Well guys, as you can most probably tell, today is my birthday, and
what a fantastic place to celebrate the anniversary of my birth.
Today has probably been one of the hardest during my time on the
ship. With what seems to have become the norm, the day shift had 1
CTD, we had 6, so Adam and I were rushing around like crazy people,
doing the sampling and analyses. This was only made tolderable by the
fact that we had entered a zone of pretty high ice concentration
(probably old sea ice mixed in with bergy bits and such like) which
meant only one thing...PENGUINS! I was actually so excited to see the
penguins that I basically ran into the end of a hand rail, and wacked
my hand, which subsquently swelled up, and bruised! GREAT! It was all
good though, had the doc look at it and he said to just rest it (not
likely with 6 CTDs to do).
Back to the penguins. There were actually a lot of penguins about,
all of the Adelie variety. They all hang about on the old sea ice,
then the ship comes along, and they seem to panic, manically running
to and fro, and eventually jumping into the ocean to avoid being
squashed by a massive orange ship. It is sooo funny to watch.
Hopefully I will also see some Emperor penguins at some point, but I
am very happy to have seen some wild ones, and on my birthday
nonetheless!
At midday, the "social event" began and day off (for the day-shifters
anyway), which turned out to be a mini birthday celebration for me.
It consisted of a barbie on the trawl deck, overlooking the ocean and
ice; a pretty spectacular location for a birthday party. It even
started snowing pretty heavily for a while, so everyone was decked
out in their warm gear, munching away on burgers. After putting in a
request for apple crumble (having missed out on all the good desserts
as I'm in bed), we also feasted on crumble with cream, and a
poppyseed and orange birthday cake - YUMMY! To top it off, there was
alcohol available for consumption; being a "dry" ship, clearly
exccept for special occasions, this was much appreciated by
expeditioners and crew alike. It wasn't bottomless, but everyone had
a good time, and I even had happy birthday sang to me. Due to the
shift work, it is rare that everyone is all together, but the
birthday celebration was the perfect excuse to do so and it was just
really nice to be together with everyone. Definitely a birthday I
will remember - I mean how many people can say that they have
celebrated their birthday in Antarctica (or close enough).
It's now 3.45pm, past my normal bed time, so bon nuit!
Current Latitude: -66.2325 (it's approximately 40 nautical miles to
the coast!)
Current Longitude: 143.5989
Current Air Temp: -2.2 (-12C with windchill - a bitterly cold wind
that's for sure)
Current Ocean Temp: -0.72C
Wildlife: ADELIE PENGUINS!!!
Sea Sickness: none
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