Auf Wiedersehen "Neumayer II"!

Mittwoch, 16. Januar
Auf Wiedersehen, "Neumayer II"!
Seit ca. zwei Wochen war die "Polarstern" dabei, gegen eine unnahbare Festung aus Eis zu kämpfen, und wenig Fortschritt zeigte sich Tag für Tag. Die Wissenschaftler an Bord dieses Forschungseisbrechers entwickelten langsam Unmut. Einige Stationen waren sowieso schon verloren gegangen, als wir zum zweiten Mal in die Atka-Bucht gerufen wurden. Nun schien es noch am Montagnachmittag, als ob das Ziel in weiter Ferne läge. Mitten in der Nacht zum Dienstag, gegen 02:00 Uhr näherte sich die Geburtstagsfeier zweier Mitglieder der Wissenschaft und eines Helikoptertechnikers langsam dem Ende. Unverhofft wurde auf einmal die erfreuliche Nachricht in das „Zillertal", die Bord-Bar der "Polarstern" getragen, die Polarstern habe die Schelfeiskante erreicht. Ich konnte es nicht glauben! Nach einigem Zögern bin ich in meinen Polaranzug geschlüpft und an Deck gegangen.
Tatsächlich, wir hatten es geschafft. Ein Anleger war geschaffen, so groß, dass, unserem Kapitän Uwe Pahl nach, die "Queen Mary" dort anlegen könnte. Mir, wie vielen anderen an Bord, fiel an diesem Sonntag ein riesiger Stein vom Herzen. Nicht nur das Millionenprojekt "Neumayer III", sondern auch unsere Forschung ist, zumindest zum Teil, gerettet.
Mir blieben nur wenige Stunden Schlaf, bis mich der Fahrtleiter Uli Bathmann per Telefon auf das Helikopterdeck bat. Der Helikopter war bereits in der Luft, als ich auf dem Landedeck eintraf. An Bord: unser Kapitän und der Kapitän der "Naja Arctica". Sie waren unterwegs, um die Eignung der Eiskante zum Entladen der neuen Forschungsstation von dem dänischen Frachtschiff zu überprüfen.
Zum zweiten Mal durfte ich Uli bei der fotografischen Dokumentation der Situation vom Helikopter aus unterstützen. Beim ersten Mal vor zwei Wochen ging es darum, die besonders schwere Eissituation vor Beginn der ganzen Aktion zu erkunden und festzuhalten. Dieses Mal ging es darum, den Erfolg der mühsamen und akribisch geplanten Operation zu dokumentieren. Die Polarstern hat einen 3,6 km langen und mehrere 100 m breiten Kanal in die Atka-Bucht gerammt, genug Platz für die „Naja Arctica" zum Manövrieren.
Gegen Mittag haben wir Abschied genommen. Ein bisschen Wehmut ist schon dabei – wer weiß, ob ich diesen Ort jemals wieder sehen kann? Aber allgemein herrscht Aufbruchstimmung. Der letzte Abschnitt der Reise beginnt und wir wollen alles rausholen, was uns die kommenden Stationen bieten.
Der Torben

We did it! Good bye "Neumayer"!

Ramming towards the shelf ice

This night to Sunday, the two Belgian participants of the cruise, Katja and Henri, organised the "Belgian Night 2008" and had brought a whole box of different types of Belgian Beer to taste. They also served French fries of fresh potatoes. This was a very nice event and the bar was crowded. On Sunday, 13th of January we were caught between the fast ice and heavy pack ice and the storm was up to 9 bft. We had no chance except from drifting westward. This day was the first day for me to recognise that I was counting the coming days on "Polarstern" backwards. We did not have stations to do for many days, some scientists on board became afraid of loosing all planned stations and this also was topic in most of the chatting going on.
For getting some alternatives in the daily program, I decided to organise a small and private "The Blues Brothers" night. The plan was, to sit on the cosy sofas in the Blue Salon ant watch the movie on the laptop. Dress code: Sunglasses! But soon, a lot more friends were aware of that and I decided to relocate that event to the seminar room. The scenery of men with sunglasses, with faces like stone, sitting together in a dark room was very funny. Somehow the word was spread all over the ship and some people just went by and heard the movie and suddenly the room was full.
And most of the people realised quickly, what was going on and went out again to fetch their sunglasses. This was a nice evening. Until Tuesday, 15th of January, I could not believe that we would have another scientific station. Daily progress seemed so small. And the storm had filled up the canal with pack ice again. But after the storm last weekend a huge ice flow was broken off the canal's eastern side.
"Polarstern" broke that flow to pieces and pushed them out of the canal carefully. Once this was accomplished, the icebreaker could turn easily within the double sized canal. The strategy of ramming was changed by captain Pahl: From now on, ice was scraped off the fast ice edge by 45°
ramming, interrupted by straight ramming every now and then. As three people had birthday this and the coming day, some celebration took place and almost no one noticed that within some hours we reached the shelf ice edge and even a large landing site was prepared. Only some hours of sleep remained, until chief scientist Uli woke me up by phone call: "I'd like you to be on the heli deck in 30 to 45 minutes. Better 30!" "Ok!" The message was clear. I got my equipment together, erased data from my camera's memory, changes batteries and was ready for take off. I was and still am overwhelmed by this opportunity Uli gave me again and I am very thankful for that. This time we used the helicopter to show the success of this two-week operation. Big relief could be felt on board as most scientists could hope for stations. And the AWI also is very happy now, as the unloading of "Naja Arctica" and the construction of "Neumayer III" can finally start now. A lot of pressure fell off the shoulders of the captain and Uli, I think. `"Polarstern" in the canal, close to the "Nordanler" ice edge´. That was the message, our pictures were supposed to give to the AWI and to the press. Around midday we left Atka Bay and headed for the first station of the final transect of this cruise. Saying goodbye to "Neumayer", Atka Bay and the shelf ice made me feel a little bit sad. Who knows if I will ever see this panorama again? But looking forward, there is hopefully another deep-sea station. And last but not least, I am getting excited coming home again.
Today is Friday, 18th. We are in Minke Whale country. Angelika was lucky to help with the helicopter counting today as we passed an ice free area with many Minke Whales. We passed that area before and Bram and Victoria saw those whales jumping and playing. I still got lots of work to do. Many samples wait to be sorted and many isopod legs wait to be dissected. Hopefully see you soon!
Yours, Torben

Another trawl

On Saturday, 12th of January "Polarstern" had to abort the operation for a while as a storm with winds from the east and northeast was approaching. The risk of getting caught in the canal by heavy pack ice was too high. While waiting for the storm, we got the chance to deploy another bottom trawl in 600m depth. The catches were very rich and impressing. There was "Icefish", giant isopods, millions of crinoids and much more. There was no chance to get lunch or coffee break that day as we had to process and fix most of the samples immediately. Other animals, especially isopods and amphipods could be kept alive in sea water aquaria in cooling containers.
I had the chance to intensively use my mini aquaria to take pictures of a lot of crustaceans. This day Saskia and me had to present a talk about isopod phylogeny. Saskia did the main part and I presented some thoughts about my upcoming diploma thesis. Indeed, compared to both previous talks on board I felt very uncomfortable before and during this talk. On the one hand I was exhausted due to the all day's hard work, on the other hand there are a lot of uncertainties concerning my thesis. Well, there is still some time to think about all that.

Helicopter ice dokumentation

Hello again!

As I did not write anything for a while, I will summarize, what has happened during the last two weeks. And a lot of things have happened. On Sunday, 06th of January the second transect of scientific stations has been interrupted. It had been decided that "Polarstern" had to steam back
to Atka Bay to break the ice for the Danish freighter "Naja Arctica". This ship had arrived at the same position in the fast ice of Atka Bay at which we had accomplished the unloading of supply for "Neumayer II" around 17th of December. Since then it was waiting.
"Naja Arctica" carried all the parts, equipment and cranes for the construction of the new German Antarctic research station "Neumayer III" and time was running due to the upcoming winter.
On our way to the southwest, at 7th of January, 25 members of the construction team for "Neumayer III" were brought to "Polarstern" by helicopter. They had come through a lot of trouble as originally it was planned to bring them directly to their camp at "Neumayer". But until then their camp was still on "Naja Arctica" and unloading was impossible for most parts, as those were too heavy. They were brought to the Russian station "Novo" then to the South African station "Sanae IV". There they had a good time until the supply vessel "SA Agulhas" reached the station with supply and lots of researchers. Construction team was exchanged for researchers as space was scarce and from then on until we took them, they stayed at the South African ship. For one day they lived in the equipment room and the Blue Salon of "Polarstern" and then were brought to "Neumayer".
At this day Bram made an announcement to all via intercom. "There are Killerwhales in front of the ship. Orcas!" 30 seconds later about 50 people were standing on the upper decks of "Polarstern" and a huge family of about 30 orcas passed by.
In the morning of Wednesday, 9th of January we reached "Naja Arctica" to supply them with fresh water. At this day the scientific leader of this cruise, Uli Bathmann, asked me to help with photographic documentation of the ice situation. I felt very honoured. Equipped with two dSLR cameras with different lenses I entered the helicopter and an impressive flight began at the early afternoon. Aim was, to get overview images from Atka Bay, from the ice cover at the "Nordanleger" and to take pictures of the construction site and the camp of the construction camp. Before that, the "Nordanleger", a shelf ice area on the western flank of Atka Bay had been
chosen as the best opportunity to reach the shelf ice edge. This was a very nice opportunity for me and I could feel a big pressure to produce good pictures. As Uli did not comment that much about the quality later on, I suppose I did my job ok.
The same day, "Polarstern" started to penetrate the ice. Direction: "Nordanleger". And it was a very hard work. Ice cover was variable and also the snow cover on top. Mean ice cover was maybe 40cm at the beginning and increased towards the shelf ice to 1.9m. But at ridges the thickness was up to several meters. At these rough structures and also towards the shelf ice, snow cover got more and more and reached a mean of 75cm. Snow was sticking to the ship's hull and was like a strong break. It consumed a lot of the speed and power while ramming.
The plan was, to ram two discrete canals more than 100m apart from each other. The ice in between was supposed to break away in big flows. At the end the canal should have been as big as to allow the ice be driven out by winds and to allow the "Naja Arctica" to manoeuvre. This plan worked well at the beginning. But as we penetrated the fast ice more and more, all the
ice and snow made up a dense stew and acceleration to necessary ramming speed got impossible. We could have used winds from the south but except from some help from the tide, nature did not give any help. At some days we did not make more than 90m progress and the distance was about two miles at the beginning.

Frohes Neues Jahr!

Willkommen in 2008!
Montag, 31.12.2007: Es war der letzte Tag des Jahres, in den wir uns hineingearbeitet haben. Wir befanden uns auf der ersten wirklich tiefen Station, auf der auch die Geräte eingesetzt wurden, die der Tiefsee wirklich bis auf den Grund gingen, um einen Einblick in die absolute
Dunkelheit zu ermöglichen. Zwischen dem Schiffsrumpf der "Polarstern" und dem Meeresboden lagen etwa 5300m!
Seit dem Vorabend war der Epibenthosschlitten "Meta" auf dem Weg nach ganz unten. Die Prozedur dauerte etwa acht Stunden. Bis er wieder an Deck kam, mussten die Proben des zuvor geschleppten Gerätes fixiert werden. Das Trawl brachte etwa zwei Tonnen Sediment, oder einfach gesagt Schlamm, an Bord. Dann hieß es warten. Die von den Zoologen eingesetzten Fanggeräte sind robust. Bei einigen anderen, wie etwa der Tiefseekamera oder sensiblen Messinstrumenten, haben die Wissenschaftler den Kampf gegen die über 500bar Überdruck verloren. Defekte Geräte und unvollständige Daten trübten die Stimmung.
Als "Meta" die Wasseroberfläche durchstieß wurde klar: Auch sie hat hauptsächlich Schlamm mit hoch gebracht. Bis der Fang gesiebt, das Deck geschrubbt war und die Proben sortiert und fixiert waren, dauerte es Stunden. Es schneite. Ein Bild von dieser Arbeit habe ich mitgeschickt.
Das Frühstück und ein Saunagang tauten die Körper wieder auf. Wir waren müde, doch zum Schlafen blieb wenig Zeit, schließlich wollte die Silvesterfeier vorbereitet sein. Ab 16Uhr war die Stationsarbeit abgeschlossen. Das Schiff machte sich auf den Weg zum Transekt auf 3°Ost, damit pünktlich Neujahr-Morgen die Arbeit auf der nächsten Station beginnen konnte.
Im festlich geschmückten Geräteraum wurde abends zum Spanferkel geladen. Auch "Dinner for One" fehlte im abendlichen Programm selbstverständlich nicht. Dieses Jahr fand die erste "Polarstern-Olympiade" statt. In 17 Teams traten 34 Wissenschaftler und Crewmitglieder, zufällig zusammengelost, gegeneinander in fünf lustigen Disziplinen an. Die Stimmung stieg schnell und die kurzen Nächte der letzten Tage waren bald vergessen. Zur Begrüßung des Jahres 2008 stießen wir alle auf der Brücke an. Ein imposanter Ausblick auf das Meer, vorbeiziehende Eisberge und das geblasene Horn entschädigten für das südlich von 60°S verbotene Feuerwerk. Bei Tanz und Musik im Geräteraum wurde das neue Jahr willkommen geheißen und 2007 verabschiedet. Soviel ersteinmal.
Bis bald.. der Torben