Antarctic sector of the trip is over. We completed the last polar
CTDs this morning, leaving the ice behind us. I'm grateful to have
had the proper day in the ice yesterday, an excellent way to say
goodbye to Antarctica. We are now doing a transect of 11 CTDs at 150E
heading north, and then heading back to Hobart for our scheduled 6th
February arrival. Hopefully we will see a few icebergs over the next
couple of days, a final glimpse of ice. We're already seeing
albatross, and the swell is also back. After 10 days of essentially
no swell at all due to the presence of ice, it's a strange and almost
new feeling; I'm sure it will take me a few days to get used to it
again - in the mean time I will continue to bash into doors and such.
The sun also made an appearance - pretty typical really, as soon as
we leave the ice, the sun comes out to play! Hopefully we will have a
few clear nights over the next few days to give us one last
opportunity to catch the aurora.
After my shift ended, I went into one of the labs to see what
biological delights were captured on a recent trawl. The basically
put a big net out the end of the ship, move along slowly, and see
what they find. I saw lots of diatoms under the microscope, and was
told that there is an abundance, meaning that they are not being
eaten by anything. I also saw some sort of anthropods (there are 400
species of these so I have no idea what one), and some krill. All
pretty interesting, and definitely makes a change from pH sampling.
The other day also learnt how to run salinty samples...all these
skills I'm getting may just get me back on another voyage :)
Well I should really go to bed now.
Current Latitude: -65.07007
Current Longitude: 149.99
Current Air Temp: -0.8C (-3.8C with wind chill)
Current Ocean Temp: 1.82C - already much warmer!
Wildlife: Albatross, and all the aforementioned trawl stuff
Sea Sicknes: I felt a little rough earlier - could have been due to
the swell, or could have just been an off day?
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