they had only a pint of motor oil -- not enough. Two of them were leaving for McMurdo in twenty minutes and they offered to give us a ride back. We were lucky since we would not have to wait for someone to come out from McMurdo to pick us up. We left the Spryte out there for the heavy equipment shop to deal with (found out later the Spryte had a cracked block which was why the oil disappeared). After all the survival training and the imperative to take our ECW clothing and camping equipment/food whenever we left McMurdo, it seemed incongruous to realize that there was no survival planning for the vehicles used in the field. No spare oil, no tools, no spare gas, no oil funnel/hose, no critical spare parts like distributor cap and rotor or fuel filter. I have accompanied my friend Bob Bayer on two major Baja scuba diving / camping trips and our vehicles are much better prepared for surprises. Here in Antarctica we are not so well prepared. We have radios to call for help so it isn't so bad and we radio when we leave McMurdo and when we return. So they know who's out there and when someone is astray.
| November 12 |
Today we flew by Astar helicopter to the sea ice edge where the open ocean edges against the ice shelf. Currently the sea ice edge extends roughly from Cape Royds on Ross Island across the McMurdo Sound part of the Ross Sea to Marble Point on the continental mainland. As we flew across the sea ice, I could see the irregular jigsaw of sea ice cracks all jammed-shut on the annual sea ice shelf. Along the cracks I could see the haul-out and breathing holes used by Weddell seals. There were one to four seals typically around a hole; you could see the hole due to the glistening ice sheen around it from the seawater that drips off the seals as they haul out and then freezes. At the sea ice edge, we could see scattered small groups of penguins, both the large Emperor penguin and the smaller Adelie penguin. The Emperor penguins were not afraid of the helicopter but the Adelies scrambled for the water
. We touched down in a promising area with penguins and pods of orca killer whales cruising offshore for penguin lunch. The orcas were as close as thirty feet from the sea ice edge so I got a very good look at them; they were in groups of 4-10 and cruising up and down along the sea ice edge. We were about ten miles from the Antarctic mainland and the vistas were magnificent: snow covered peaks and mountain ranges, glaciers, vast expanses of ocean and sea ice, some ice floes floating away from the sea ice, etc. We moved our gear towards the ice edge and Norbert took various photos. The ocean was choppy making water entry for Norbert problematic and the penguins were not having anything to do with diving into the water due to the orcas patrolling offshore. After a long time, we moved out gear back to the helicopter. A group of 29 Emperor penguins marched up in single and double file honking away as they do and checking out the helicopter. They are curious about people and especially curious about a helicopter. We took photos and observed them up close as they clustered around us and the helicopter. I watched pairs slowly drop their heads down in unison and then raise them back up again. As we lifted off in the helicopter, they were unperturbed by this thundering beast leaving them.
We flew to an area of ice edge with calmer ocean water and no orcas. We moved out gear to the ice edge and a group of eleven Emperor penguins promptly left their location and marched over to visit us. They parked themselves right next to us and watched our equipment preparations avidly. Norbert entered the water with camera and finned back and forth trying to shoot photos of penguins underwater. He got a few but knows better what to do next time. We saw both Adelie and Emperor penguins. The Emperor penguins are very stately birds and very curious. The Adelie penguins are less curious and more skittish and shy away. It was fun having them around for company in the sub-zero wind chill; it was sunny and the air temperature was warm but the wind out in the open was knifing. We saw a white petrel or tern zipping along on a jagged flight path along the ice edge.
We flew back to McMurdo after eight hours in the field. I have now exhausted my must-see checklist: orcas, Emperor penguins, and Adelie penguins. Tomorrow we will be entertaining more penguin visitors at our worksite at the sea ice edge.
| November 13 |
Today we made another helicopter flight out to the sea ice edge of the Ross Sea between Ross Island and the Antarctic continental mainland. We left McMurdo and first flew over the islands offshore Ross Island. The pilot was great but it wouldn't have been fun for someone who gets carsick easily. It was like a Star Wars ride where you sit in front of a screen and everything tilts, swoops, etc. We circled low in tight turns around Inaccessible Island and then lifted quickly up and over its black volcanic ridge. We flew straight towards the 100 foot high ice wall of Barne Glacier and then lifted up quickly so we wouldn't hit it and then into a steeply banked turn. Lots of G-forces, swooping around, tight steep turns, etc. I was in roller coaster heaven.
We cruised along low along the sea ice edge heading towards the mainland and then turned and flew back along the edge towards Ross Island. Again I could see some orca killer whales cruising just off the sea ice looking for penguin brunch but I didn't see as many as yesterday. We could see the penguins in small groupings at the sea ice edge. The Adelie penguins looked like small children running scared for the water when we flew over. The Emperor penguins looked like grownups who weren't going to move just because some damn helicopter was flying overhead. The penguins really did look like people down there running around on two feet.
We set down at a likely spot. I was off to the sea ice edge carrying the first load of gear. A delegation of 21 emperor penguins got up and walked over to greet me. They honked upon arrival and I set my gear down and honked back, flapping my arms with my elbows held to my side to simulate a penguin. They weren't buying it; they moved up real close to see what kind of damn idiot penguin this was and then moved on after a short time. We staged our gear near the edge and then Norbert got into the water to film swimming penguins with the underwater movie camera (the widowmaker since it is a bear to hoist in and out of water, in and out of helicopter, in and out of Spryte, lift, carry, lift, carry, I'm humping a lot of gear down here). Lots of Adelie penguins and the larger Emperor penguins were in the water so we hung around in the subzero wind chill for six hours. Very brisk out there in the open.
A few Emperor penguins popped out of the water right in front of me, quickly registered surprise at me being there, and then hustled right back into the water. I watched penguins diving in and popping out the whole time we were there. Though it happens episodically; they seem to do everything in relative unison. The Adelie penguins are smaller and lighter so they get more air when they pop out. The heavier Emperor penguins just kind of pop out without much height and sometimes they don't make it. They were all swimming around and Norbert shot movie film and still photos. I also watched closely how the penguins scooter along on their stomachs. They push themselves along very quickly with their feet and use their short wings for occasional corrections. To stand back up, they use their beak in conjunction with their feet. We had our lunch in the helicopter and the Emperors all marched over to look at us. They did a promenade around the helicopter honking away while we were inside out of the infernally cold wind eating lunch. Eventually they went back to the ice edge. We finished up the afternoon work and took off in the helicopter while some Emperor penguins stood by our take-off site and watched the helicopter lift off. I think Emperor penguins worship helicopters. Actually there is so little variance out there visually that I would march over for a look too if I were an Emperor penguin.
We then headed over to Ross Island and the helicopter hugged the shoreline of the island as we flew back to McMurdo We had a great flight back like an amusement park ride with G-force turns, quick elevator ups, tilting and swooping, etc. We saw the glacier edges where they flow down off 13000 foot high Mt Erebus and end up as fractured cliff edges at the frozen ocean; we saw them well since they were RIGHT in front of us. We swooped in close and up and over rocky coastal promontories of volcanic rock. There were blue frozen meltwater pools on some headlands, islands had sea ice cracking and pressure ridges, lots of glaciers ending abruptly in ice cliffs where the glacier met the frozen ocean. Pretty spectacular scenery.
I never bothered much with jackets or sweaters in my native Southern Californian lifestyle. It has been interesting trying out a full range of winter mountaineering clothing issued to me for use; you really can stand outside in subzero weather with a strong wind with the right clothes. I can't say I recommend the runny nose that comes with it though.
At night (though sun is fully out of course), we drove a Spryte snowcat out to the Erebus Ice Tongue glacier and went inside its deeply eroded ice crevasse caves down at sea level. This is a popular excursion for McMurdo residents. We parked where the flagged road ended and walked over to the low cliffs of the glacier at the edge of the sea ice. There was a tunnel going inside that we crawled through. Once inside we were in interlinked glacier crevasses with snow bridged roofs. The sights were spectacular and the sun was fully out giving pleasing white and bluish tones to the light filtering through the snow roofs of the glacier crevasses. You could go from one crevasse chamber to another by following narrow slots or close tunnels stepping up and down and crawling about. The ceilings were spectacular in several of the larger chambers. They were like Gothic rose windows made of ice with icicles hanging down like stalactites and the icicles were covered with feathery dendritic ice crystals. Upper walls and ceilings all looked feathery, branching and delicate with lots of stalactites. Very spectacular. We took photos for quite awhile and then crawled out into the nighttime sun and arrived back at McMurdo very late.
| November 14 |
Went scuba diving today at Little Razorback Island and did two dives (124 feet max for 42 min and 97 feet max for 38 min). Little Razorback is an island offshore of Ross Island just south of Cape Evans. It is a knife-like volcanic ridge island and nearby is a larger island just like it. There are tidal sea ice cracks around Little Razorback Island that the Weddell seals lay around and use for access to the water. There were several mother-baby pairs about; the babies were large and there was a weaned baby laying around too. The hole in the dive hut dropped down into 55 feet of crystal clear water. Light was good because the snow had been removed from the surface of the sea ice for some distance around the dive hut for someone's experiment I guess.
My mission was to take one of Norbert's cameras down and place it on the ten foot deep shallows for Norbert to pick up later. I was then to follow him down to 120ish feet to pick up and carry one of the two cameras he was taking himself in order to lighten his load. The bottom topography was stunning. There was a ten foot deep very wide shelf that extended toward the shore of the island until the sea ice laid on top of it and you could swim no more. At the ten foot deep end you had 4 feet of clearance between the bottom gravel and the sea ice ceiling. At the break of this wide shelf, the bottom dropped steeply with some vertical cliffs and the slope dropped down to God knows what depth. I dropped off the camera on the shelf and went down.
There was a profusion of urchins with attached algae in shallower depths and as I went down there was too much to look at. There were gigantic orange sea stars and large white sea stars. There were featherduster worms with white plumage on top of tall stalks maybe eight inches tall. There were lots of littler sea stars, pinkish soft corals, sponges of various colors, orangish sea spiders, white lacy dorid nudibranchs, lacy bryozoans very similar in appearance to those I see off Point Loma, very long nemertean worms looking like deflated bicycle inner tubes in colors like purplish or orangish, and lots more than I can remember.
I met up with Norbert and took the second camera and followed. He snapped shots and we swam over to a cliff section at the base of which were three immense vase sponges clustered together with the largest being four feet tall. We then went up to the shallow shelf so that Norbert could photograph seals at their breathing holes. There were indeed a few seals scooting about. We went slowly in through the low overhead taking care to keep ourselves just off the bottom yet not grinding the top of our scuba tank into the sea ice ceiling. Occasionally you do grind at the soft sea ice ceiling a bit since clearance was close -- maybe ten inches above and ten inches below. It helped to be expert at adjusting your buoyancy so you wouldn't plaster yourself against the ceiling or weight yourself against the bottom. I did well and scooted along mostly by grabbing hold of rocks and pulling myself along.
We approached a tidal sea ice crack near the shoreline of the island. The sea ice tented up towards the crack which let in light. It was like you entered a room suddenly after passing through a long horizontal tunnel. There was a seal floating up at the top of the crack taking some breaths. We had seen a few seals scooting about through the horizontal tunnel area which was very broad; the seals were obviously in transit from the sea ice crack to deeper water to feed. We continued on and went through some close clearance areas that opened out into other tented rooms with openings to the surface. When my air was running low, I left Norbert and exited the narrow shelf area; don't want to run out of air in there! In more open water (yet always under a sea ice ceiling of course), I watched two Weddell seals sport about, twisting and turning around each other. Then I got out to warm up.
On my second dive, my task was to carry the underwater movie lights down slope so that Norbert could film the bottom scenery. The lights were excellent for looking at the bottom life as I made my way down. I held them up for lighting as Norbert filmed various sights. Then we were done filming and I was excused to return the lights to the dive hole and then burn off the rest of my air sightseeing in this wonderful place. I saw lots more of the same as mentioned above including a ctenophore (a jelly-like animal) and a pteropod (a winged swimming mollusc). There was a lot to look at but I only saw one seal on this dive; I guess it was afternoon siesta time.
| November 15 |
We went for an early evening dive to an open dive hole (no dive hut) located just south of McMurdo and known informally as Dayton's Wall (after Paul Dayton of SIO). This was my first time diving in the open sans hut and I will be doing this for five days starting tomorrow. It is very different than suiting up in the warm comfort of a dive hut. There's you, a dive hole in the sea ice in the open wind, and some momentarily exposed skin areas screaming to get out of the wind and the cold. I learned that I need to more carefully manage my transition from clothing to dive gear particularly for my head and hands; you don't want to start out a dive here with slightly chilled hands.
The wind was blowing as usual so it was very nippy -- the usual zero-ish wind chill. My task was to take topside pictures of Norbert and Dale getting ready to dive and getting into the hole and then I was to follow along with one of Norbert's cameras and join up with him for camera handoffs as needed. Since I entered the water later than them, I didn't see the wall since they had moved off by the time I joined up. Doesn't matter much - it was still an interesting 29 minutes at max depth of 80 feet. The hole in the ice was over 60 feet of water and I dropped down from sunlight to relative darkness. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dim light under the sea ice and while I was waiting I was worried I wouldn't be able to see much. If you wait a while you really can adjust to the low light and see fairly well.
I finally spotted Norbert down slope and joined up, handing cameras back and forth as needed as he moved about. The area that I saw was basically a fairly steep slope starting down from a shelf at 15 feet. The bottom is the usual black volcanic gravel. I saw lots of big yellowish anemones, whitish finger-like sponges, lots of other sponges in various colors, pinkish soft corals, a dragonfish which has a very pointed snout, some nudibranchs, and lots of the usual Antarctic benthic life I have reported previously like featherduster worms, nemertean worms (nothing eats these fellows I think; they just lay about in profusion out in the open), etc. There were a few jellyfish moving about up in the water column. I went over to look at a big piece of anchor ice that had formed a large enough aggregation of crystalline ice plates to become buoyant enough to lift off the bottom like a crystalline airship. It was still borderline buoyant and not floating up much at all; it hovered well of the bottom with a few gravel rocks trapped within the anchor ice plates. The sea ice ceiling was a lovely dark blue color with a brownish tint from algae in some areas.
What was really a spectacular sight was seeing Norbert stopped at the 20 foot depth (making a safety stop before exiting) right under the ice hole when I was quite some distance away. He was spot lit from the daylight coming down through the ice hole and around him it was pitch black clear sea water with a dark blue sea ice ceiling. A great visual effect like he was suspended in space.
| November 16 |
This morning we packed up the bulk of our gear for our upcoming field camping trip to Couloir Cliffs in the Granite Harbor area and took it to the helicopter operations center.
This afternoon we went to Cape Evans to see Scott's hut which I had previously visited sans Norbert. Norbert wanted to get pictures inside Scott's hut so off we went. This hut was taken south on the the ship Terra Nova by Captain RF Scott RN for the British Antarctic Expedition of 1910-1913. It is the largest historic building in Antarctica. When Scott's party departed from Cape Evans after Scott's fatal trek to the South Pole, they left a large quantity of provisions, equipment and clothing behind. These came to be vitally important to the ten men of Shackleton's Ross Sea party marooned there in 1915 when their ship Aurora was blown out to sea. Two of Aurora's anchors remain embedded on the beach next to Scott's hut.
In addition to what I described previously, they had tins of ox tongue, lunch tongue, chutney, curry powder, rhubarb, digestive biscuits, etc. I saw Heinz ketchup bottles that looked pretty much like we see now. There were tins of Colman's mustard that look the same as now. There is a bench were the marine biologist worked, a small table used by the meteorologist, a chemistry lab, medicinals on a shelf including thyroid extracts, boxes of eggs (penguins?), round metal containers labeled Dutch cheese (I presumed these were Gouda chess balls encased in tin balls), etc. The upper ranked men had their own mess table and slept on one side of the room. The lower ranked men slept on the other side with the kitchen and the door to the outer shed surrounding two sides of the hut. The outer shed had a rusted dissembled bicycle, the afore-mentioned seal blubber slabs, wooden skis, picks, shovels, the horse stables with each horse's name painted opposite each stall, etc. It is like taking a step back into time going into the hut and the most interesting things are the foodstuffs (my vote for most revolting is that stack of blubber slabs -- it certainly lends an "atmosphere" to the outer shed).
Tomorrow morning we helicopter off with our gear in a sling load under the helicopter and fly to Couloir Cliffs south of Granite Harbor on the Antarctic mainland. I will be camping for four nights and you won't hear from me for awhile obviously. This should prove to be an interesting experience.
| November 17 |
This day commmenced a four night camping trip to the Granite Harbor area of the Antarctic mainland northwest of McMurdo Station on Ross Island. After a Labor Day backpacking trip in the high country of Yosemite with Kathy, my friend Calvin, and two others turned into a twelve day snow camping and survival experience, I vowed never again to do snow camping or turn vacations into adventures. So I broke my snow camping vow in Antarctica; at least I did it in grand fashion.
We helicoptered with our gear to the Granite Harbor area on the Antarctic mainland about eighty miles NW of McMurdo Island. We crossed over the northwestern part of the Ross Ice shelf, the largest ice shelf in the world and about the size of France. From the air we saw icebergs that had floated into shore and run aground and then had become entrapped by the annual sea ice. Some of the grounded icebergs were surrounded by sea ice cracks and had numerous Weddell seals and pups around them. Many of the larger sea ice cracks we saw from the air had Weddell seals strung out along them at irregular intervals. At the sea ice edge, it was breaking up here and there into ice floes. We landed at Couloir Cliffs on the southern part of the bay encompassing Granite Harbor on the north, Mackay Glacier in the middle and Couloir Cliffs in the south. The Mackay Glacier is a broad glacier running down to the ocean from the Antarctic highlands. Mackay Glacier is surrounded by high coastal cliffs of granite sometimes topped with volcanic rock and by coastal peaks of 1000-2000 feet height. We joined up with another diving oriented research group and shared a common campsite and facilities next to a long sea ice crack. There was a Jamesway (small quonset-like) hut for cooking, eating, storing dive gear, and filling scuba tanks with a compressor. The outhouse was a Scott tent and I'll say no more about that. We slept in two man tents nearby that we anchored down to the sea ice with ice screws. We were about thirty yards offshore from Couloir Cliffs and it was like camping on a big ice cube. We used snowmobiles to transport ourselves and dive gear; one snowmobile had a wooden sled with Teflon runners. Dive holes were widened out with hand tools from sea ice cracks.
My first dive was near camp and was 74 feet for 29 min. I was tasked to be a model for wide angle photography of a diver swimming below a sea ice crack lit up by the light streaming down through the crack. I am not a great scuba diving model. I don't fin kick aesthetically so I have to correct that while posing and I am slow on the uptake at understanding Norbert's underwater hand signals. The sea floor sloped down steeply from shore and several jellyfish went by. I watched a Weddell seal breathing at the sea ice crack. The overall scenery underwater was magnificent because it was well-lit; there was no snow on the sea ice so a lot of light was coming down. The sea ice ceiling tents up at the sea ice crack and looks like a brightly lit jagged line running along the sea ice ceiling as far as one can see (which is very far). A shaft of sunlight dropped down to the bottom from the dive hole. I tended on another dive and watched topside as skuas picked at a seal pup carcass and fought tug-of-war over scraps.
| November 18 |
I did a dive along Couloir Cliffs for 130 feet 29 minutes. I was tasked to carry an extra camera and hand it back and forth as needed for macro photography. The bottom life was much better deeper than shallower. I saw: whip-like soft coral with short white sea cucumbers perched on the whip ends; sea spiders (Antarctica has the largest sea spiders in the world; they can be as large in span as a Frisbee); brittle stars; sea urchins with algae that they stick on top like top hats (for chemical defense I hear); various sea stars in purple, red, white colors; gray free-swimming scallops; white dorid nudibranchs with frilly edges; lacy bryozoan clumps; small fish of two kinds; ctenophores (comb jellies) like Beryoe; lots of sponges in various colors; some big volcano sponges down deep; pink and white soft coral. The sea ice ceiling had hollow brine tube stalactites hanging down. Underwater visibility was great and there was a jagged sea ice crack running along the sea ice ceiling.
A second dive was at Discovery Bluff, a rocky promontory immediately south of Mackay Glacier. There were many Weddell seals along the tidal cracks at the base of this point and many, many pups bellowing for their mothers. I heard a thunderous avalanche come down some distance away; it was on a steep slope inland from the appropriately named Avalanche Bay ! This second dive was 120 feet for 46 minutes. It was a granite bouldered bottom dropping steeply with a shallow shelf at twenty feet running toward shore. There were big white volcano sponges, urchins, white aeolid and dorid nudibranchs, sea spiders, sea cucumbers, sponges, and seals cruising the area continually and up at the cracks. From below, I watched a seal mother and pup laying about at a crack. A large male seal cruised right up to Norbert making barking noises underwater; this was almost certainly an aggressive display and something we watch out for. Weddell seals when aggressive will bite between another seal's hind flippers, a sensitive area on a seal. On a human diver, aggressive Weddell seals have been known to bite between the flippers too --- the diver's crotch. As you might imagine, this factoid does cross the mind when around male Weddell seals underwater. When we went to bed, it was snowing lightly.
| November 19 |
We returned to the second Couloir Cliff dive site, deciding that it was the best. I did a 42 foot dive for 39 hellish minutes being a model for Norbert's wide-angle photography, swimming back-and-forth, back-and-forth in the light streaming down from a sea ice crack. You don't get to see much other than the larger view but I did see ctenophores (comb jellies) and purple and red pteropods (winged free-swimming molluscs). Topside, I watched how a skua would fly low and follow a sea ice crack, scouting for whatever it might find to eat along the crack. There was a seal pup and mother at a sea ice crack. The pup was calling for its mother who was underwater at the time. The mother would stick her head out and call back. The pup inched over to the crack and touched noses with mom and slide into the water gracelessly right on top of mom.
Later I did another dive at this second Couloir Cliff dive site for 30 minutes at 113 feet. The sea ice crack runs to shore into tidal cracks and pushed-up pressure-ridge ice blocks. Underwater the scenery is amazing. The ceiling is a tented-up pressure ridge ceiling of sea ice blocks covered with a crystalline ice surface. The bottom is only fifteen feet deep and covered with crystalline anchor ice clumps. The bottom ran straight into a vertical shoreline rock wall covered with frozen water that had streamed down as meltwater from the snow-covered granite rock cliffs above. This underwater shoreline rock wall looked like a crystalline underwater waterfall with deep blue ice coloration over the rocks. The water had melted above, trickled down and then frozen as it flowed down under the sea ice. This frozen water coats the fifteen foot vertical or near vertical drop. The whole place for some distance along the shore looked like a crystalline cathedral with some crystalline brine tube stalactites thrown in for added effect. It was magical swimming slowly along and watching the play of light across these structures as the light came down from the tidal cracks above. In one spot along the frozen wall, I saw a long nemertean worm frozen in place; it had obviously been crawling along when a fresh batch of meltwater streamed down over it and froze it in place.
Down deeper, the benthic life was more interesting with urchins, brittle stars, sea spiders, nudibranchs, soft coral, anemones, large white volcano sponges, a huge brown knobby-surfaced volcano sponge, and various sea stars.
| November 20 |
We snowmobiled across the bay to the other side; you have to go forward in a zig-zag manner to maneuver around larger sea ice cracks. I tended this dive at the base of high granite cliffs topped with volcanic rock layer. Though one misses a dive while tending one's fellow dives by helping them gear up, pass cameras, assist in getting out of the water, etc, you do get a grand opportunity to sit in silence while they are underwater and enjoy the magnificent scenery. This truly felt like the middle of nowhere. You get where you think you are in the middle of nowhere in the western US and you see jet contrails overhead; here no contrails, no nothing, just you and some bellowing seal pups.
Later we went back to the better Couloir Cliffs dive site where I did a 62 minute dive for 54 feet max depth. Norbert wanted me to stay perfectly still in place against the frozen ice wall for a multisecond tripod exposure. I move up and down slightly with normal breathing so Norbert swam over and hit my drysuit air inflator button thereby filling my suit so full with air that I was buoyantly plastered almost immobile against the sea ice ceiling. He had a mirthful look in his face as he did this. Now I was the perfectly still model he needed and he did several shots; I stuck my arms and lower legs down a bit so it wouldn't look like I was unnaturally flattened against the ceiling. It gets very cold staying perfectly still for multisecond shot after shot; my fingers got pretty numb. After Norbert got the shots he needed I was released to cruise around on my own and sight-see. There were six to seven foot long brine tube stalactites hanging down along the chambered shoreline with anchor iced bottom, ice wall, and sea ice ceiling as previously described. A seal cruised through the area and I saw ctenophores (comb jellies) and the usual bottom critters.
| November 21 |
I decided to pay heed to my slight head cold of the day before and take a day off diving to get better. I tended while Norbert and Dale did more diving at the better Couloir Cliffs dive site. Dale had a whole dive of swimming back and forth, back and forth, back and forth in the light shining down from the sea ice crack. It was a bright sunny day and perfect for the wide angle shot of a diver illuminated underwater from God's beams streaming down from a sea ice crack.
I felt like this was a perfect day to sit out if one had to get over a slight cold. The air temperature was right at freezing and with the sunlight, the sea ice cracks in the area were thawing and opening up a bit. There were seals laying about and totally enjoying their sunbaths.
We returned by helicopter to McMurdo.
| November 22 |
Today we did some running around in preparation for an upcoming field camping trip to Cape Bird starting in two days.
In the afternoon, we did a dive at the Dayton's Wall area of Cape Armitage just south of McMurdo. I did a 130 foot dive for 29 minutes. I saw a crinoid perched on the edge of a three foot high white volcano sponge. I saw: sea spiders; two big yellow anemones doing tug-of-war eating of a big conical jelly fish; another anemone eating a big jellyfish; yellow banana-like sponges in clumps with long spines;white banana sponges in clumps; brittle stars; a jelly fish over six feet long way up in the water; several jellyfish and many small ctenophores. A Weddell seal was audibly nearby but unseen and it added its eerie soundtrack to my dive.
| November 23 |
Today we drove out along the ice shelf to Little Razorback Island for a dive. Some sea ice cracks were opening up en route on the main flagged road marked out offshore on the ice shelf used by every field party to traverse along the western shore of Ross Island. The continued sunshine is really loosening the ice up; one crack we crossed was about 1 1/2 feet wide and it went straight down. A bit spooky to drive across these. At the Island, I did a 130 foot dive for 39 minutes. I described the Little Razorback Island dive site before and got a better look at it deeper in this return visit. The steep rocky hillside underwater has gullies, rock outcroppings, and vertical wall sections. This makes for splendid invertebrate habitat and this dive site is my favorite for invertebrate sightseeing of the places I have been diving. There are large white volcano sponges down deep and they appear like ghostly apparitions as one looks down the dark steep slope or into gullies. I saw a white dorid nudibranch perched up on a foot long feather duster worm tube just below the feather duster feeding apparatus. There were plenty of the usual: sea spiders, sponges, nudibranchs, hydroids, soft coral, a fish perched on a yellow sponge, white sponges in big clumps that looked like moose antlers. The wall sections were especially colorful since the organisms stood out so clearly. When it was time to leave the depths, I looked at the siphonophores floating about at twenty foot depth below the sea ice. They looked like a vienna sausage with a long tail; the tail had fine strands sticking out from it. When the siphonphores sensed my nearby presence, they retracted the tail strands, shortened up their tail section, and started jetting water to move away. I could cruise up to one and it would be fully arrayed and motionless, just fishing away; after a few seconds, some water current from me or something would alert it and it would start the flight reaction. There were also ctenophores in the water column and small medusa (jellyfish). These transparent jelly animals are one of my favorite things to see while diving and these Antarctic waters are full of them. They can be very hard to see until you catch the light just right on them and realize there is an animal there.
Tomorrow morning we shift our field camping gear and food to the helicopter operations area and fly off in the afternoon to Cape Bird, the northwestern point of Ross Island. There is an Adelie penguin rookery there and supposedly leopard seals cruising for penguin brunch. The sea ice does not extend so far north on Ross Island so we will see rocky coastline and open ocean. Norbert wants to get in the water and photograph the leopard seals and penguins swimming about. Our dive operation is scaled back in consideration of our impact on the small New Zealand field camp we will be visiting. Only Norbert will be diving. Actually he will be snorkeling around a lot to find subjects to film and then using the scuba tank on his back for short excursions underwater to film. Dale will be bringing his dive gear for snorkeling in order to be a safety person in the water if needed. I will be hauling gear, handing cameras back and forth to Norbert, setting up Norbert's scuba rigs, etc. This will be a six night field camp so you won't hear from me for awhile. Since the air temperature at McMurdo here has been staying around freezing, the sunshine has been melting snow around McMurdo in a hurry. McMurdo looks mostly like volcanic gavel and mud holes now; some call it McMudhole when it is like this. Its more common nickname is Mactown.
| November 24 |
Weather came in and our afternoon helicopter flight to Cape Bird was canceled (all flights were canceled). The air temperature got colder and light, big fluffy snowflakes started falling. McMurdo is now white again though only a thin coating.
Dale and I decided to go for a dive at Cape Armitage nearby in the late afternoon (I win either way: camping trip or local dive). I did a 106 foot dive for 29 minutes and it was great: no camera gear, no camera cases to load, just sight-seeing. I saw the usual critters and headed into an area with rock outcroppings and big fields of white bushy hydroids. It looked just like that: a field of white bushes underwater. I saw a big anemone choking down a large jellyfish. One animal I saw in abundance were large dark brown stalked tunicates (ascidians) as big as footballs. I went up shallow where the sea ice ceiling ran into the seashore and headed towards a large thin hollow brine tube stalactite I saw. It was over six feet long and reached down to the seafloor (which was just under seven feet below the sea ice ceiling. Where the brine tube touched the seafloor the supercooled brine branched and flowed downhill in two iced-over small streams on the seafloor.
On the way back up and over to the ice hole, I noted a large number of juvenile fish hanging about just below the sea ice ceiling where they feed and find refuge. In the water column there were several jellyfish floating about; one had bright white spots on its clear bell. I also saw small medusa and several of those tailed siphonophores. It was a fun dive. We will see what the weather allows us for tomorrow.
| November 25 |
Did a six night stay at Cape Bird on the northern end of Ross Island (McMurdo is at the south end of Ross Island about 45 miles away). Cape Bird has a New Zealand research hut and is the location of a large Adelie penguin rookery. We helicoptered in the morning but turned back due to low clouds; a second evening flight was successful. The sea ice shelf ends currently at Cape Royds (about midway up Ross Island) and there were ice floes and old icebergs along the Ross Island shoreline towards Cape Bird. After we landed, I was surprised to see the inside of the Cape Bird hut and realize that my expectation of field camping was radically wrong. This large hut was a short but steep hike up a hillside from the iced-up beach, had a great view of the coastline, and was very comfortable -- two bedrooms with bunk beds, a large dining/cooking/lounging room, a hut heater, a dry lab room, food pantry, and a storage room. Even had an outhouse with a killer view of the penguinated coastline. Absolutely palatial considering we were once again out in the middle of nowhere. The Cape Bird hut is located at the northern penguin rookery comprising 60,000 penguins. Sixty thousand Adelie penguins -- the cacophony, the overwhelming smell, the countless numbers of penguins everywhere -- made for a total immersion experience for six nights. I previously described visiting the Adelie penguin rookery at Cape Royds which has 1,500 penguins; it paled in comparison to seeing sixty thousand Adelie penguins.
First off, let's get the smell out of the way -- yes, it smelled constantly and strongly of penguin poop with its fragrant and complex bouquet. Diaper experience is adequate preparation.
In the rookery area, the Adelie penguins build nests on ridges or raised areas of ground. They construct their nests of small rocks. The ground around the nests and in the open areas immediately around the raised nesting areas is solid penguin poop, penguin feathers, and dead penguins or penguin parts. Generation after generation of penguins have lived here. The ground is built up of many layers of penguin poop, feathers, and penguins but mostly penguin poop. There are dead penguins, adults and chicks, everywhere in various stages of decomposition. They are freeze-dried and so the carcasses can be quite old. Some carcasses are embedded in the ground and slightly raised out with their bones showing like fossils.
Adelie penguins are cute and engaging. After several days of observation, I realized that Adelie penguins are tough birds and they can kick butt anytime, anywhere. They fight other Adelie penguins and predatory skuas by striking with their beaks or bashing with their flippers. A flipper bash makes a very loud thud when landed on another penguin; the two penguin researchers in residence with whom we stayed said it could break your finger. When we arrived, the Adelie penguins were laying on their bellies incubating one or two eggs (usually two). The male and female Adelie penguin take turns incubating while the other feeds. The Adelie penguin has a brood pouch at the bottom of their belly in which the eggs (and later, the chicks) tuck in. There is a constant stream of penguins leaving and entering the penguin rookery on their way to or from the ocean. The eggs incubate for a month and the very first chicks were expected a week after we left. In addition to laying around incubating eggs, the Adelie penguins would stand up, stretch and shift their egg around a bit. A male standing next to his nest mate would do ecstatic calls which are loud shrieking calls proclaiming the nest territory. There was a lot of ecstatic calling going on as well as mated pairs proclaiming their bond or something; the rookery was a noisy place. The Adelie penguin partner not incubating and not feeding would spend time getting more rocks either from the area surrounding the rookery subgroup or from another penguin's nest. There is a lot of rock stealing going on. Adelie penguins get away with rock stealing when it is behind the nesting penguin's back and MAJOR squabbles erupt when rock thievery is noticed by the nesting penguin. Rocks are the major currency of the penguin rookery and a lot of Adelie penguin time is spent in gathering rocks. Major squabbles break out between non-incubating penguins on occasion and mad chases ensue with one penguin chasing another throughout the rookery and almost every penguin along the way throws in a peck or two. It looked like running the penguin gauntlet.
I spent a lot of time sitting around on the edge of various rookery subgroups watching the action. Mating was largely finished by the time we visited and I saw penguins mating a few times only. One rookery subgroup had a light brown colored Adelie penguin, a rare color variation called an leucistic penguin (not an albino). The penguin researchers said that they had spotted another in the rookery elsewhere. It snowed one day and the dusting snowfall and colder temperature seemed to quiet down the penguin rookery. A few Emperor penguins wandered into the shoreline area on one day but this was definitely Adelie penguin country. We saw snow petrels flying along the shore a lot on our last day; they must have been fishing. We even saw one Weddell seal on one day, hauled out on an ice floe.
The area of Cape Bird with the northern penguin rookery had volcanic rock cliffs and steep slopes topped by the Bird Icecap. Meltwater from the Icecap trickled down in small streams on warmer days. There was an ice waterfall along the cliff at one spot with long icicles making up the waterfall. The shoreline ended on the north where the Bird Icecap was a 100 foot blue ice cliff next to the ocean; from the top of this blue ice cliff, huge long icicles hung down. The beach along the shore was edged by old stacks of pack ice pushed up into pressure ridges. The volcanic beach dirt was blown and tracked all over this rugged iced shoreline making it look like a miniature Alps for penguins. The penguins tracked all over it and were quite agile climbers.
Down at water's edge, there are penguins standing around in groups waiting for the right moment to jump in, penguins walking in long lines looking for the right spot to jump in, penguins jumping out of the ocean and standing about, and penguins swimming and porpoising in the water. Penguins are very particular about where and when they will go in the water. I watched long lines of penguins march way, way down the shoreline looking for the "right" spot while passing up many such spots already in use by other penguins. Penguins are followers and do everything in groups so it takes something special for them to choose a spot to jump in and the time to jump in. In both cases, seeing a lot of other penguins doing the action in question will help make up a penguin's mind.
I spent considerable time sitting still at a point regularly used by penguins to jump in the water. If you sit still, the Adelie penguins don't mind that you are there; fifty to eight penguins would crowd around in front of me waiting to jump in. So what does it take for them to jump in? They watch the water and when a large group of penguins comes swimming into their immediate area, the Adelie penguins start getting very vocal. They start jostling, jockeying for position, squabbles break out, beaks peck back and forth, some flipper bashing back and forth, lots more loud discussion, more jostling, more pecking, and finally the braver ones will jump in followed by an immediate chain reaction of everyone rushing to jump in the pool all at the same time, no waiting, every person for themselves. Of course this isn't good enough for some timid ones who hesitate a bit and then decide the time isn't just right for them and stay back.
It was a blast to watch this right behind the penguins; they were close enough to touch (but I didn't reach out since Nature is not a petting zoo). If I could anthropomorphize them and then translate into words my impression of a penguin group's verbal and bodily behavior while they mill around before diving into the water, it would go like this:
HEY, HERE COMES SOME PENGUINS -- Looks like a lot of them -- Do you think we should go in? -- NO, LET'S WAIT FOR MORE PENGUINS -- Hey, I think that's enough penguins; let's go in -- I'M NOT GOING IN -- Stop pushing (peck) -- I DIDN'T PUSH; HE DID (peck back and peck at another penguin) -- I didn't push; don't peck me (flipper bashing) -- Hey, I'm going to move over here away from you rowdies -- HEY, YOU STEPPED ON MY FEET (peck, peck) -- You pushed me too (peck) -- Hey, stop pecking me (peck, peck, peck) -- Hey, that's a lot of penguins in the water -- No, it isn't and I think there's a leopard seal lurking and ready to eat us -- I'M JUMPING IN -- DON'T JUMP IN YET -- I'm going (splash) -- I'M GOING IN (splash) -- DON'T JUMP IN -- I'm going (splash) -- I'm going (splash) -- I'm going (splash) -- I'm not going and I think you're stupid to go -- Me, too; let them get eaten!You get the idea. Incredibly loud discussion and commotion -- jumping in happens when it seems to reach a fever pitch. Looks a bit silly but it isn't; it is serious business. After all, these Adelie penguins have to worry about getting caught and eaten by leopard seals and orca killer whales patrolling the shorelines. A penguin by itself is at greater risk than a penguin in a group with many eyes watching for predators and many voices to sound the alarm. If there are lots of penguins already in the water in front of you, then it is likely to be safe to go in. If you jump in as a group, you are safer then if you jump in alone. Watching the penguins go through their behaviors of marching up and down the shoreline en masse and then waiting for incredibly long periods of time to jump in starts to make sense if you are the chicken of the sea.
The penguins like to swim along porpoising; I imagine they can see where they are headed with regard to sea ice and also confuse any following predators. When the Adelie penguins are ready to come ashore, you can see them porpoising until they are about sixty feet offshore. Then they swim underwater building up speed and pop out vertically at the shoreline. Since there is sea ice blocked up several feet high along the shoreline, they have to jump up fairly high to get out of the water. You can see whole groups at a time doing this. Some misjudge and fall back in.
One day, Norbert and I took turns taking photos from a spot at water's edge where we were screened from the ocean by an ice block. It was right at a low spot where the penguins liked to jump out. I sat there and watched Adelie penguins jumping out in mid air just a few feet in front of me. They launch themselves out of the water with a lot of velocity and height and usually land gracefully. When they touched down on the ice, several were quite surprised to see me there and ambled off quickly.
We saw leopard seals daily but not regularly; they did not appear to be present in this area in large number. Our first sighting occurred after I selected a relatively fresh penguin carcass to use as a leopard seal decoy. Dale and I tied it on the end of a long line in order to throw out in the water and hope that it's splashing would attract leopard seals for photography. I named the penguin carcass George after a good friend. George stayed with us for several days. We even engaged a few penguins with George dangling on his noose like a macabre marionette. Dale tossed George in and I held the end of George's line. Immediately a large leopard seal stuck his head out of the water right next to Dale and not George. It eyeballed Dale and showed no interest in George. Dale was immediately rattled and jumped back from the edge of the water. It was obvious that George the decoy would fool no one. On other occasions, we saw a leopard seal usually by chance cruising along the coastline in an area where we happened to be sitting taking photos. The leopard seal would usually eyeball us (large delectable morsels that we were) and move along about his business. I saw a leopard seal spyhop and raise straight up out of the water at water's edge to look at some penguins standing along the shore a few feet back from the edge. The seal didn't go for them and the penguins took off. Dale and I both saw a leopard seal chasing penguins in the water, porpoising along behind penguins porpoising higher than ever and penguins moving faster than ever.
One day, a pack of orca killer whales cruised along the edge of the pack ice that was just offshore; there were about thirty of them strung out. I didn't see them attack any Adelie penguins though it was evident they were looking for brunch opportunity cruising so close to the ice edge. A few spyhopped for a topside look but they mostly just cruised by. The pack ice that was just offshore started moving very fast towards the shoreline due to some winds or current very far away. The big ice plates broke up into smaller blocks and raised up into new pressure ridges. There was a loud constant crunching sound during this movement period which lasted under an hour. It was like watching plate tectonics in action. There were jumbled chunks, plates and peaks being formed -- a brand new version of the existing shoreline we had been hiking about on. It was now obvious how the old jumbled ice along the shoreline had been formed. The orca killer whales were just down the coast and the channel in which they had been traveling along our shoreline closed up due to this movement of the pack ice. I could see through the long lens of my camera that the killer whales moved into a small area left open and started spyhopping frequently. They were evidently trying to see a way to swim out and I could see them open up some narrow passageways with their bulk. After milling about for awhile spyhopping and trying some passageways leading nowhere, the killer whales dived down and I didn't see them surface; they must have swam away underwater for quite a way.
Skuas were constantly about; they are the bad boys of the Antarctic and the most southern-ranging bird on the planet (skuas have been seen far inland near the South Pole). Skua pairs have hunting and nesting territories staked out in the penguin rookery and fight to retain them. Skuas eat krill, fish, penguin eggs, penguin chicks, and penguin carcasses. I was able to watch penguin egg hunting by skuas on a few occasions; it is difficult to be in the right area at the right time. Skuas are very patient and they would sit patiently just a foot or two away from the outskirts of a penguin rookery subgroup waiting for an opportunity. I saw a skua dart in and cause a single penguin parent's egg to break on the ground and also cause a penguin pair's egg to roll out of the nest. An incredible ruckus of noise broke out among angry penguins and a screeching skua. An egg out of the nest is usually doomed and is not recognized as "mine" by the penguins. The penguin pair chased after the skua and were fighting mad at it but did not move the egg back to their nest though they had ample time. The skua waited a bit, flew in and snatched the egg in its beak while the penguins fought back to no avail. The skua is at some risk from getting its bones broken by a penguin flipper or getting its eyes pecked. The skua flied off a very short distance, stretched its wings and screeched in triumph standing over the egg; then it pecked open the egg. Certain places in the penguin rookery were favored egg eating places and had numerous broken eggs on the ground. Skuas fly really low over a penguin rookery and the penguins will strike out if the skua is low enough. A cocky penguin ambling along will go out of its way to attack a skua standing idly about. The skuas seemed to have a lot of respect for the danger of attack by an Adelie penguin and stay out of their way. The skuas nest right around the penguin rookery and many times I walked unwittingly through their nesting areas. You knew when you did so because they would fly straight at you right above your head trying to get you to leave. If they didn't do that, they would stand around and screech at you so loudly you would want to leave. I saw a few skua eggs laid on the ground; I felt like stomping on them on the penguins' behalf but refrained from doing so.
Tomorrow, Dale leaves and Norbert and I are scheduled to fly by de Havilland Twin Otter skiplane to the Emperor penguin rookery at Cape Washington on the Antarctic mainland. This is too far for helicoptering so we go by airplane. If there are any helicopter fans, we have been using the Bell 212 for trips to Granite Harbor and Cape Bird and the Astar for trips to the sea ice edge. The 212 carries a lot more gear.
| December 2 |
Got back late at night from a de Havilland Twin Otter skiplane flight to Cape Washington on the Antarctic mainland far, far away from McMurdo Station. Cape Washington is the site of a major Emperor penguin rookery with 20,000 chicks in annual attendence. The skiplane followed the Antarctic coastline and views of the mountains and glaciers were exceptional due to the clear sunny weather. We flew over two glacier ice tongues; these are immense seaward extensions of a land glacier sticking way, way out into the ocean. The Nordenskjold Ice Tongue is a seaward extension of the Mawson Glacier. The really big one we flew over was the Drygalski Ice Tongue of David Glacier; it ranges from 9-15 miles wide and is about thirty miles long. Many times we were flying not too far above the water and at some points, the pilot flew the plane right alongside glacial ice cliffs at water's edge. We landed on the fast sea ice at Cape Washington and could see Mount Melbourne towering over us further inland. Mount Melbourne (8,966 feet) is the only volcano on the Antarctic mainland. Other Antarctic volcanos (like Mount Erebus on Ross Island) are on Antarctic islands.
We jumped down from the skiplane and could see thousands of Emperor penguins spread out along the base of the cape and stretching way out onto the ice shelf around us. They were older Emperor penguin chicks in down plumage whose parents were at sea gathering food. The Emperor penguin lays its egg, incubates, and hatches it in the Antarctic winter and we were seeing fairly grown chicks now in the early Antarctic summer. The Emperor penguin does its rearing on sea ice and not on land. The Emperor penguin chicks were large enough to be left alone and vastly outnumbered the adult Emperor penguins present. There were some skuas around but they didn't bother the chicks. The skuas were flying in and land ing where there was an adult Emperor penguin feeding a chick; the skuas were hoping to get some spilled regurgitated food. Norbert went straight to the rookery area to photograph while tasking Rob Robbins (the scientific diving coordinator who was accompanying us in order to assist) and I to survey the shoreline for underwater photographic opportunities. The shoreline was a thirty minute hike away through soft snow up to one's shins and occasionally thighs. I plunged in pretty deep sometimes.
At the sea ice shoreline, adult Emperor penguins were present in small numbers standing out of water and in packs cruising along the shoreline. We watched them porpoise along when swimming fast. Occasionally they would swim more slowly and stick their heads up to survey the shoreline. The Emperor penguins would dive down and not come up within the usual time period; then they would suddenly pop up out of the water onto the sea ice edge to come ashore. They came out of the water more horizontally than the Adelie penguin and not quite as high -- about chest high on me. How do I know it is chest high? Because two groups spotted Rob and I on the shoreline with 2-3 other Emperor penguins and decided that we constituted a large enough group of penguins and substitute penguins to come ashore. Expecting absolutely nothing, I was standing at the sea ice edge wondering where the penguins had gone when suddenly I saw a large shape with white marks hurtling straight towards me from about six feet underwater. I yelled out in surprise and ducked for cover and a sixty to ninety pound four foot tall Emperor penguin landed right next to me where I had been standing. It just missed me. Two more Emperor penguins suddenly erupted out of the water nearly hitting Rob and myself (again). The Emperor penguins landed around us and then casually got up and walked off; they thought nothing of it. This happened again about twenty minutes later with about five Emperor penguins; it is hard to count them when they are whistling through the air around you. There would have been two direct hits in this second batch and the latter of the two would have taken out both Rob and I if we didn't side step. The thought of being hit right in the chest by one of these large fellows was a sobering thought though we were having a great time seeing them launch out of water right smack dab in front of us. We hung around and assessed the underwater photography opportunities further and decided that there wasn't enough Emperor penguin action compared to Norbert's previous underwater photography at the sea ice edge to justify sledging the extensive and heavy gear over. There were a few Adelie penguins about, obviously immature ones since they weren't at a rookery. There were lots of white Antarctic snow petrels flying along the sea ice edge back and forth; these are beautiful birds with black beaks and eyes and a robust snowy white body and wings. We also saw lots of Wilson's storm petrels, a small black bird with white streaks on its wings.
Rob and I hiked back to the plane, picked up some topside photo gear and sledged it over to Norbert at the Emperor penguin rookery. The rookery was full of Emperor penguin chicks as previously described and the relatively few adult Emperor penguins present were either laying about (presumably with a chick nearby) or standing next to a chick that was pestering for a regurgitated feeding. I watched as Emperor penguin chicks pestered for a feeding and received it from their parent's beak. Lots of penguin chicks were just standing about without parent and many of them were calling. Their sound was quite melodious and the sound of an Emperor penguin rookery filled with chicks is much more pleasant than the sound of an Adelie penguin rookery filled with nesting adults. No substantial fighting or squabbling was going on among the Emperor penguins that I could see. I saw some chicks trade off minor pecks jockeying for a feeding, probably between the chick that should get the feeding and a hungry interloper chick. Overall the rookery scene was fairly peaceful on this sunny mild day.
Norbert decided to get photos of porpoising Emperor penguins so we hiked over to the sea ice edge. While standing around waiting for an Emperor penguin group to cruise by, Rob was casually kicking a bump on the sea ice on which he was standing near the edge. A big chunk of the sea ice on which he was standing suddenly broke off and tumbled into the water as a result of his action; Rob had to dive back onto the unbroken sea ice to avoid going into the water. This was pretty funny and laughs were shared all around. Norbert unconsciously did the same thing himself about thirty minutes later as an even larger piece of sea ice on which he was standing broke off and dropped into the water. Norbert had to dive backwards sprawled out to avoid falling in the water. Wise one that I am, I did not similarly tempt fate.
We hiked back to the skiplane and flew to the Italian Antarctic base at Terra Nova Bay; Cape Washington is at the far end of this bay. En route, we flew over the unused German Gondwana Antarctic base and then landed at Terra Nova base. We had a nice Italian dinner there (great pasta) and walked around looking at their base. We picked up an American scientist and his absolute gravimeter equipment at Terra Nova and then flew back to McMurdo.
| December 3 |
Today Norbert and I did two dives at Arrival Heights in a new location; they move the dive huts occasionally. Having been out of the water for some time, it felt very good to get back in and get some nitrogen bubbling around my system. The first dive was at 106 feet max for 38 minutes and the second dive was at 86 feet max for 43 minutes. My hands seem happiest with a forty minute dive if I am assisting and/or modeling for Norbert. My activity level is lower following a photographer around and my hands suffer from the cold long before I start to feel really cold on my torso. My feet and head don't get cold at all though my only exposed skin -- my lips -- get properly numb as they get instantly cold. However lips are heavily vascularized and seem to withstand this freezing water well except for a constant slight case of chapped lips. The drop line hanging down from the dive hut hole hit bottom at sixty feet in the midst of a volcanic gravel and rock slope running from the shoreline close by down to deeper water below. Up shallow there was a lot of crystalline anchor ice clumped together as large plates; I could see many animals trapped within the ice. I saw one anchor ice clump that had grown sufficiently and broken free to achieve buoyancy and was on its way up to the sea ice ceiling to add to the ice plates there. The benthic (bottom) community was dominated by large and small anemones (beautiful big yellow ones and small white ones with intensely white tentacles) and also sponges of various colors including stalked sponges and volcano sponges. I saw sea spiders, long-spined polychete worms, loads of bicycle inner tube looking nemertean worms, white aeolid (similar body style to Tritonia festiva) and white dorid (similar body style to Hermissenda crassicornis) nudibranchs, a large anemone still battling for capture of a still alive and pulsing jellyfish, various sea stars, large red urchins, geoduck-type clam siphons in the gravel, large brown stalked tunicates, white-topped stalked featherduster worms, soft coral, and lots of small white sea cucumbers with their feathery feeding arms fully extended.
I could hear the eerie calling of a Weddell seal or two throughout both dives though I never saw one. There was a large sea ice crack nearby and the light coming through it broke up the dark blue and brown tones of the sea ice ceiling. Two volcano sponges had fish inside their bowl looking quite picturesque perched there. There was a big pile-up of sea stars and a few nemertean worms eating an upside down large white sea star; smaller sea stars of one species attack the larger sea stars of another species here. The sea ice ceiling had the usual vibrant community action going on along it; there were numerous juvenile fish, crustaceans, and pteropods (winged free-swimming molluscs).
On the first dive, I was tasked to follow Norbert around with a second camera and pass cameras back and forth as needed. On the second dive, I was to be a model, a task at which I'm not the best to put it mildly. The sea ice ceiling looked like puffy dark clouds when one looked up and Norbert wanted to take wide angle long exposure photos of the sea ice ceiling and slope with me posed against the ceiling. Since I am incapable of staying absolutely still for a four minute exposure by an underwater camera on a tripod, I over-inflated my drysuit and pinned myself up against the sea ice ceiling. I put the beam of a hand-held underwater light on the previously arranged spot on the seafloor and then stayed absolutely still for five minute stretches with rearrangements of position in between as directed by Norbert. It gets darn cold particularly in the hands staying stock still for fifteen minutes and having one's face right next to the sea ice ceiling is a reminder how cold it really can be. I was happy to be released for a sight-seeing dive on my own for the rest of my underwater time; I flexed my fingers constantly trying to get some warmth going in them. They still feel stiff as I type this.
| December 4 |
Today we did a single dive at Danger Slopes, a short distance north from McMurdo on Ross Island and just beyond Arrival Heights. The bottom fauna was similar to what I described yesterday but more sparse. This dive was 87 feet max for 39 minutes and marks my 21st and last dive here in Antarctica. It's been enough because it's starting to look very familiar and I'm growing tired of constantly flexing my fingers during a dive to generate muscle heat. It will be nice to return to diving in San Diego and not look like a grasping idiot throughout a scuba dive. The Danger Slopes dive site was remarkable physically. There was a gradual slope up to the shore and it stopped a forty foot depth where a large ice wall from the glacier above met the ocean. The ice wall cantilevered up at a 45 degree angle from the seafloor, went up forty feet and met a tidal sea ice crack which streamed in sunlight. The blue ice wall and the sunlight streaming in were beautiful; we cruised along this wall for quite awhile enjoying the view.
Tomorrow our luggage has to be humped to the air cargo building, I have to check back in our field camping gear and field HF and VF radios, and then we fly out the day after tomorrow (weather permitting). I have had my fill and am looking forward to coming home.
| December 5 |
Weather opened up and a helicopter was available. We rushed to drop our luggage off early in preparation for the flight from McMurdo to Christchurch, New Zealand tomorrow. You drop off baggage a day ahead of departure for loading in the hold of the cargo transport planes. There are about eight passengers on our flight. Tomorrow morning we report at 6:10 am for our flight. The slower planes are now in use; I have a seven hour flight back to New Zealand instead of the 5 1/2 hour flight I had coming down.
Norbert had a Astar helicopter at his disposal for photography so off we went to the Dry Valleys on the Antarctic mainland across the McMurdo Sound part of the Ross Sea from McMurdo on Ross Island. Our pilot was my favorite who likes to swoop around and bank in tight turns for a bit of a thrill ride. It isn't so good for photography but it sure is fun. First we helicoptered to the sea ice edge and looked for leopard seals, killer whales, etc. We spotted an area with killer whales and minke whales and set down for some photos from the sea ice edge. The orca killer whales were just a few feet away from us as they cruised along next to the sea ice edge. A minke whale went by and dived down under the sea ice edge to feed on plankton under the sea ice. It came back out in several minutes and went diving down under the sea ice again.
We then helicoptered to the Explorer's Cove area of New Harbor on the mainland and flew onto land there up the Taylor Valley, a dry valley. The Dry Valleys have almost no snowfall and the mountains around them are high enough to keep out major glaciers coming down from the Antarctic highlands in the interior. Whatever snow does fall in a dry valley (and there were patches and traces) is melted quickly by solar heat soaked up by the exposed ground. The Taylor Valley looked to me similar to the other dry valleys we were to see: craggy mountains rimming a valley with bare dirt slopes, infrequent running streamlets, and seasonally frozen ponds (saw one unfrozen pond, Don Juan Pond, which we were told never freezes). We landed at Lake Hoare for a closer look; it was currently frozen and was sited next to a big glacier that pierced into Taylor Valley. We looked around the research station there and took off up valley.
We left Taylor Valley in the Lake Bonney area and flew over the mountains to the Wright Valley, another dry valley. We dropped down into Wright Valley at Lake Vanda which had a running streamlet flowing into it and a craggy cliff on one side. It was a gorgeous sight. We flew around a bit for photos and then landed at Bull Pass which exits Wright Valley. We were left there for an hour while the helicopter went to refuel. Bull Pass is dry itself and noted for its ventifacts - wind-eroded rocks. Many granite rocks were wildly eroded with biomorphic shapes; the sculptor Henry Moore would have felt at home. We walked around examining wind erosion on various types of rocks and walked back to the landing site when we heard the helicopter approach (it zoomed by about thirty feet overhead; I love that pilot).
From Bull Pass, we flew to Victoria Valley,. another dry valley to a view of Victoria Upper Glacier. The Victoria Upper Glacier was spectacularly edged in a gracefully curved glacial ice cliff and meltwater ran off down slope to frozen blue ice ponds. We flew back to Wright Valley and up to the Wright Upper Glacier and a misty cloud-enshrouded view of the Airdevronsix Icefalls where a glacier drops down in an icefall into the Wright Upper Glacier (I think; hard to tell exactly with the clouds in the upper reaches).
Flying down from the Victoria Upper Glacier, we exited through the Labyrinth section of Wright Valley. The Labyrinth is a winding narrow-sided craggy canyon and it was an incredible thrill to fly down it with tightly banked turns. A flight down the Labyrinth was featured in the IMAX Antarctica film. Our pilot said that he led the film crew helicopter through the Labyrinth to show them the way. We exited the Labyrinth to continue flying down Wright Valley to the ocean.
Along the way we landed twice to shoot photos of mummified seals that had erroneously traveled up into the Wright Valley instead of turning back to the ocean. Since it is so cold and dry where their bodies lie, they are well-preserved and rather ghastly looking. I read in a book that they are crabeater seals; they didn't look massive enough to be Weddell seals and I cannot imagine that a Weddell seal would hump so far inland (since they prefer fast sea ice and ice crack holes).
We exited the Wright Valley where a glacier pierced it and flew to Marble Point to refuel. Marble Point is a refueling depot on the Antarctic mainland across the McMurdo Sound from McMurdo on Ross Island.
We flew back along the sea ice edge again and I
spotted a few killer whales. We landed when the pilot spotted a leopard seal
lounging in the sun at the water's edge on the sea ice. After we landed, it
humped into the water and we stood some distance back from the sea ice edge
watching. It was cruising back and forth and would stick its head up and
look at us occasionally. It was a large leopard seal (they can be nine feet
long) and its head looked huge in comparison to the Weddell seals I have been
seeing. No one wanted to tempt fate and stand right next to the sea ice edge
looking for it. The spot where the leopard seal had been laying had feathers
all around, undoubtedly a penguin lunch. Leopard seals capture and eat
penguins standing right next to the sea ice edge. After awhile, the leopard
seal hauled itself onto the sea ice for a short while. Some Emperor penguins
nearby were totally unconcerned. I think they know where they are in danger
since I rarely see an Emperor penguin standing right next to the sea ice
edge; they stand about six feet back. The Emperor penguins even started
walking in the general direction of the leopard seal; they wouldn't be in
danger on the ice since the penguins can move much faster than a seal on ice.
After awhile, the leopard seal went back in the ocean. It was time for us to
fly back to McMurdo.
Click to see the
Diving Under Antarctic Ice web site resulting from this trip. DUAI presents a photo gallery, scuba
diving information, a Field Guide, and personal journals based on the work
of Norbert Wu's underwater photography team in McMurdo Sound.
| Text ©Peter Brueggeman.
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