It's been a hectic day on the ship. I went to bed last night with
hopes of waking up with nothing to do because of the camera
trawls...I was sadly disappointed. There had apparently been a
problem with the camera or the trawl, which meant they decided to do
the CTDs in another canyon system earlier, just as my shift started.
So with the previous shift having done nothing all day, we were
lumbered with 5 shallow CTDs which meant non-stop sampling and pH
analysis, with nothing for the day-shifters to do this shift. To make
matters worse, there is a "social event" tomorrow at 12, which means
another day off for day-shifters, and a normal day for us. This night
shift has the most unfortunate timing! It's all fun and games really!
It has felt like a proper Antarctic day today. Between the sampling
craziness, I managed to get outside to see that we appeared to be in
what I expected the Antarctic Southern Ocean to be. Lots of big
icebergs, with lots of "bergy-bits" everywhere. We seemed to be
surrounded by icebergs of some sort or another. Even better was that
it was lightly snowing, so the ship was covered with a light dusting.
Additionally, it was pretty damn cold, and so the data display tells
us that frostbite will occur if skin is exposed for >30 minutes! If
you remember, I stated up until now, frostbite was "unlikely", so I
was hoping that it would display a frostbite likelihood scale...sadly
not. Still, the fact that frostbite was possible made me happy, and
made it feel much more Antarctic-ey!
Lots of birds around today too, we must be in nutrient rich water. I
spent a bit of time on the bridge today looking up the names of the
species I have seen so far...let's see if I remember:
- wandering albatross
- black brow albatross
- royal albatross
- Southern fulmar
- Giant petrel (both colour morphs)
- Cape petrel
and perhaps a snowy/Antarctic petrel
I have probably seen more but these are the ones I see most often,
and having been outside for the past hour and half, I probably took
about 200 photos of some of them! Let's hope there are some good ones
Current Latitude: -65.8370 - The coast is only 1 degree lat away!!!!
Current Longitude: 143.1687
Current Air Temp: -1.9C (-12C with wind chill - it was flipping cold
up on the deck above the bridge)
Current Ocean Temp: -0.25!
Wildlife report above
No sea sickness
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