New Year in Antarctica!

The science team woke up this morning to the news of the first sighting of sea ice. Sea ice was spotted at 7:45hrs local time from the bridge. Today, our group sat at three different meetings one of which was a practice CTD sampling exercise. The sampling protocol involved three distinct groups who need to work in consort to efficiently use their time during sampling .

The planned test deployments of the CTD/Rosette and TMC Rosette for today, Saturday went well. The schedule was for the Hydro-group (i.e. Team Klinck) to muster in the Baltic room for training on oxygen, nutrient, and salt sampling at 10:00hrs.  At 13:00hrs Klinck, Smith, and Bibby teams mustered in the 03 Conference Room for a discussion on CTD sampling work flow.

 In the afternoon at 1430 CTD test cast and TMC test cast
 were carried out and went well.   The day ended with discussion of the sampling protocols and the practice adjourned until tomorrow at 10:00hrs.

On Sunday, January 1^st, we’ll have a special lecture from Al Hickey entitled Doctors without borders in Ethiopia at 1300hrs in the 03 Conference Room.

The holiday party committee is currently working hard to throw a New Year’s  party in just a few hours where yummy snacks and mocktails will be served. Remember there is absolutely no alcohol policy on the boat! While the committee is preparing for the festivities some of us are blogging away!

Happy New Year everyone! 

Prep work

The science team held yet another PRISM seminar today after lunch at 13:00rs local time and this time it was given by Blair Greenan (Bedford Institute of Oceanography) on Mixing and Upwelling in a Sargasso Sea Mode-Water Eddy. Blain and his team will be duplicating the same experiments here in the Ross Sea using a number of sensors mounted on a seahorse. While awaiting to get to our sampling site in the Ross Sea, everyone in the science team is doing pretty much their own stuff in preparation for the big event. The Hydrography group, which I belong to, has been involved with ping editing of multi-beam ADCP data, running tide prediction models (global and for the Ross Sea) and working on some related data collection protocols. Tomorrow our group, together with the plankton and primary production groups, will partake in a demo CTD/sample collection for nutrients, salts, oxygen, chlorophyll , protein, etc. analysis.

Tomorrow night, among other things, around 10:30pm local time we will be celebrating the end of the year and the ushering in of a brand new one!

Happy Holidays everyone!

PRISM Seminars

Nathaniel B. Palmer (NBP) left Punta Arenas, Chile on December 24th at 10:00am and meandered around the southern tip of the South American continent (The Strait of Magellan) and after a couple of days of non-stop cruising we hit the Drake Passage which in itself was an exciting experience. 

The science group on board of NBP thus far hosted four separate PRISM seminars after a general overview of the project by Dennis McGillicuddy (WHOI). The seminars were given by John Klinck (ODU), Pete Sedwick (ODU), Walker Smith (VIMS) and Tom Bibby (University of Southampton). The speakers all brought different perspectives to the table  spanning from the physical oceanography of the Ross Sea to the biogeochemistry/nutrient dynamics and primary production.  

We are currently approaching the Antarctic Circle and a "crossing ceremony" will be held as part of the tradition. Stay tuned on this and other developments.

Drake Passage

Currently we're crossing the Drake Passage.  Follow our cruise by clicking 'our position' on the right hand side of this blog. The winds appear to have subsided over the last few hours but we are expecting strong winds (and thus bigger waves) tomorrow morning (local time).