The past couple weeks before our departure were spent preparing last minute items for the trip and packing. This included constructing benthic chambers that we have brought with us to the ice to deploy on the sea floor. The benthic chambers will be used to quantify the flux of methane from the seafloor over a 24-hour period. We will also take pore-water measurements from the chambers allowing us to see the concentration of methane, sulfur and oxygen at various depths within the sediment. To facilitate these research goals, the benthic chambers had to have various features that I’ll outline here. By working with the awesome people at the CEOAS Machine Shop (Ben Russel, John Simpkins and Tige Kurth) we were able to design the chambers using mainly stock PVC plastic and acrylic plastic tubes.

In designing the chambers, we had a few goals that we had to have many brainstorming sessions to figure out how to achieve. First, we had to make sure that we could gently mix the water periodically to avoid the sediment-water interface from becoming anoxic. It has to be a gentle mixing though, as stirring up sediment would skew our data. We also had to have outlets to sample the overlying water (through use of a gas tight septa) as well as holes for sampling of the pore water beginning at the top of the sediment and continuing at two centimeter increments down. We also had to ensure that the cap would have a gas tight fit so that we could have upmost confidence in our measurements of gas flux from the sediment into the overlying water.

Figuring out how to gently mix the water to avoid the development of anoxic conditions while also not disturbing the sediment was the most challenging task. Most designs employ use of a motor powered turbine, generally battery operated through water and pressure proofed connections. However, we knew that the best option for us would be non-electric – a difficult task to say the least. What we ended up designing can be seen in the animation that Ben Russel from the Machine Shop designed on solid works. It utilizes magnets to hold two propeller shaped pieces on either side of the lid of the benthic chamber. With manual movement (by us during dives) of the top magnetic piece, the bottom piece rotates accordingly gently mixing the water within the chamber.

In design of these chambers, I got to learn how to use the Lathe for facing, turning and drilling (machine shop lingo for smoothing the ends, countering the bottom, and creating even sides) the chamber tubes once they had been cut on the horizontal band saw. The lids for the chambers, including the outlets for the septa and o-ring groves, were designed in the CNC program and cut into the PVC plastic of the caps with precision by the machine. The ports for the rhizones that will allow for sampling the pore-water in vertical increments down the core were made with a simple drill press. Overall, it was really fun to work in the machine shop designing these chambers and learning how to use all the new equipment. Check back with us to see pictures of them deployed in the field!

WE MADE IT!  Needless to say it is a relief to be back to Antarctica after four years away.  It is somewhat like returning home again but really only in regards to it being a research home.  Upon arriving we get swept right into trainings upon trainings.  These are some of the more fluid items that change periodically and this year had some big changes.  Here is just a smattering of the trainings that both Sarah and I have to complete before we can head out into the field:

Science Inbrief – this one is pretty straight forward.  Hello, Welcome, Do good and don’t break rules.  Here are the names of people whom will be helping you but you will meet.  I’m always happy to see certain people in this meeting as I know that parts of my research will succeed.  Tony runs the mechanical shop (MEC) and provides our cool tracked vehicles and drills. Michael is in charge of shipping and one of the greatest (annoyances) challenges of science is dealing with shipping samples.  Both of these people have been here for decades and if they were not I would be worried.  They are here – sigh of relief.. and on to the next training.

CORE training (Classroom Vehicle training, Fire Safety, Waste Briefing, Medical Briefing) – Don’t get in a crash and drive slow.  Don’t burn the station down.  Throw stuff in the right trash. Don’t get sick and if you do come see the doctor.  Check!

Practical Vehicle training –  Here is the truck/ piston bully (tracked vehicle) and here is how you start it and don’t break it/ catch it on fire. Check!

Snowmobile training (standard) – This is a snowmobile. I usually avoid this training simply because I do not love snowmobiles down here.  They are a bit chilly and more than that we don’t dive out of them so largely this training is not something we will use. Not Check!

Crary Lab Safety Orientation – Don’t die of chemical burns and don’t mess up the environment. Check!

Meeting with Crary Lab IT to gain access to wireless network – We will let you check your email and update your blog now… Check and whoo hoo.

Environmental Field Brief  – Antarctica is delicate don’t mess it up! Check (well not really… that’s Tuesday but I look forward to getting it checked)

FST Training Classes – This is how you don’t get hurt by Antarctica as she is an unforgiving beast.  For me this was a day course and for Sarah a day course plus an additional day getting instructed how to be safe on the sea ice (I’ve taken the sea ice course three times before so just got the PPT refresher).

MacOps Pre-Field Communications Briefing – This is how you use a radio and who to call.  Check!

Science Sample movement from the field to McMurdo – Pretty self explanatory in the name…

MOCA (McMurdo Operations Cargo Application) – This is the database that will let you ship samples off continent and back where they need to be.

Lab Waste Briefing – How to dispose of lab waste. In Antarctica this is more specifically, how do you put lab waste into a waste stream so it can be shipped off continent.  There is ZERO waste disposal in Antarctica (with the exception of effluent from the sewage treatment plant – but not the solids from it.  Those get shipped off as well).

MEC Allocation – Here are your drills, chainsaws, and anything else you may need.

BFC Allocation – The BFC is where we get field supplies that are not motors.  This is everything from survival bags (fingers crossed we never use them) to toilet paper.

Communications Equipment Allocation – Here are your radios! Check.

Dive Operations – This is the introduction to diving in Antarctica and how the dive locker runs.  Not listed but part of this is also a check out dive.

Implementer – I guess I haven’t done this one yet since I have no idea what it means… getting there.

All in all the trainings take around 6 business days. The good news is that there is only one non-business day in Antarctica and that is Sunday.

I will also say that the internet connection this year is not what it used to be so we will be updating the blog as we get intermittent windows of good internet but those currently seem to be rare.  This blog, for example, was supposed to post weeks ago but we haven’t been able to get it on line.

Since then this happened:

 

After two days of delays we have finally made it to Antarctica! I know our journey was easy compared to the stories I have heard of past travels south but I was so excited to make it to the ice that the whole time I felt like it was the biggest struggle. After all the delays when we got brought in to the

CDC for the second time (Center for Clothing Distribution for the U.S. Antarctic Program) I was trying to not get my hopes up of arriving on continent that day, but no matter the effort I was still day dreaming about what it would feel like when we arrived in Antarctica the whole waiting period. When the Sargent came in and told us it was time to prepare for our pre-departure briefing I was still trying to restrain my excitement, knowing that even if we got on the plane we could be boomeranged back to Christchurch at any point… even if we had already made it to McMurdo airspace. Before I knew it we were all donning our ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear and boarding the bus to the C-17 that would be (hopefully) taking us all the way to McMurdo Station, Antarctica.

As a quick aside, the ECW gear is bulky, warm and makes you feel like a real Antarctic explorer. It includes ‘bunny’ boots which you can see me wearing in the picture below. It takes a little getting used to before you can walk in them at a normal speed and even then you have a bit of what a ‘gangster-like swagger’ to your walk. The jacket is fittingly known as ‘big-red’ – it is super warm and cozy and probably my favorite thing in the collection.

In preparation for our journey I had spent a lot of time excitedly googling images of what things would look like including the plane ride. Because of that, when I got on the C-17, and it looked exactly like what I had saw in pictures, everything just felt right and it really hit me that 5-6 hours from then I should be stepping foot on the Antarctic ice for the first time in my life. I grabbed a seat up near the front, put in my ear plugs (the planes are not insulated so it is very, very noisy) and prepared for departure. The ride itself was a lot smoother than I was expecting and we even got a brown bag lunch with not one but two sandwiches. There was a small window on the side of the plane you could walk over to during the flight and look out at, once we got over the ice I kept walking over there because I thought it was so cool to watch how the sea ice changed in look the closer we got to McMurdo and there were cool islands and mountain ranges you could see.Towards the end of the flight they started letting us walk up into the flight deck allowing us to see the whole panoramic view of Antarctica. It was totally and completely amazing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once we were about 20 minutes away everyone had to put on all the ECW gear, and I started to get butterflies I was so excited. Landing on the ice was a different experience entirely, it took a lot longer to slow down and you could feel how much the wheels were skidding on the ice. When the plane finally halted, a Sargent moved over to open the door and I put on my sunglasses and grabbed my camera and bags.

I was lucky to be close enough to the front that I could see the door and I’ll never forget that first view from out of the plane door. I remember seeing the flaggers in the distance without a single inch of skin out, which made total sense to me once I felt what -20 degrees Celsius air feels like. I could barely restrain myself from running to the door I was so excited to step out onto the ice.  When I was walking towards the bus that would take us from the Pegasus landing strip to McMurdo I just kept turning in circles looking at all the mountains and islands against the flat, expansive ice sheet. I felt like it was a hard thing for my brain to take in, the everything and nothingness of it all. I don’t think that has stopped yet, even as I write this I keep pausing to look out the lab window at the sea ice leading up to the Royal Society Mountain Range. Every time I look at it, it looks different. I guess that’s what keeps people coming back here over and over again. It is more majestic than my wildest imagination dreamed.

 

 

 

We have embarked on our expedition and taken the short jaunt from Corvallis, Oregon USA to Christchurch, New Zealand.  There are a few routes to get here but we went by way of Sydney, Australia so from departure on the first flight until landing in New Zealand was ~28 hours. While that is a long time, our flights were easy and comfortable and we even caught some sleep.  The time change is 20 hours between NZ and the west coast of the US so we are a bit confused by the day night cycle but its great to be on our way.

Christchurch is always a great place to be.  The botanical garden is among the nicest places to go for a walk with the local birds singing and plants you see few other places.  Plus, having left fall in the northern hemisphere and found spring in the southern hemisphere all the plants are happy and blooming.

After a day of getting fitted with our ECW gear (extreme condition weather gear) we were turned loose on the city to see the sites.  However a scientist is rarely “done” and so part of that was sitting in our hotel rooms catching up on the myriad of work that doesn’t end just because you are not on the same continent that your job is.

Today, (Tuesday NZ time and Monday US time) we checked all of our gear in for the flight and just made the weight cut off. We are allowed (each) 85 lbs of checked luggage so needless to say, I had 85 lbs exactly and Sarah had 84 lbs.  Thankfully they don’t weight our carry on since we both are essentially carrying bricks worth of scientific gear.

The next part of the day is waiting to take off.  Now if you are used to being on a commercial airline this is a different beast entirely.  We wait for the planes to show up and to get the OK from weather and in many cases this is not a quick processes.  Currently we have been waiting at the terminal for four hours and have been bumped off the fast planes (C-17, C-5, or an Airbus) onto the slow plane (LC-130).  The LC-130 is super cool since it has skis on it but it means instead of a 5 hour flight we are looking at 8 hours.  This also bumps us into a forecast wind event and so might mean we don’t leave at all.  We are just in limbo for the near future and at the moment… Ok – never mind. We just got told we are not flying today.  Now we wait to find out where we are staying tonight and then we repeat tomorrow.  Hopefully with an early flight to the ice but we won’t know that we made it until we land on the ice runway.

 

After a 4 year break the Cold Dark Benthos Team is headed south again.  On October 21st we depart for New Zealand en route to McMurdo to start a new project which we hope will inform us all about methane cycling in the Antarctic.  Over the past few months we have been gearing up and training up for the expedition.  Our team will again be a small one including myself and Sarah, a graduate student in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences here at Oregon State University.  Rory (our previous partner in science) has moved on having completed his PhD.

So a quick catch up – it has been a summer of challenging diving. The visibility on the Oregon and Washington coasts have been at an all time low and so for getting in our requisite training dives we have had to endure not really seeing much of each other.

This was in the better visibility that we had.  We also experienced a Mysid storm (equivalent of a Sharknado but much smaller) diving off Port Orford:

And then finally we got to do some good dives in the Newport aquarium, including getting the chance to ‘put it all together’ meaning that Sarah dove in drygloves, drysuit, three hoods, and Antarctic level of insulation. She was careful not to move too much since she was overheating even though the water was a (balmy) 50 degrees F.  All in all a success and we are now just waiting on tickets and departures… a little over three weeks to go.

 

Well I would like to say I did extraordinary and exciting things today. In reality, i mostly wrapped loose ends associated with research in far flung places on the globe. Customs paperwork, lots of packing and cleaning, and a bit more of all of that is on the menu for tomorrow as well. This is what I have to show for it. Four boxes of research gear and (not shown) 8 sample containers and a freezer full of items ready to travel with me home. At the end of the day i was rewarded with a wonderful view of the discovery mountain ranges being lit by extraordinary light.

In the last post I pointed out that it was pretty warm out. I spoke to soon.

The weather stayed sunny but the wind has picked up and this late in the season there is nothing in the way of shelter as we get ready to get in the water. It may be a balmy -2C (28 F) in the water but with windchill at -20 C, it is still a bit cold to have exposed hands when getting suited up. When finally putting on my dry gloves they don’t really fit mostly because both they and I are frozen. However once in the water comfort takes over again and back to science we go.

The timing of this project worked out perfectly. The visibility is rapidly improving and is already up to around 100ft. Here is a close up of the worm tubes which are still in full form. Note the brownish hue on the sediment. That is likely the benthic diatoms that are still blooming away.

These are some of the most abundant types of infauna, they are sand anemones called Edwarsia. I had always thought that this was how they always lived but I discovered that they actually burrow around sideways just below the sediment surface in most of the cores. While the are not as numerically as abundant as the spionid polychaetes, they may provide more biomass.

Terril was my dive buddy again. Here he is lite from above by the bright sunny summer day that is awaiting him. You can also see the tether that connects us.

It is strange to be staring out at a frozen ocean, wearing a t-shirt and sweating. That was sort of my day.

After a whirl wind lab setup yesterday, today’s goal was samples. The first task was to get out to our dive hole and re-open it. Thankfully the divers down here have been looking after me (Terril and Martin). Just before the ice “closed” (i.e. no more vehicles or people are allowed on the sea ice as it was too thin/ warm/ both) they drilled a gigantic hole. A normal hole is ~3ft across and there is plenty of room for a diver. This one is a clover leaf of those same holes so it is essentially ~7ft across. It would make a lovely hot tub if it wasn’t still -2 C in the water. They also have been chipping it and keeping an eye on it – every bit of it I am thankful for. I was concerned I would come down here with a hole that once existed and a chainsaw to make it exist again. Chainsawing ice looks great when people make center pieces out of it. When you are chainsawing down, into a frozen ocean, it looks more like a fountain. Its quite pretty. However you are in the center of the fountain getting a bath in freezing water, and its rarely warm out to begin with. So again. I am thankful for the work that they put in to make my life easier.

We only chipped half the hole out, as that was still plenty. The other good news is that the plankton bloom has passed and so the visibility is already improving. When I was here before the visibility went from ~ 1000ft down to a measly 400 ft and then I left. After I left, the visibility dropped to ~7ft and now it is back up to around 60ft. This makes life much easier as I can easily see my sites from the bottom of the hole. We are still diving ‘tethered’ in that we are connected to the surface with a line to make it easier to find again since we can’t actually see the hole from where we are working. We dive with two people on the same tether (or floating rope, it could also be called) where one person manages the tether while the other works.

The sites that I marked out in early September are still there and I was back coring the mud by about 2 o’clock this afternoon. I am not sure but I think it may be near a record to only be on station for two days and already be collecting samples.

Ahh back to the weather. As we have to walk out to our dive site, wearing gear meant for cold water, we get warm. Really warm. As the ice is not good enough to support a vehicle and to spread the weight of our tanks and weight belts we haul them out on sledges behind us. The sleds with tanks et al, weigh somewhere around 230 pounds for two so that would be a lot of extra strain on the ice if we were to just wear it. So hauling 230 pounds in a sled across ice, wearing a drysuit, is well. Not dry. This also means that we have no hut to dive out of, but because it is so warm this is not an issue at all.

On the Dive I collected 12 great cores (well 10 great cores and two that are good enough) and that means the science season is officially open for me. A great feeling after flying some 8 thousand miles from home and taking the better part of a week in some stage of travel.

In true Antarctic fashion – I made it here but not quite as planned.

After what seemed like way too easy travel days, both my luggage and myself connected easily to all of my connections without extra long lay overs and I and my equipment arrived in Christchurch no worse for the wear.

Christchurch was a beautiful city. I have many fond memories of my early travels to the ice and the time there and one of the best parts of it is the botanical garden – in full bloom now as it is the height of summer. The rose garden was amazing but I am often most struck by the green leafs of plants I have not seen before, such as this one.

After a day getting settled I showed up at the Clothing Distribution Center to depart on Saturday. After checking my bags and watching safety videos about the antarctic, we got put on a hour mechanical delay (i.e. something wasn’t working on the plane). This turned into a 24 hour delay which unfortunately put us into a weather delay. McMurdo received something along the lines of 12 inches of snow in 24 hours.

However bright and early today, I re-watched those same safety videos and boarded one of the LC -130s. These are prop planes that can take off using skis or wheels and can land just about anywhere. The less good part of them is that they are quite a bit slower and instead of a rapid 4-5 hour flight south, in these it takes closer to 8 hours. Originally we were supposed to take a C-17 (one of the faster planes) but they require a better runway and while this was all set – a storm came in and blew volcanic dust all over the runway. The dark material on the surface of the snow made it melt and so the nice smooth runway became a crater field… hence the LC-130.

We landed with no problems and I found myself in a nice warm overcast day in the antarctic. The weather is a warm -2C, which is warmer than it was in Oregon when I left home a little less than a week ago.

I was thankfully able to skip many of the normal briefings and got right to setting up the lab.