Antarctic Diary 08.12.2007

Saturday, 08.12.2007: We solved our first station and are now heading
southward to the German polar research station "Neumayer II". We will
supply the 8 overwinterers with food, fuel and equipment. It is still one
week to go, until we reach the edge of the continental shelf-ice. But we
will reach the sea-ice within the next couple of days.
Until then we will work on our samples from the first station and create
plans for Christmas. It really gets chilly outside even though we are at a
latitude similar to northern germany. We already passed the polar front
and entered the circumpolar current, which isolates Antarctica from the
world's other oceans. Water temperature sank to less than 5°C. Yesterday
there was the first iceberg I saw in my life! It was the first impression
of the ice-desert we will face the next weeks and it was beautiful! Today
I saw even six icebergs, and tried to get good shots of birds like "Sooty
Albatrosses", "Antarctic Prions", "Giant Petrels", "Cape Petrels",
"Southern Fulmars", "Blue Petrels" or "Antarctic Storm-Petrels". So far I
did not see any whales.
Last night my professor Angelika and a ship-mate called Ekki celebrated
their Birthdays in the ship's equipment-store. At the beginning it was a
very strange athmosphere, as there seemed to be still quite an inner
distance between scientists and crew. This wall broke and it became a
fest! There was dancing and loughing and "the ice" between scientists and
crew melted.
The increasing waves and the rum made the dancing a pogo soon and as food
and glasses were flying through the room and it became too dangerous Ekki
made an end.

On the one picture Lydia (right), Saskia (center) and me stand on the
aft-deck of RV Polarstern next to our gear, the epibenthic sledge called
"Meta" and on the other picture you see a Sooty Albatross.

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.

Diary 28.11.2007

Mittwoch, 28.11.2007: Es ist wahr geworden. Irgendwie hatte ich mich nie
gewagt, davon auch nur zu träumen, aber nun bin ich auf der
FS-Polarstern!! Am 28.11. um 20 Uhr sind wir pünktlich in Kapstadt
abgelegt.
Da das Schiff wird genutzt ist mit Wissenschaftlern, Hubschrauber-Crew und
Wetterfröschen vom Deutschen Wetterdienst. Ich muss ich mit der
Isolierstation des Bordhospitals Vorlieb nehmen. Ich teile das Zimmer mit
zwei netten Kerlen in meinem Alter, Falk und Jens. Beide machen ganz was
anderes als ich, aber wir verstehen uns sehr gut. Gleich beim Auslaufen
hatten wir Windstärke 7. Das ist nicht sehr viel, gerade bei der Größe
dieses Dampfers, aber für den Anfang war das schon ganz ordentlich, sodass
ich die erste Nacht nicht besonders gut schlafen konnte.
Diese Fahrt bedient unter anderem das SYSTCO-Projekt, welches das
ehrgeizige Ziel verfolgt, Fachgebiete übergreifend Zusammenhänge zwischen
den Verschiedenen Lebensräumen von der Wasseroberfläche (oder sogar
darüber) bis zum Meeresboden zu finden. Besonders geht es darum, wo der
vom Phytoplankton gebildete organische Kohlenstoff durch das Nahrungsnetz
fließt.
Meine Aufgabe im Speziellen liegt im Probensortieren und heraussuchen von
Isopoden, mit denen ich in meiner Diplomarbeit arbeiten möchte und
Bivalven und Scaphopoden für eine Dame aus England. Ich arbeite
hauptsächlich mit dem EBS (Epibenthos-Schlitten). Das ist ein Gerät, mit
dem man den ersten Meter über dem Meeresboden in so gut wie jeder Tiefe
beproben kann und vor allem Tiere zwischen 0,5 und 10mm fangen kann.

Wednesday, 28.11.2007: It became true. Even though I never believed in
that, I am now a participant in a Polarstern-Cruise! Today we left Cape
Town in time and were at once confronted with harsh weather. 7 Bft. is not
that much, especially as we are on a huge ship, but it was enough to
disturb my sleep quite a lot.
A significant project of this cruise is allocated to SYSTCO- (System
Coupling in the Deep Antarctic Ocean). Its aim is, to simplify it a bit,
to find out about where organic carbon and other nutrients go, whom eats
whom and how different habitats from the surface of the ocean down to the
fauna living in the deep-sea's sediment are connected to each other.
I am on board to help sorting samples, especially from the Epibenthic
Sledge (EBS). This gear can be towed in almost every depth and catches
small macrofauna basically consisting of crustacean, polychaetes, molluscs
and more. I am also here to pick out Bivalves for a professor from the
British Antarctic Survey and to pick out isopods for Laura's PhD-studies
and my Diploma-thesis.

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The picture with me on it, sorting in the lab, was taken by Nils Brenke,
the picture of the sea-ice was taken by Jens Edinger and the "Penguins on
the iceberg" picture was taken by me.
Tschöö.. Torben

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This picture shows Nils and me...
Cheers.. Torben