Friday 26 April 2013

Day 40: La Ultima Stazione!

This afternoon at 1pm we took the last-final-ultima CTD out of the water. Lucky Stazione 128. Epic.

From 5pm today science, sampling, tracer blob tracking and salinity calibration are all band. We are done. The festivities will be kicking off from 6pm and we'll roll into Stanley, no doubt bleary eyed, at 8am tomorrow. Then the packing, shipping, cleaning...and probably a bit of calibrating etc will begin its final throws.

It has been an incredibly successful voyage. Four significant cross sections of the deep ocean have been made. Moorings have been recovered. An unprecedented amount of data on mixing has been gathered by the VMP. We have observed the evolution of the blob for the fourth year and it has continued to suprise. Our one unfortunate occurrence was the sea-ice south of the Orkney Islands stopping us from retrieving Lamont's moorings. Any, way we got off better than Shackleton did when he had too much sea ice.

Well done everyone!

There will be a final sign off in a few days.

Cheers
Jan




Photo: Still friends after 128 Stations. The mostly day CTD crew including (from front left): Paul, Doc John (from back right) Gwen, Siobhan, Gwyn, Andrew and Me.


Tuesday 23 April 2013

Day 37: I can'ey do-it cap'n I've only got the power of 8,000 homes


One station from the end of the line, as we drank the last dregs of well mixed tracer blob from the Argentine Basin, the weather hits us. Winds over 50 knots. A growing sea. Foaming and mountainous. We can no longer drop CTDs. We could wait, bobbing and battered where we are. Better we make use of the time as the storm hits to begin the long steam home. We make a meager 5 knots into the wind. Walls of water crash over the bow. The ship goes from random walk generator to Martini shaker. Sleeping is boarder-line...if your bed has a boarder...if not...hold on.



Photo: It is fun to be in the bar and notice the windows being cleaned from the outside...and the inside if you don't hold onto your drink.

When a ship like this is in tough seas or trapped in thick ice, needless to say, it needs a lot of power. Yesterday the ship's third engineer, Mango (haven't figured out why he's called mango yet) took us on a tour of the ship's inner workings. It is difficult to imagine what lurks beneath. All we usually see are men popping up and down staircases and ladders wearing grease stained boiler suits. Are they greasing shackles? Shovelling coal?



Photo: Mango doing his best Mickey mouse impression.

The tour begins in the control centre. It feels and looks like a 1960's version of the future. Flashing lights, colour screens, countless dials and of course...red buttons! There are large machines down here, very large. Just the rudder has 4 motors powering it's movement. The propeller shaft spins at the rear of the boat and is as thick as a large tree trunk. There are desalination chambers for our drinking water, and everything is powered by 4 huge engines, two 3 Megawatt and one 1 Megawatt, 8 Megawatts in total. Wondering what a Megawatt is? The former president of Indonesia? 1 Megawatt is enough to power about 1000 American homes. So the force we need to move through ice and keep us alive (and quite comfortable) could sustain a small town.



Photo: See, told you!

It is fascinating how much of the ship has been modified for science. Water and air are transported in oversized pipes to prevent vibration. Parts in contact with the sea are designed so that oil and water come in rather than out to prevent contamination. Special power supply to prevent surges and static. The ship has huge compressors for seismic surveys. These send out a shock and the reflection tells us about the sea bed and the earth below it. They used to do it with dynamite but Mango says they never let him play with them.


If all goes well we'll get to within day a day of Stanley on the 25th. We will then squeeze in a few more CTDs near the South American Continental Shelf. There's got to be some tracer in them there waters!

Cheers
Jan


Sunday 21 April 2013

Day 35: Power for a small town of murderers

The voyage draws to its final week. We are across the 50S latitude.  We sit over a shallow hump 1500m down. To our north the sea plunges to 6km into the Argentine Basin. The circumpolar current surges beneath us once again. The cooler Antarctic Waters to the South twist and dance around the warm Atlantic waters. A tango of frontal interaction. Between the tosses and turns we search desperately for the blob of tracer. We only have a few opportunities left to taste the tracer before we steam to the Falklands.

Th Argentine Basin is deep. Six km down into the ocean means there is 6km of water above you. The pressure felt at that depth would be like having about 3,000 people walking all over. There would be the kids on top, the teenagers, the old fogies, Oliver Cromwell, Julius Caesar, the Neanderthals, the lot. Even a few large Dinosaurs and the bus they are all travelling in (if this doesn't make sense to you see the previous post on taking a bus with Genghis Kahn). To have a little fun with that sort of pressure, and to get a little memento of the voyage, Pierre got the scientist on board to decorate a polystyrene cup. He then attached the cup to the CTD before it went all the way to 6km.




Photo: Pierre's little Cup and it's original size.

To ease the tension of not finding much of the blob, a competition is proposed: who can guess how much we will find?  previous year's maximums have been around 1 and 0.5
(in Femto-Moles - 0.000000000000001 moles). This cruise it is barely above 0.15. Some have boldly predicted the tracer is centred up this way and we will catch it at around 0.5. Others are more pessimistic and predict there will be almost none. I am assuming the people who say higher are as right as the people who say lower. So my best guess is that we will find the blob at the same concentration we have all voyage...so that's what I go for...I won't gloat...but...so far I am right....



Photo: The 'tracer worm' showing what everyone guessed. (I won't gloat yet...)

Picking the peak tracer isn't the only game going around the ship. A game of 'Killers' has been instigated. Each player gets the name of another player. This is their mark. The mark must be found alone and the words 'your dead' uttered (preferably followed by an evil laugh). No witnesses.
The mark carried by the dead is passed on and the killer. They pursue their new mark and on the game goes...until only two are left. It may ease the monotony, but the tension could be cut with a dagger (to the back). Over a beer the first night of the competition, names are passed around with much laughter and comradeship. Within minutes-silence. No one wants to go to bed...at least not alone. Bladders become strained. By early morning countless dead...and only a few of us now stand...

Cheers
Jan

Friday 19 April 2013

South Georgia, over the mountains and far away

We left our heroes standing looking dubiously at the peaks of South Georgia, unsure if they were worthy of tackling the legacy of Shackleton, even on a sunny day in April where the weather report contained nothing more sinister than 'Possible sideways snow blasting.  Light to variable.'.  Stirred by the accuracy of the UK weather forecasting system, nominally one of the reasons that such out of the way rocks as South Georgia were occupied in the first place, we squared our shoulders, kicked free of the seals gripping our shins, and pushed on up the steep slope leading from Grytviken into the foothills of the island.  


Grytviken Bay:  Pretty if you like that kind of thing. 

I have found that the word 'hill' is an extremely culturally dependent word.  In Tasmania, where Jan and I hail from, is considered perfectly acceptable to own a car with a faulty starter motor, as it is almost impossible to park it somewhere where roll starting down a substantial slope is out of the question.  In contrast, when I moved to Cambridge in the UK, I would often see panicked looks come across local's faces when I suggested sitting upstairs in the pub.  However, after being at sea for over a month where the most substantial climb you do daily is from the floor back up onto the barstool, the precipitous slopes of South Georgia looked formidable.  Puffing and rapidly shedding layers of wildly inappropriate Antarctic gear, our rapidly shrinking party arrived at our first stop, the dammed and picturesque Gull Lake sitting directly above Grytviken and Shackleton's dubiously oriented grave.  Wiping the sweat aside and peeling yet another ill applied layer of thermal underwear off, we peered squintingly into the sun at our destination, the peak of Mount Hodges.  Climbing up to the lake from Grytviken had seemingly brought the peak no closer at all, but had mysteriously magnified its height several times.  Several of the party began rummaging through their day packs and, feigning surprise at finding an absence of crampons and oxygen bottles, decided that Penguin River sounded like a much more appealing destination.  They paused briefly to innocuously gather the names of our next of kins and then shuffled off around the lake. 

Being made of sterner, and decidedly more dense stuff, Paul, Pierre, Jan and myself decided to press on, confident in our photocopied map that looked like it had been transcribed by a Parkinson's sufferer with a crayon and the third engineer's confident parting assertion that 'you can't miss the way up'.  In retrospect taking mountaineering advice from a man named Mango may have been unwise, but the day was sunny, we were young(ish) and what could possibly go wrong?  Fairly immediately something went wrong.  Our first goal after Gull Lake had been to find the glacier that ran down the south side of Mt Hodges and 'just stick to the right hand side of it'.  Glaciers are typically fairly intrusive bits of terrain, and not easily overlooked, but after searching through the bare, rocky valley we concluded that several million tonnes of ice were not to be found and that either we were a bit lost or Mango was substantially older than he looked.  Deciding on the latter we pushed up the valley looking for what remained of the glacial tongue after 150 years of global warming. 


Have you checked behind the couch? No glacier to be found.

As we trudged onwards we were increasingly aware that we were not gaining much height, but getting closer and closer to the peak.  Consequently the slopes leading from our valley floor up to the mountain on our right were getting steeper and steeper.  Jan's keen mathematical brain seized on this bit of geometry and suggested that it would make our life easier if we started climbing the ridge now, rather than wait for it to get even steeper further along the valley.  Nodding sagely and quietly wondering how we could get coauthor status on this geophysical insight, we all agreed and headed more or less directly up the steep rock strewn slope towards our goal. 

           
Moderately steep, and perfectly safe for trained professionals

Now, a quick physics lesson.  Objects, for example head sized rocks, gain energy the higher up they are raised.  This energy is called potential energy. Objects such as boulders perched on mountains have a lot of it. In general, objects, even stones of approximately skull size sitting at rest, want to get rid of this potential energy.  They usually do this by swapping their potential energy for kinetic, which is the energy of moving objects.  No one really knows why rocks feel compelled to do this, but on this slope they liked to do it as fast as possible, often with only the slightest of prodding to inspire them to take off to the distant valley floor.  Perhaps they read in the Geological Times that kinetic energy is the in thing this epoch? Or maybe it is just to, literally, keep up with that nice dolerite couple next door?  In any event noggin sized boulders were soon being liberally dislodged and leaping excitedly down to the valley below, bounding past the much less happy climbers at the rear.  By the time our man from the Alps, Pierre, decreed that 'Zis is not good.  Zees is quieet dangerous', we had gone too far and to go back down was probably more dangerous that continuing up.  Leaving a bit more room between us for the newly liberated rocks to enjoy their freedom, and wondering why BAS decreed hard hats essential for sampling water bottles but not mountaineering, we pressed onwards and upwards. 


Spectacular:  The view from Mt Hodges

As we stumbled past one last false crest, quietly cursing the venerable Mango's directions, we suddenly discovered that there wasn't any more up to climb.  We had reached the peak, and all around us we could see the magnificent panorama of South Georgia basking in the unexpected sunshine.  Deciding that simply standing on top of an exposed mountain on a Subantarctic island in Autumn wasn't a good enough reason to continue to ignore the blissfully warm sun, we tore the last of our beanies off.   Instead we donned shades and fumbled for the suncream needed at these latitudes thanks to the ongoing good work of chlorofluorocarbons in the ozone layer.  Giddy with the unexpected coincidence of both our survival and arrival at the correct destination we opened up our stashes of goodies and shared them out, even with Pierre who had decided that nine hours of mountain hiking didn't really warrant any supplies.  We noted that even here we could still hear the blood-thirsty cries of the seals in Grytviken, several km away and 600 m straight down. Their calls will no doubt haunt our waking dreams until our final days.      


Bloody tourists:  Andrew, Pierre, Jan and Paul.  Note the highly appropriate technical clothing.

After recording every angle of the vista in several gigapixels we engaged on the traditional argument of explorers who have achieved their destination; what the hell to do now?  Going against the obvious option of setting up an isolated township to spear whales, reducing their fat to an oil and selling this to make soap, we elected to avoid the horrible scree slope we came up.  Instead we would push on down the other face of the mountain and make our way back to the town from the opposite side we had left.  It couldn't be worse.  Right?


'I'm king of the world!'  Pierre was pushed to his well deserved doom immediately after.

In the end, and in defiance of all good storytelling convention, it actually wasn't worse.  We came down off the mountain in quick time, and soon were traipsing across the easy going lunar landscape on the valley leading down the far side of the mountain.  In these mountains not a single plant grows, and there is nothing really but rocks and small tarn lakes, formed from the snows of last winter and glaciers remembered only by misleadingly youthful ship's engineers.  Delirious with his first encounter with sunshine since moving to the United Kingdom, or possibly his choice of mountaingoing sweatpants, Jan decreed that it was time for a swim.  Paul and I declared him firmly insane and quickly moved to claim his chocolate rations, but Pierre was already down to his boxers and dancing towards the pond across the rocks.  Incidentally, as well as being loose and heavy, the rocks were also razor sharp.  Deciding that the epitaph of 'Men pour beer on national hero's grave, molest seals, freeze to death in alpine lake; Good riddance' was as good as any, Paul and I started carefully removing clothing too.  Soon all four of us stood on the waters edge, spongy and white after four weeks of living indoors on two desserts a day.  Then, like lemmings, we plunged into the water.  The photos below are probably a good enough description of how it felt.  

   

   
Morons

Invigorating is probably the most charitable way to put it.  Jan immediately christened the pool 'Spanner Lake' for its tightening effects.  Despite the water being, oddly enough, chest tighteningly, hand crushingly, cold, once we clambered out it was warm enough to simply drip dry.  We passed a fairly magical fifteen or so minutes regressing to our youths while we stood with the sun on our backs and skipped stones across the pond.  For a few moments the rest of the world felt very far away.  At some point, however, we realised that we were a bunch of thirty year old physicists standing on a mountain in our underwear. So we struggled into our clothes and set off down the hill again, all in great spirits and on adrenalin highs from our dunkings.  After a few wrong turns, notably where we forgivably mistook a vertical ravine for the path back to town, we made it down into the valley leading to Grytviken.  This was helpfully labelled in crayola on our geriatric maps as 'single scientist limit'.  This presumably means that lone scientists are allowed to wander that far from the base and people wouldn't have to look too far to find their bodies. 


Miaviken Bay.  The mud immediately ahead is the track.

Not yet suitably exhausted, Pierre and I struck off to Miaviken, a fjord to the north, while Paul and Jan decided that a trip to the post office in town was in order and headed back south.  They hadn't previously struck me as philatelists, but it's a perfectly valid lifestyle choice and one shouldn't judge.  Pierre and I enjoyed the change from mountains to grassy meadows and discovering that the seals of that cove were at least as unfriendly as those around Grytviken, but substantially larger as well as being masters of camouflage in the long grass.  


Things you don't want to step on in the long grass.  An Elephant seal no less.

As dusk began to fall we said goodbye to this beautiful, wild and amazing place and headed back to King Edward Point.  Here we were welcomed by the base locals with a roaring fire and barbecue.  On the menu were the poor introduced reindeer, who having somehow survived the seals for almost a century were now being removed from the island in the tastiest possible way.  The whole ship's compliment stood with our backs to the fire, listening to the growls of the seals from the darkness and reflecting on a day of opportunity well and truly seized. 


The RSS James Clark Ross tied up at the King Edward Point barbecue hut

Andrew







     

 

      






               



Wednesday 17 April 2013

Day 32: All that way just to spell your name?

The scientist and crew are all very grateful to JB. He has managed to coordinate the cruise well so far. We have seen sea-ice, whales and South Georgia. Today he is attempting to cash in some of that kudos. He wants to fulfill a lifelong dream: to write his name in the ocean...




Photo 1: JB, hoping to write his name in ship track. Gwyn is dubious as to his motives.

Jesting aside (as Brian K would say), our  cruise track is changing quite significantly from our original plan. The reason (at least the one JB is sticking too) is that the tracer concentration is very low where we are. It is about one tenth the concentration it was this time last year. Back then it was clearly centred between South America and Antarctica. This time we are measuring the tailing end of the blob. It has slipped between our fingers into the Atlantic. (For those who remember the Squash/cordial analogy we are following it downstream and the taste is weak but getting stronger). We have 10 days left...so North we will head...in pursuit. The Fact that on JB's last cruise he drew a J shape and this time it will look like a B...coincidence?




Photo 2: We hope that this "B-line" will take us to the core of the blob. If not, it may be lost forever.

We will find the blob! Stay tuned

Jan

Tuesday 16 April 2013

Day 31: Sometimes science does work in the real world

We are done with Icebergs. We are done with penguins, done with whales. There will be no more jollies and no more ice-scapes. It is time to work. Between South Georgia and our return to the Falklands we will be doing non-stop CTDs and VMPs. We are crossing the North Scotia Ridge. Those tired of numerical names and acronyms will be pleased to hear we are currently in 'Shag Rocks Passage'. Brian K tells me the last time he was during the 'ShagEx-The Shagrocks Experiment'. The Shag Rocks are a chain of under-sea mountains which interrupt the flow of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. We expect the blob to be in the core of the current and mixing as it punches through the passage.



Photo 1: You might have seen these 'billows' in the sky. They occur in the deep ocean too!

Just today some 'wow it really works!' science was done. Have you ever looked up to the clouds and seen them swirling like beautiful overturning waves? The type with a long wisp. If you are lucky there are a whole set of them lined up. These billows are formed when a dense fluid - the cloud - flows under light fluid - the air above. If the cloud is flowing one way and the air above the other then little ripples can grow and eventually form the crashing cusps one might surf in a surreal dream. What is cool is that if you know the difference in the speed of the air and the cloud, and you know how much heavier the cloud is than the air - you can predict if the waves will form or not. The theory doesn't only apply to clouds. It is thought that much of the mixing in the ocean (that which is churning up our blob of tracer) is caused by these billows forming and breaking as deep dense currents flow under light surface waters.

Today, while measuring the flow through Shagg-Rocks, Alex and Gwynn's VMP (the mixing thingy) showed a big jump in mixing rates at about 2km down. When we looked at Xing Feng's LADCP (the water velocity thingy) showed a strong current below 2km pushing through the passage. And...when we looked at the CTD data (the salinity-temperature-density thingy) it turned out the velocity difference and the weight difference where spot on to give us the mixing we saw. Having met Louis Howard, one of the guys who came up with the theory simply with a pen and paper and the laws of physics, now in his nineties.  It is really amazing to come out here in the middle of a turbulent ocean, drop something over the side and tada! Physics works!...at least this time.



Photo2 : The measurements which seem to confirm the theory.




Photo 3: Brian K attempting to grab a piece of 'Shag Rock' on the map

Day 31: Sometimes science does work in the real world

We are done with Icebergs. We are done with penguins, done with whales. There will be no more jollies and no more ice-scapes. It is time to work. Between South Georgia and our return to the Falklands we will be doing non-stop CTDs and VMPs. We are crossing the North Scotia Ridge. Those tired of numerical names and acronyms will be pleased to hear we are currently in 'Shag Rocks Passage'. Brian K tells me the last time he was during the 'ShagEx-The Shagrocks Experiment'. The Shag Rocks are a chain of under-sea mountains which interrupt the flow of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. We expect the blob to be in the core of the current and mixing as it punches through the passage.



Photo 1: You might have seen these 'billows' in the sky. They occur in the deep ocean too!

Just today some 'wow it really works!' science was done. Have you ever looked up to the clouds and seen them swirling like beautiful overturning waves? The type with a long wisp. If you are lucky there are a whole set of them lined up. These billows are formed when a dense fluid - the cloud - flows under light fluid - the air above. If the cloud is flowing one way and the air above the other then little ripples can grow and eventually form the crashing cusps one might surf in a surreal dream. What is cool is that if you know the difference in the speed of the air and the cloud, and you know how much heavier the cloud is than the air - you can predict if the waves will form or not. The theory doesn't only apply to clouds. It is thought that much of the mixing in the ocean (that which is churning up our blob of tracer) is caused by these billows forming and breaking as deep dense currents flow under light surface waters.

Today, while measuring the flow through Shagg-Rocks, Alex and Gwynn's VMP (the mixing thingy) showed a big jump in mixing rates at about 2km down. When we looked at Xing Feng's LADCP (the water velocity thingy) showed a strong current below 2km pushing through the passage. And...when we looked at the CTD data (the salinity-temperature-density thingy) it turned out the velocity difference and the weight difference where spot on to give us the mixing we saw. Having met Louis Howard, one of the guys who came up with the theory simply with a pen and paper and the laws of physics, now in his nineties.  It is really amazing to come out here in the middle of a turbulent ocean, drop something over the side and tada! Physics works!...at least this time.



Photo2 : The measurements which seem to confirm the theory.




Photo 3: Brian K attempting to grab a piece of 'Shag Rock' on the map

Sunday 14 April 2013

A visit to South Georgia

Hi again blogwatchers, both of you!

Last Friday was a special day.  We’d been promised a stop at South Georgia all cruise long, but it had always been threatened to be cut out to make up for delays or possibly impossible due to high winds at the awkward mooring site.  But, as dawn came two days ago we were awoken to by the sight of towering snow capped mountains jutting straight out of the sea, interspersed with massive glaciers and numerous bays dotted with freshly minted icebergs glowing yellow in the first light.   Even more magical was the wind on the monkey island (the ship's roof to lubbers) where we all gathered to take pictures.  Rather than the traditional teeth shattering gale, it was actually warm.   Having been warned that South Georgia would be some sort of glacial death zone, raining and snowing 320+ days a year and populated entirely by man eating fur seals, the blue sky and mirror finish bay flanked by luxuriant cushion grass and tumbling brooks looked a bit incongruous.  Possibly the whole thing had been dreamt up by Shackleton’s PR department? 



Not as bad as it looks.

The JCR pulled rank on the ship presently resident at the one ship dock at King Edward Point (the BAS base) and forced them to stand off to sea for 24 hours while we did vital science tourism.  We impatiently listened to the quick briefing by the base commander and then took off ashore armed with day packs bulging with foul weather gear, slabs of bread pilfered from the galley and several terabytes of blank memory cards.  The party quickly spread out, with some visiting the historical ruins and museums, others heading for the hills and one or two keen philatelists (word of the day) heading to the post office that inevitably marks the far flung outposts of the British Empire.  Some of these places presumably consist only of a post office and a postmaster who has annoyed someone.  Our small band had a plan to seize the day, and cram as much possible into the daylight hours. 




Grytviken viewed from KEP.

First stop, at 9 am, was the traditional drink with the boss.  Shackleton’s grave sits on the opposite side of the bay from KEP at the end of a gravel road that passes through the abandoned whaling station of Grytviken.  Ambling along the road, and enjoying standing on firm ground again, we encountered our first fur seal pups and everyone began fumbling with their cameras.  To be frank, these things are adorable.  Imagine a small fuzzy ball of long whiskers, ridiculously oversized flippers and huge black eyes that look imploringly up to you.  Even their uncoordinated waddle seems precisely calibrated to melt hearts.  Basically, they're so sweet that simply looking at them can inflict type 2 diabetes. Until they get close to you that is, at which point their eyes glow red and they open their fang lined mouths and charge in at a gallop.  Let me tell you this, fur seals can produce an amazing array of sounds and all of them are threatening.  They range from a mildly annoyed snort of derision to a deep bellied growl that could be used by security companies in place of, say, armed guards and dobermen.  In any event, the sight of several respected scientists stumbling backwards over each other in order to get away from this foot-high hell beast was both disturbing and amusing.



A cold hearted killing machine.

The entertainment starved locals know the comedy value of this first encounter, and they were probably watching with high powered lenses from the base.  We later found out from them that they normally walk the beaches armed with a broom handle.  Calling it a club is probably in bad taste, but evidently a stout piece of wood and a good aim is the best way to dissuade seals from snacking on bits of your anatomy.  This is definitely something you want to avoid, as a big seal can weigh almost two hundred kg and their fangs are serious business.  Worse, John the ship Doctor informs us, their bite carries some very nasty bacteria that make infection inevitable and leads to the terribly named condition of 'seal finger'.  This name seems specifically chosen so that people will either laugh off your injury or believe that you are some kind of deviant, both ways guaranteeing insufficient sympathy for the blackening and swelling of bits of your body.  Seal bites are such a problem that the small huts scattered around the island, where people go when they feel that the base simply isn't isolated enough for them, are equipped with 'seal bite kits'.  Each hut has four such kits, presumably to deal with mass casualties when the seals finally get around to organising a coordinated assault.

 

I'm not kidding.

In any event, our first encounter with the seals was a learning event.  Everyone started taking a bit more care where they stepped, as the seals were scattered absolutely everywhere and were at the very least a tripping hazard.  Mostly we got on by by keeping our distance, although Andy Watson seemed to rub the seals the wrong way with his mere presence.  Others would wander by and the dozing seals would open one eye and stare malevolently.  Andy strolling past absentmindedly musing on tracer concentrations would elicit a much more serious defcom level and he was more than once was forced to apply the tip of his boot in order to keep his fingers.  As we rounded the bay, we passed through Grytviken, the old abandoned whaling station.  Had I payed more attention in the museum I'd know why this UK outpost has a name like this.  Presumably it has a lot to do with the many Norwegians buried in the cemetery where Shackleton also rests.  I gather throwing things at whales was such a popular national pass time that Norwegians would literally travel to the ends of the earth, immigrating in the process, to pursue it.  The norse certainly have a knack of naming manly things. Grytviken. Just the word alone sounds like it should be used to describe a group of huge hairy men with more eyes than teeth and possibly wearing helmets with wings on.  I imagine they probably struggle to find a good name for something like, for example, butterflies, but if you need to name a town where people will stab whales from open boats in subzero gales, drag them to shore and then cover themselves in blood and oil, ask a Norwegian.  



This particular species also shows affection through biting.

The town itself has seen better days, with rusting industrial whale processing machinery everywhere and several beached and decaying whaling boats, but it is certainly evocative of the brutal life that the whalers must have lived to bring nice lamp oil and perfumes to the folk at home before they discovered that they were running out of whales.  It did have an excellent museum that demonstrated the remarkable amount of history that has been crammed into this little cove.  From the whalers, being the light at the end of Shackleton's epic journey, hosting a small war where both sides took turns surrendering to each other and now to a busy tourism, fisheries and science destination, Grytviken and KEP have been through a lot.



Pretty sure it was an insurance job.

Pressing on through the grassy field, littered with glowering and blood thirsty seals, we came to the neat and quiet white fenced cemetery where Shackleton and others are buried.  All the small white graves face the traditional east, except for the large slab denoting Shackleton's final resting place which, legend says, faces forever south.  I earned no friends at all by pointing out that the stone, in fact, faces north, and for Shack to be facing south he must be lying with his feet to the stone.  To the right of the stone is the much newer and smaller marker for Shackleton's 'right hand man', Frank Wild, who's ashes were recently discovered in South Africa and reinterred next to his old boss.  I further compounded my unpopular literal interpretation of metaphor by pointing out that for Frank to be on Shackleton's right hand, the great man must also be planted face down.  I continue to maintain that technically correct is still the best kind of correct.  As one of the giants of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration (which for UK explorers traditionally meant failing with great style and bravery) Shackleton is a spiritual founder of the British Antarctic Survey.  He was also a man who enjoyed a drink and so, with great reverence, several bottles of beer appeared and he was duly toasted.  As tradition dictates a small sip was spilt for him to enjoy.  This is something that has been going on for decades, so Shackleton must be particularly well preserved in his old age.  Possibly even pickled. 



Jan, Pierre, Gwyn, Andrew and Paul pay their respects.  Jan appropriately sombre.

Expeditioner tradition satisfied, and inspired and humbled by the amazing determination it must have taken Shackleton and his companions to cross the rugged ice caps of South Georgia, we finished our beers and looked up at the peaks towering over us.  I'll recount the tale of our own epic journey across the mountains in my next post.

Andrew

 

 


Saturday 13 April 2013

Night 29: News update from the late night tracer shift

Hello again

A special blog post from the nocturnal tracer madmen tonight! They bring much needed reggae and caffine fueled creativity to the voyage. Enjoy!

Jan

NEWS UPDATE FROM THE TRACER NIGHT SHIFT

HEALTH AND SAFETY
       
You will no doubt be aware of the famous ‘fire triangle’ of fuel, heat and Oxygen - remove any one, and the fire will stop. Tonight seems like an appropriate time to remind everyone of the ‘night shift triangle’: 

Caffeine: Coke. Full fat. No exceptions.

Reggae: The louder the better. Any Reggae will work, but Shaggy is the night shift artist of preference

Food: Paddy’s night meal should be enough to see you through from midnight to breakfast


Take away any of these vital ingredients, and your night shift is doomed to fail. Just see what happened when the night meal was replaced with a reindeer BBQ in South Georgia – morale took a definite dip!



Ben (Left): "It says 'Instant Coffee'...why won't it appear...all I see is dry brown stuff.  Stevie (right): Reggae...Caffeine...something is missing...

TRACER NEWS

Still no tracer. End of tracer news.


ARTS & CULTURE

The Tape Modern is pleased to announce the acquisition of a new masterpiece for it’s international collection: ‘Rhones Alpes’ by Woodward and Mills. The piece will initially be loaned to the Musee du casque, under the stewardship of ‘head’ curator Pierre Lebrouche. A sneak preview of the work in its glamorous new location can be seen below:





SPORTSDESK
        
Results are in for the much coveted CTD Sports Personality of the Week award. The tracer team have compiled a list of everyone’s night shift sampling contributions. Thanks go to all the men, women and physicists who have assisted. The scores are:

3rd place – James B (21)

2nd place – Brian K (26)

And the winner is...Xinfeng Liang (37)

Special mention also goes to Alex F, who would no doubt have finished higher up the leaderboard if he wasn’t scared of getting his hands wet.



Day 28: South Georgia and a day to remember

Hello All

On our 28th day we arrived at South Georgia. We had heard about and seen pictures of this mountainous sub-antarctic island, but little could prepare us.  We arrived at King Edward Point at dawn to a spectacular sight. As the glow broke through the clouds it lit up towering peaks, cascading glaciers and golden hills. Although it rains 300 days a year down here, this day was sunny and still. An incredible treat.




Photo: Towering South Georgia before sunrise.

Stepping off was disorientating. One grows accustomed to constantly correcting the sway of the ship. The shore was lined with young fur seals. Irresistibly cute even if they think they are scary when they growl - although a bite is almost certainly infectious. Most people spent the day out and about, climbing nearby peaks, spotting king penguins and elephant seals and enjoying the glorious sunshine. By all accounts every choice was equally spectacular and I can certainly vouch for the view from Mount Hodges to the interior peaks and out to the crimson blue glacial bays. More reports are likely to come...





Photo: Gwynn met some king penguins at penguin river...of all places.

I
n addition to it's natural beauty, South Georgia is mostly known for two things: Whaling and Shackleton. Despite being discovered by Captain Cook over 200 years ago (there were no previous inhabitants), South Georgia wasn't settled until the early 1900s when Norwegian Whalers established a station here. Massive steel drums and countless engines that could pull steam trains rust into a dull reds and oranges. These are evidence of the industrial scale whaling had reached by its end here in the 1960s.




Photo: Mount Hodges, the old whaling station and some cute-until-they-bite-you seals


In 1914, when whaling was in its infancy in South Georgia, Ernest Shackleton set off to Antarctica with the aim of being the first to cross Antarctica. Their wooden ship, Endurance, came up against unexpectedly thick ice (a bit like that which stopped us getting our moorings). Endurance became trapped in the ice. Shackleton's team had to spend the winter on the ship as the ice pushed them slowly northward. By the end of the winter the ice had consumed the ship. They then set out for Elephant Island (the only other land we have spotted since departing) where 22 stayed and Shackleton led 6 others across 800 miles of ocean to South Georgia. Incredibly, they arrived safely, but on the South-Eastern side. The legendary status of the journey was confirmed when the 6 men made perhaps the first crossing of South Georgia over 36 straight hours. Shackleton and all the men involved survived the ordeal and he is now buried in a cemetery here in KEP - his the only gravestone with the head pointing South.




Photo: Pierre scrambles up a scree. The terrain in the background is more like Shackleton's weary team would have tackled.


In the evening the 8 British Antarctic Survey staff still on the island invited us, the 2 government officers and an assortment of temporary staff there to help with eradication of introduced species, for a sunset dinner. Rarely do you get to eat something as delicious as reindeer and find you are helping solve an environmental problem...mind you there were plenty of takers.





Photo: Not a bad Sunset.

Stay tuned for a late night post from the Tracer-Red-Eye-Crew.

Jan

Thursday 11 April 2013

Day 27: CTDs near Neptune's Palace

Hi All

The weather has blessed us this week. Cruising North from Antarctic waters, the horizon has been near glassy. Despite being 4 weeks into our journey the surprises and excitement hasn't let up. Pairs of whales have enjoyed krill feasts. Seals, penguins and birds seem to remain as curious about us us we about them. Yesterday we saw an island of ice. A tabular iceberg 6 miles long. That means it would take you about 2 hours to walk it's length...if it where perfectly flat...which it not...and if you could get on top of it...Anyway the berg was so big it formed a line of cloud on the horizon and we saw no end to it.





Photo1: The Iceberg extended as far as we could see into the horizon.

The VMPs have begun to work again (although we remain on our toes!)
and tonight we do our last CTD before landing in South Georgia early in the morning. As John gave you complete picture of the CTD sampling process yesterday, I thought I'd talk about what the CTD crew do while its in the water.




Photo2: Andrew - one of my fellow nerds - interpreting the Temperature and Salinity data streaming through (on the far right yellow is oxygen, pink is salinity, green is density and red is temperature, the horizontal lines are where we have triggered the bottles to close and trap the blob).


The CTD measure temperature, salinity and oxygen. As it descend to the sea floor, often 3-4km down on a very long wire, what it is measuring is displayed in real time on a bunch of screens we have around the place. Although I'd like to pretend it is like NASA headquarters in Houston...it is a bit more like the basement of a nerdy computer hacker. And the nerdyness doesn't stop with the décor. As the temperature and salinity are displayed we can gauge where the water is from. Going down in the water column we see cold water which was put there last winter when the ocean was churned up, below that we see salty water that came from the North Atlantic and below that...anyway we enjoy it.


We know roughly at what temperature and salinity the blob of tracer was injected into the ocean at. If it didn't mix up much at all we'd expect it to still be the same temperature and salinity. So the CTD crew are looking keenly for the right numbers to come up. When they do we sample  close the plastic bottles at and nearby. It is actually quite remarkable how little the blob is mixing. When the Tracer was in the pacific ocean it mixed vertically at such a slow rate you could have done a better job with a hand blender (Nerds only: my colleague Bill estimates that mixing a typical cubic kilometer of the deep ocean at a rate of 10 cms squared per second-which is what was measured-requires as much energy as a common hand mixer). It seems to be stronger where we are now but it is fascinating just how little it mixes. Brian, who was on the voyage that injected the blob keeps saying: "who would have thought that you could put 75kg of this stuff in the middle of the ocean and still go out and find it again 4 years later".




Photo3: One of our last CTDs before South Georgia with a not-so-Southern-Ocean-like swell.

When tonight's CDT came out of the water we where treated to perhaps the most majestical iceberg yet. It most likely melted from below then flipped over. The result, as Gwen suggested, looks like Neptunes Winter Palace.



Photo4: A special one.





Wednesday 10 April 2013

Day 26: adventures of an amateur in the Southern Ocean

Hi all

Sorry for the sudden slow down in posts - A combination of impossible
internet and post-polar-bear-apathy. We are cruising up the A25 line and
are getting back into the blogging now with...a twist! Here is a great
post from our on-board doctor, John. He's spent the last year or so in
South Georgia and below he gives us his perspective on this whole
oceanography caper.

Until tomorrow

Jan

Day 26: adventures of an amateur in the Southern Ocean

Three days have passed since the last blog post and there have been
disturbing reports in the news of high spirits and general unrest. As a
medical man, my diagnosis is of mass hysteria secondary to blog
withdrawal and associated anxiety.

Fear not. Despite extravagant reports and the usual partisan analysis of
journalists from London, Paris, New York and Pyongyang, there is nothing
to worry about. We're doing fine but have been so busy pushing back the
Frontiers of Science that we simply haven't had time to write. Indeed,
such are the demands of the work that Jan has had to retire to the bar
for a digestif after yet another 5-course dinner and so it falls to me,
the ship's doctor, to leave my customary spot (which Jan has just taken)
and give you an update on our progress.

When we left you last, we had just finished retrieving and re-deploying
a group of moorings, a noble struggle, as it turned out, between man and
ice, whale and camera. Since then we have returned to what seems to be
the bread-and-butter of oceanography, CTDs. Ah yes! CTDs - I know them
well! Well, as a matter of fact, now I do because whilst they are very
clever bits of kit – collecting water at specified depths in the ocean
and sensing all sorts of things as they go – the final step is to decant
the water out of them into sample bottles for analysis of whatever
happens to float you boat. And this is something that even a doctor can
manage as long as he's moderately sober.

The process is, as I say, relatively simple but perhaps it is worth
telling you a little bit about it to give an idea of the practical side
of the science work. The CTD is a large round structure, sometimes
called a rosette, on which 24 plastic bottles sit. These have stoppers,
top and bottom, which are held open by wires that latch onto hooks in
the middle of the CTD itself. The whole caboodle is chucked into the
sea, sorry, lowered carefully over the side of the ship on a large,
purpose-built gantry.

It is then lowered to whatever depth the scientists want to collect
water from. Using a computer programme, they can then trigger the
latches to release the wires holding the stoppers open. These close and
seal the water from that depth in the bottle. Each one of the 24 bottles
can be triggered independently and so water can be collected at
different levels in the water column. Then the whole caboodle is janked
back out of the drink, sorry, carefully recovered back on board the vessel.

This is where they let monkeys like me help. The CTD comes to rest in
the so-called 'water bottle annex' which, until I knew better, I thought
was where we went for a refreshing libation between vigorous games of
qouits and petanque. It isn't large but can accommodate a CTD and a
smattering of scientists and their simian assistants. It has the virtue
of a roller door – the kind of thing you see on the better class of
boozer – that comes in handy when the weather is rough.

It also has a radio that plays almost constantly a programme of static
interspersed with the songs you didn't want to hear. This keeps spirits
high as we get about our work. Water from each of the 24 bottles on the
rosette is transferred into sample bottles. This, the dark art of clear
water, is more complicated than it sounds. Great care must be taken to
ensure that there are no bubbles in the water as it flows into the
sample bottles. This is because the tracer that we (okay, they…) are
looking for normally exists as a gas at atmospheric pressure. It yearns
to break free from its watery prison and give it the slightest
opportunity – a friendly air bubble or tubulence at the surface of the
water as it collects in the sample bottle – and it will make a break for
it, never to be seen again. Or at least not to be seen in the sample
water that they analyse.

This analysis is done by a very clever machine. I was allowed into the
container in which it lives on the back deck. They only made that
mistake once because although I managed to leave it unscathed (neither
of us were hurt), I could not hide my clumsiness for long and even I had
to accept that my curiosity did not justify wasting years of their work.
I did manage to get some pictures of The Thing that goes beep, and all
sorts of other noises, and requires a regular diet of liquid nitrogen.
Feed Me Seymore! The Little Shop of Horrors doesn't even come close.
Yes, as you can see, I haven't the foggiest how it works and will have
to leave that to the experts to explain.

These scientists are not experts only in the art of blob chasing but are
talented artists as well. In particular the night shift, when not doing
battle with Scientific Frontiers, have taken to decorating our helmets.
Most of us now have the flag of our country of origin emblazonned in
electrical tape upon our nut cases (a technical term, you understand).
That origin may be where we were born or where we feel our spiritual
origin lies. For many years now, I have felt that I am in fact Ugandan
which is the reason that I sport their flag. It has nothing to do with
the fact that it was the most complicated flag design I could think of.
[Any other suggestions are welcome as some helmets remain to be
decorated and, with 3 weeks left to run, they need new challenges to
keep them awake at night. Answers on a postcard, please.]

Photo 1: A late night CTD comes on deck.

Photo 2: The static noise generator (perhaps it has something to do with
the dubious looking aerial).

Photo 3: John with the flag of his spiritual home carefully crafted by
the red-eye tracer team.

Photo 4: Water for the tracer-machine's insatiable thirst.

Photo 5: Many hands make light Sulfur-Penta-Flouride!