Diary 02.12.2007

Sunday, 02.12.2007: It is Sunday and after some day of building up laboratories and preparing first station, most of the scientists aboard RV "Polarstern" relax a little bit. We all by now became quite used to customs and rules on board.
If you want to know exactly where I am at the moment, visit the webpage http://www.awi-bremerhaven.de and look for the Polarstern. There you can find a cruise plot with our current position.
It is still four to five days to go, maybe more, as we are inside a high pressure system and have to steam against storm and waves. By now, just some groups have started their work. The plankton group has deployed the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR). This gear is towed behind the ship and needs no additional ship-time, except for the deployment and the heaving.
It will always be used between the stations as long as we are out of ice-covered areas and stays in the water all the time. Depending on speed and cable length, the depth to sample at can be adjusted. This gear was used since many years worldwide and catches zooplankton. It gives an
overview on species composition, abundance and distribution. On the "Peildeck" the Top- Predator-Group counts birds and whales. Unless the storm is too strong they stay there outside from dawn till dusk. Every day! This group also uses a towed gear, the „Surface and Under ice Trawl" (SUIT) which can also be used in ice-covered areas and consists of a very
impressing steel frame with car-wheels to roll underneath the ice and heavy weights. They try to investigate Top-Predators and their food from the surface of the water column.
Once we reach the first deep station, the ship will stay approximately at the same coordinates until all the work is done. During the stations a lot of different instruments will be deployed. There is gear that will just be lowered down to the deep-sea floor for example to measure physical parameters like currents, oxygen-content, CO2-content, salinity and temperature, but also to get water samples from different depths, or graps and corers to sample the sediment. We also have a Free-Fall-Lander and a Bait-Trap on board. Both throw off weights triggered by acoustical signals and float back to the surface. With the lander, e.g. oxygen-gradients can be measured in the bottom-surface layer. The traps are used to catch scavengers. When all this gear is done, trawled gear, like our EBS for benthic organisms or the "Rectangular Midwater Trawl" (RMT) for pelagic organisms like Krill is deployed. All together a station may last more than 36 hours.