Science
We have about 20 scientists on board. We will drop six of them off at Palmer station for the summer season. They will stay there for a few months, studying sea birds, cetaceans, krill and other things. The remaining scientists will continue on the cruise doing their oceanography. This is a brief description of the project:
“The chemistry of fossil diatoms, specifically their nitrogen and silicon isotopic ratio, reflects past changes in surface water nutrients and uptake by plants. Changes in sedimentary diatom nitrogen and silicon values from the Southern Ocean record to what degree ocean biology consumed nutrients in the surface ocean through time.”
There are diatom blooms throughout the ocean, in freshwater and in aquariums even. This trip they will be looking for a bloom in the northern study area, which is warmer at this time of year. Then follow the bloom to the colder south to gather samples to study further.
One of the grantees just defended her PhD thesis before she came down here. She gave a science lecture today, Spooky Southern Ocean - Investigating the biological pump with zombie diatoms. Theming it for the season of course. She is studying some type of Chaetoceros diatom. This presentation was taken from her thesis and among all the graphs and calculations, she had a slide of what vegetative Chaetoceros looks like in knitting. She is knitting a sweater with vegetative diatoms on the yokes, and resting diatoms across the bottom. She is also knitting socks depicting some of her calculations. One for data collected in west antarctica and one for data from east antarctica. She said that creating the knitting pattern for the resting diatoms was harder than any of the math in her thesis.
In other news, we went through some drift ice earlier today, which was exciting. There are lots of birds around and I saw a seal go by outside my window. I also saw a little pod of penguins later on when we were out of the ice. They were swimming so I couldn’t tell what kind they were. People thought chinstrap.
Here’s another porthole picture, with iceberg in the distance. This is taken with my phone and not manipulated at all. It looks like a colorized photo from 100 years ago and I like it. The white bars in the sky are reflections of light fixtures inside.
