The journey goes on

March 11, 2017

We have been at sea for more than two weeks after our last port (Punta Arenas). We have visited South Georgia islands, passed by South Sandwich islands and are now at Bouvetoya. These are the three archipelagos/islands we visit – the rest of the journey will be through open waters.

We have experienced all kinds of weather, lived through a hell of a storm, had snow, hail, calmness;  saw icebregs (but no sea ice this leg). It has been busy. The other day I was working in my “office” on the 4th deck (with windows) and I was so busy I forgot to look outside. What a lousy meteorologists! Thanks to our ship’s photographer passing by and mentioning the light and the clouds – I quickly ran outside and snaped this picture:

I have to say my life only got more busy. On top of my usual daily routine of sampling CTDs and underway (which I now have great help from our new team member Alex)  and launching radiosondes and collecting atmospheric data …. So on top of all this I’m starting to fill out custom declarations for all our cargo to return to various labs and institutes in Europe and US. It’s a tedious  task, as I have a lot (and I mean A LOT) of equipment and just general STUFF. It was really useful to have all I need, but it will be a pain to locate and to pack. It also snowed quite a bit between South Georgia and South Sandwich islands, and I had to postpone my packing efforts to sample.

I also tried to collaborate with our photographer to get his help with macro-images of snowflakes, but it was not cold enough for snow flakes to last. As soon as we lit them with any kind of light they melted. So at the end of the day all our efforts resulted in wasted time.
I expressed my frustration with an interpretative dance catching snow flakes on slides on heli deck:

At lease I hope the slides I collected will be useful.

Now I need to input all my slides into the data base and pack all my snow equipment ASAP as more packing awaits. Wish me luck!!!

Thanks for reading,
Masha

Leg three, the beginning

February 28

I have to admit that I’m starting to “lean north” as we used to say in McMurdo. I am ready to go home and sleep a little bit. Although sleeping on a non-rocking bed would be hard.
During the stop-over in Hobart I had the bestest time with my Australian friends, I smelled the trees and played with kids and felt rejuvenated. I had to do some work during the Punta Arenas stop-over. I also did not get to stay off the ship, so I slept in my cabin even in port. And honestly – maybe it’s for the best. Going back to ship after a night in a real bed would have been that much harder.

That said our first day at sea was really smooth and peaceful. We observed the solar eclipse in the morning (see my previous post) and had one of the most spectacular sunsets.

We did our first CTD station on February 27 and then did another station on February 28. The second one was shorter and only our project sampled the water from it – so it got designated “Masha station” on the white board in the expedition office.

I told you I will become an oceanographer ;)

Launchings radiosondes

February 15

We had a few really busy days on Tryoshnikov. We have been transecting through the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Seas, stopping for ocean stations every day. We have also been sampling underway and launching XBTs into the ocean. At the same time we were launching quite a few radiosondes into the atmosphere to study the precursors of the atmospheric river conditions.

As a result, Irina and I have been working quite a lot and I did not have time to update my blog for a couple of days. But I also got a few pictures of me working (thanks to Irina and other colleagues, who I gave my phone to take pictures). So here’s a collage of me preparing and then launching a radiosonde:

And here's an entry from my gradnfather's journal dating back to February-March 1960 in Mirny. As I’m writing this on the first relatively “calm” day after a few non-stop work days, I can totally relate the relaxing atmosphere of life at Mirny station and I am grateful to learn how much respect he had to meteorologists launching their weather balloons in any conditions:

Жизнь в Мирном удивительно не похожа на обстановку на Востоке или на шельфе. Может такое сравнение покажется кощунством, но мне эта мирнинская жизнь напоминает санаторий (правда я никогда еще не бывал в санатории, но представляю его по-видимому правильно). Здесь, в Мирном, твердый распорядок дня - завтрак, обед и ужин, на которые исправно собираются все миряне. Четыре раза в неделю по вечерам кино, куда от нечего делать также собираются все, пару раз работает библиотека, ежедневно вызывают на обследование врачи, дежурства, несложные авралы и прочее - прочее. 

Жизнь течет размеренно и спокойно. Работают научные отряды. Ежедневно в любую погоду выходят на свои площадки метеорологи - у них 4 срока, кропят над колонками цифр синоптики - они получают сведения о погоде чёрт знает со скольких станций в Антарктике и субантарктике, дважды в день запускается радиозонд - аэрологи долго пеленгуют его потом и принимают сигналы его миниатюрного передатчика, сообщающего о температуре, давлении и влажности воздуха на разных высотах. Летит этот пузырь, с подвешенными к нему на шнурке картонным коробком, километров на 25-30 ввысь.

ACE special groundhog day

February 5

Today we lived through our own ACE groundhog day – as we are approaching the dateline we lived through Sunday, February the 5th twice. Unfortunately, two Sundays in a row did not come in with usual Sunday perks: eggs for breakfast, “baked gods” for tea time (полдник) and “women’s day” in the sauna. The perks only came on a first Sunday and the second Sunday felt more like a Monday to me… We also went from being a day ahead from the rest of the world to a day behind. But still, it is really interesting to experience crossing the dateline on a ship. The two Sundays could not have been more different.

The first Sunday, February the 5th was the calmest day I have seen on this journey so far. There were no waves, only ripples

We had a CTD station in the morning in very calm waters and pretty icebergs in sight. Too bad the CTD lab does not have windows and I had to spend a lot of valuable “sunshine” time inside. But after we were done with a 1km cast I went outside and spent some time admiring the glorious views.

The second Sunday, February the 5th was a gloomy and snowy day. It was much colder and windier, the ship started rolling (reaching 15 degree rolls!). We were in calm waters for quite a few days and things in our cabins and in the labs started moving around. We had to go back and secure our belongings once again -  it’s a never-ending process. When the sea is calm, you take out things you use and forget to secure them. And you forget. And then the roll comes, always unexpectedly.
By late afternoon we reached our next destination - Scott island. The island is tiny, we have seen icebergs higher in elevations and larger in area.

Due to bad weather island operations are suspended till tomorrow morning, while we are having a really busy day as atmospheric scientists. We launched a radiosonde, we are continuously sampling for snow (both water isotopes and snowflake collection). It is great to be outside, although it is quite cold and windy at the moment. So basically it’s double excitement – go outside for a sample and go back inside to get warm again. Here’s a picture of Irina collecting snowflakes for our joint science/art project:

Interpretive dancing is also a part of it, maybe the most important one ;).

Thanks for reading,
Masha

XBTs

January 25

Yesterday night (January 25) I launched my first XBT - a temperature probe that you "fire" into the ocean from a funny looking gun. I had quite a few spectators, so it was a little intimidating. The launch was a success, however.
Here's a picture of me measuring the temperature profile:

Basically you release a probe from the ship's deck as free fall and as soon as it touches the water it starts measuring. There's a tiny wire connecting the probe to the gun I'm holding - this is how the signal is being transmitted. The wire is so thin, I couldn't see it with a naked eye and I was worried I lost the probe. But my gun kept making spooling sounds, so that was a good sign. At the end someone went inside and confirmed that we do get data on the computer. That's how we knew it was a success!

The probe I had is X-7, going to 760m depth (then the wire breaks and the probe is lost, but the data is already at our computer). People on the ship, especially the crew, are telling me that I'm the biggest polluter - I launch radiosondes, SOCCOM floats and now XBTs. But I have to say it is a lot of fun to see vertical profiles of the air and ocean, especially when it's instantaneously available

I launched another one at 6 AM in the morning on January 26 (Still January 25 UTC time) - I was by myself, not a single sole even to look at the screen inside to see if it worked properly. Such a contrast from last night.
I'm proud to say that I managed and got another profile. Now if only I had more time to sleep in between all this exciting measurements I'm making ;)

Leg two started abruptly

January 23

I had the most relaxing long weekend with my friends in Hobart. We arrived on Thursday the 19th in the morning. Everyone was scaring us with impossible customs, but we managed to go through them very quickly and I was able to get off the ship before my friends’ plane touched down. I met up with my colleague Irina, we went to Customs house – a pub that our long colleague Neale showed to us years ago. My Melbourne friends showed up pretty soon and it was the happiest reunion.
Although I had internet and phone, I decided to stay off my blog to have a complete break from any activities I was doing on board. Sorry everyone, I won’t be updating on wonderful eucalyptus smells, I will jump right on to leg two activities.

We were scheduled to leave on Sunday, January 22, although the time kept changing (which gave me more time with friends and I am really grateful). We finally left just short of midnight, almost on Monday the 23rd. As we were leaving port our ship was directed by an Australian pilot. Half an hour later a small boat came to pick up the pilot and off we went.

As we were late leaving port, we were pushing our luck with getting on time to Macquarie island. On the morning of January 23rd it was first decided to steam as fast as possible to the first island, sacrificing all the marine projects on board. However, the forecast was not favorable to be able to land/do any work around Macquarie island.  So mid-morning on Monday with the help of marine science teams we changed our plans from sacrificing the marine part to catching the good weather and getting some data. We decided to do a CTD station to 1km, together with a trace metal rosette sampling, bongo nets for zoo and phytoplankton and micro plastics nets. Considering this was the first marine station for the new group of scientists, we were really efficient. Actually the fact that we as a new group could convince the chiefs to do a CTD station rather suddenly impressed me the most. We managed to do a station before meeting and deciding on the role of each individual, which is once again quite impressive. Also, I’m happy to report that Irina and I sampled a complete 1km profile, turned on all our en route instruments, and started the underway sampling. I even managed to take a picture of Irina sampling from the Niskin bottles – as you can see the weather is quite nice and we sampled outdoors.

On top of coordinating some of the marine team efforts, I spent my day helping many other projects, particularly new people on board. As flattering as it to have a reputation of a “nice person, who will help you”, it is a pretty tiresome job. Anyhow, I am glad I can help. And I am also proud to say I am learning to say “no”. Today I draw the line on non-science request for chores around the ship, I could only do so much.

There is one more thing I wanted to mention to keep this post from being work-only. It feels so weird to be on a ship with a lot of new people! We got so used to seeing same people every day and now there’s a whole new group of people, who gets lost around the ship. I guess the crew feels that way each time they start a new cruise…

Another very long day

January 4

January 3rd was a really long day for me. I keep meaning to write up my daily schedule hour by hour, but I keep getting into too many details. So I will do a combination of the two.

Midnight till 2:30 AM:
I was working at midnight, sampling the underway and watching the pump for an hour from 12 AM till 1 AM. "Pump watch" is an ad hoc activity we had to come up with to overcome our ship's design limitations. Our underway intake line is located 4.5 m below the water level, so when we roll for more than 5 m, there is a possibility to catch air bubbles. The pump dries out and many instruments in the lab do not like an inconsistent water flow. So during the rocky seas we "watch" the pump, to avoid breaking instruments. A bit of a reality check for all the PIs on board, especially those who expected our ship to have the 21st century equipment.
I spent 1 AM to 2:30 AM checking messages and talking to friends. It is usually much quieter at night and I get a better signal.

2:30 AM to 6:30 AM
I was sleeping.
I meant to get up at 6:00 AM as we were planning to do a deep CTD cast followed by a SOCCOM deployment, I had trouble waking up and since we were not stopped at this point, I got up around 6:30 AM.

6:30 AM to 11:30 AM
As I got to the oceanography lab I learned that the CTD stations have been canceled due to high swell, but we are deploying SOCCOM floats at around 9 AM. We decided to launch the sensors in pairs since we couldn't do a CTD cast and water sampling for calibrating the sensors. With two they can at least calibrate against each other.
Jenny and I with the help of Dave (there are a lot of guys named Dave on this leg ;) got one of the floats out and tried to secure it to the pole. It was extremely windy and the ship was rocking hard, so we did not dare to take the second one out. We used all our bunji cords and rope on a single one.
At 9 AM we did not get to the deep enough waters, so the SOCCOM launch was postponed. Finally at 10:46 ship time  6:46 UTC we started launching our SOCCOMs. We successfully deployed two (black one from this picture):

I do not have any picture of the deployment, since I was busy doing it. But there were a lot of people watching since there wasn't much else going on. I hope I will get a nice picture or two from them.
As we were putting the first SOCCOM out of the box, the crew was rather curious. At some point as I was checking on how well the first SOCCOM is secured to the pole, a boatswain asked what they are. And while we were deploying the float, I could hear him talking to other crew members explaining. It was rather cute!

11:30 to 14:30
After we deployed the floats, we had lunch and went upstairs to write to our collaborators about the deployment. It took a while since internet is slow.
I was also expecting another atmospheric river event to come, so I talked to Iris and Pascal to check the time we will need to start launching radiosondes. It wasn't until 9 PM ship time, so I signed up for the night shift to help out.

14:30 to 16:30
Since I knew I will be working all night I decided to take a nap.

16:30 to 21:30
As I woke up on January 3rd for the second time I decided to start off the day "right". I did my yoga and meditation.
At our daily PI meeting we were discussing coming to Hobart a day late since we are so delayed already. I have mixed feelings about it, I do want to have more work done, but I don't want to miss out on the valuable time with friends in Australia!
I spent dinner time and after sorting out the schedule for the radiosonde launches at night - it is impossible to launch a radiosonde alone, you need at least one person, maybe two or more in high winds conditions helping out. It wasn't easy to find help for my 2 AM and 4 AM launches and I am forever grateful to my colleagues agreeing to help out.

21:30 to 6:30 AM.
I spent most of my time launching radiosonde or collecting precipitation samples outside. I also had my daily midnight underway Ocean water sample to take. I had big plans to go to the gym between the launches, but ended up having no time or energy for that unfortunately.
The 4 AM radiosonde launch was the most dramatic. The weather was awful, winds were very strong with even stronger gusts, it was raining too. I had two people helping me, who never launched a balloon before and we ran out of helium. At the time this happens, I was lying on the helo deck under the balloon launching structure, unable to leave as I was holding a half-blown balloon. So I couldn't troubleshoot anything and after waiting for two minutes in the cold we decided to launch a half-blown balloon to get at least some data. The launch was really dramatic - the balloon went down first, but then it picked up and was able to climb up to 3.5km.
After the launch I had to go change helium bottle to prepare for the next one - it was a hard task to do. The bottle (even empty) was really heavy and we had to travel down two decks and then all the way to the front of the boat. After realizing that there is no way I can lift the bottle even together with Ilya (ship meteorologist, who was super helpful, found a two-wheeler and everything!) I went around the sleeping ship trying to find help. It was hard, but I managed. I had an interesting failed attempt, when I asked a colleague checking his email to help, he said yes, came to help deck, saw the helium bottle and said "no way in hell I am lifting that" and left. I have to say it was my first time, when a person reacted like that. I was surprised he did not say "no" right away then, would have been less dramatic of a moment ;).

Since I stayed up so late after my last scheduled launch at 4 AM changing helium bottles, I decided to help the 6 AM shift with their launch. It was much smoother, the sun was out, helium was abundant and we have extra hands.
On that note, I went to bed. It was 6:30 in the morning on January 4th by then and I was totally exhausted.

I have to add, I spent most of the day on January 4 sleeping and doing minor maintenance and translating tasks. It is the evening of January 4th as I am writing this. I know by now that both SOCCOM floats we launched started communicating (hooray), we have a nice long record of vertical profiles through another atmospheric river event and I feel rather satisfied. We are approaching Kerguelen island and we decided to shut off the underway pump not to get kelp seaweeds on it. So no midnight sampling for me.
Good night everybody!

A day in Masha's life on Tryoshnikov

January 1
Happy new year again to all my friends from different time zones. I hope you had a great celebration! As many of you know, the New Year is one of my favorite holidays. So I was really happy that we had festivities on the ship lasting into the night. I am hoping to do a separate post about the party, but today I wanted to talk about my day.

As the party ended around the sunrise and the light was so magic - I decided to go on the top deck and take pictures of the island. And who can be the better subject of a picture than myself?

We stayed anchored overnight near Possession island of the Crozet archipelago and as the day was starting there was a cool lenticular cloud forming

As I did not plan to do any work in the morning, I went to bed right after the sunrise. However, I was woken up by a colleague of mine telling me that an interesting atmospheric event - an atmospheric river - is coming upon us. As previously discussed we decided to launch radiosondes every two hours until the atmospheric river passes us. We ended up launching 6 radiosondes in total, working well into the night and we were able to capture this event in its entirety. Hopefully these data will be very useful to all of us!
In between radiosonde launches, I managed to practice my daily yoga, to learn all about the latest activities on the ship, to get jealous that I don't get to fly or Zodiac to the beach, to do a load of laundry, to translate for our ship's doctor seeing a patient, to attend a very heated PI meeting and to take an ocean water sample from the underway system. Once again a rather busy and hopefully productive day on Tryoshnikov.

One thing that is worth mentioning about the life and work on the ship - we don't get any days off. We basically keep going 24/7 chasing interesting atmosphere and ocean conditions, taking samples and collecting data non stop. This is why I was really happy to have an excuse for a party tonight - parties do not come often. And it was great to mingle with people I work with every day, including both scientists and crew members and to chat about non-work-related things.
Off to bed I go!

Till later,
Masha

Leaving Marion Island

28 December
I am happy to report we safely recovered our people from Marion island and are currently underway. It was a really pretty and unusual to see land while at sea and we will enjoy views of many more islands.
Here's a picture from yesterday overlooking the helicopters parked on the helo deck and some interesting cloud formation in the background. Too bad we could not launch a radiosonde to get data from the vertical profile. We usually launch from the helo deck and cannot operate while the helicopters are out of the hangar.

The weather was much nicer today so we did a lot of different things. We did a 200m CTD cast, deployed nets to collects zooplankton, deployed nets that scrape the sea floor to collect benthic species, launches a radiosonde. We were gonna end the day with a 1km CTD cast followed by a 1km trace metal rosette cast, but things got a little off track. We lost communication with the normal rosette half way, so spent the rest of the evening trouble shooting. Trace metal rosette was successful in principal, although we did not collect many water samples. But all in all it was an extremely busy day for many science teams and for the ship's crew.

***
Aside from science life on the icebreaker goes on. We have been sailing for a week now and the days are starting to look more and more routine. The meal schedule keeps us on track :). This never changing meal schedule that my grandfather described in great detail.
Actually today was the first day I managed to attend all four meals - I usually skip breakfast or tea if I am working or sleeping still.
I am yet to properly visit a gym and a sauna. I only played one game of table tennis so far, where I lost miserably. Need to up my game a lot ;))))

And I only located the sauna today. We have limited freshwater supply on the ship, so sauna is not open daily, there is only two days a week I can go - on Saturdays for the expedition day and on Sundays for the women's day. This week I did not have time on either day.
I have been trying to keep on track with my yoga, but I did not find time to do a proper cardio workout at the gym. The only thing that I hope helps me - I ran around up and down the stairs all day long. My cabin is on "-1" deck and my atmospheric office is on the "4.5" deck. We launch balloons from the helo deck on the "2nd" deck and the CTD lab and the mess (cafeteria) are both on the main "0" deck. But I am not sure it is enough and I keep promising myself to go running or rowing every day. Yet it is again closer to midnight and I got up at 7AM and I am exhausted. So all I will most likely do today - take my water sample at midnight and go  to bed.

What a busy day I had

24 December

Today was a very busy day for me. I am happy to report I actually worked on a lot of science project for my own project, rather than helping everyone else. Actually  that is not true, I managed to help quite a lot of other people in the process, but I tried to focus on my own stuff.
***
We finally got our temporary inline water supply line ready and split up between all the science groups. Hooray to me explaining to the crew what we need and big thanks to the crew for making it happen. And finally we cleaned up the Aqualine Ferrybox instruments enough to connect it back to the inline water. It took us a few hours to put the instruments back together and figure out the sharing of the water between several instruments from other projects that are now connected to the system. I can't call it a complete success as we haven't read the data off it yet, but we did successfully logged into the system.
***
Huge thanks to Anastasia and Franzisca, two students who put enormous amount of work trying to figure out this instrument during Leg0 from Bremerhaven to Cape Town. Unfortunately the data this instrument collected before was awful - rusty pipes on the ship made it impossible to measure anything meaningful. Nastya and Franzi took the instrument apart to clean the parts and the ship's crew build a completely new temporary inline water system for us to use - a new stainless steel pump for water intake and a temporary PVC hose supplying water from the bottom of the ship to our instruments in the lab. The system looks pathetic, we basically have a hose running through a corridor, but it works. Also, the intake location is at 4.5 m under water during calm seas, so during the 6-8m (and higher) swell it gets air bubbles and the pump dries out. We figured out a system of scheduled "shifts" to look after the pump to make sure we don't dry it and break this delicate system altogether.
I want to give big thanks to the crew who helped us build this system. It is by far not ideal, but it was the best solution we could come up with given the circumstances. We have quite a few instruments hooked up to it now, the Aqualine Ferrybox, the one my project is the most concerned with was the last one to come live.
***
I am also happy to report that the atmospheric group (my Swiss colleagues) Iris and Pascal successfully launched a radiosonde without my help. This is a big relief for me, as they had some language/communication issues with the bridge during leg0. I basically took over their communication to the bridge for the first couple of days and ensured that the bridge is ok with us performing the launches periodically. As we are not planning to do a UTC-oriented launches, but rather event-driven launches we needed the bridge to be ok with us launching balloons without an advanced warning. We see interesting weather - we launch a radiosonde. I am happy to say they do not need me anymore, yahoo!
***
I have also spent quite a lot of time talking to the chief engineer coming up with a creative solution for the pump needed for another three projects on board.
I also spent quite a lot of time translating for another group, who ran out of the cooling fluid in their compressor. The crew hopefully will be able to fix that problem during the stop at Marion islands.
I have noticed that some of my colleagues are starting to take my volunteer help for granted. And I have to say I don't appreciate being taken for granted especially for all this extra work I have been doing for other people. Need to think about how to approach this yet. I am happy to help when I do have time, but I have to work on my own project. And it would be nice to get an acknowledgement for going out of my way and helping all this people. Maybe I should suggest they all make a coauthor on their publications :)
***
I wanted to write more about non-science things, but this post it getting too long as it is. Happy Christmas Eve to all my readers all over the world. I do hope I will get a little break tomorrw to celebrate and relax. But then again, I have been hoping for that since Cape Town :).
*****
UPDATE:
I wrote the original draft of this post last night and I am happy to report that my colleague Jenny made a lot of progress today reading the data off the Aqualine Ferrybox. It looks fairly reasonable, we are yet to do tests on how stable it is. Kudos to Jenny!

December 22, 2016, second day at sea

Hello,

Happy birthday to my friend Leshka, who almost forgave me for missing his birthday this year. I did have to use my circumantarctic journey as an excuse. Leshka, I hope you celebrated your birthday in style, even though I am not making crepes (bliny) for the party this year. Coincidentally we had crepes with cottage cheese for tea tonight. I guess the kitchen wanted me to celebrate your birthday the usual way :).

It has been going great. We are still rocking quite heavily, the swell today reached up to 16 m according to the ship’s sensors. I am happy to report that I am feeling great and apart from occasionally having to catch flying objects I do not notice the leaning of the boat much. What a difference between how I felt yesterday and how I feel today.

Since the swell was that high we did not do a CTD cast today - the main deck is rather high from the freeboard and the swell makes it impossible to safely lower the rosette into the water and take it out. We did, however, launched a radiosonde at about 4pm ship time (1pm UTC). We used the newly loaned balloon launcher station from Academik Fedorov and we were still figuring it out. The wind was quite high too. But I am happy to report it was a successful launch. Amazing how many people gathered to watch us launching the radiosonde - I guess it is always exciting to watch other people work. Plus looking at a balloon disappearing in the sky is rather exciting as well.

Members of ACE expedition enjoying warm weather on the deck. The swell just makes it more fun.

Other than that I kept myself busy solving minor and major issues different science teams have. I met most of senior crew members already and my people’s skills come very handy. I decided I will not be shy about it either, so I am telling it like it is. 

***

Coming back to my grandfather’s journals I wanted to say how far we have come with technology. I am able to write this blog and although I do not get any feedback from it, I am happy to at least know that my friends and family can read about my adventures in near-real time. At the same time I noticed how similar my feelings are to my grandfather’s. Here’s a quote from his journal:

18 ноября

Спать не хочется, я и так ночью плохо сплю, отоспался в первые дни рейса. Все лежу, вспоминаю дом, ребят, Москву. Как-то сейчас там? Помнят ли меня, или заботы совсем заслонили…

Радиограммами решил не допекать, думаю, что пока будет достаточно раз в пять – шесть дней. А то радиоузлу слишком большая нагрузка, да и отвечать мне хлопотно и накладно. Почему-то уверен, что все будет благополучно и дома и, Бог даст, у меня. Главное, чтобы они там не волновались и не обращались бы в разные бесполезные органы. 

and another one:

3 декабря:

Сильно я был раздосадован тем, что из дома не было телеграммы. Я отлично знаю, что волнение неуместно и напрасно, но уж как-то настроился раз в неделю давать знать о себе домой и получать сведения оттуда. Ведь это теперь довольно далеко!

Четыре дня я не находил себе места на этом корабле, на третий (это было 2 декабря) дал телеграммы домой и Саше и лишь сегодня получил сразу два ответа. Конечно дома все в порядке.

I called several people yesterday from the Iridium phone our expedition has available. Iridium actually decided to sponsor this expedition (big thanks to them) and hence we have the phone available for us to call our loved ones. It is usually busy during the day, but at night one can use it easily. So I called a few people and nobody picked up. I ended up leaving a few rather disappointed messages. “I am calling from the middle of nowhere and you are not picking up!” kinda messages. Anyhow. I am so lucky to have internet, my “blog helpers” and everything come together. I shouldn’t complain ;)

Thanks for reading,

Masha

A few words about our science

This is schematic map of our upcoming expedition. We will be circumnavigating the Southern Ocean, stopping at several sub-Antarctic islands. Our cruise will consist of three legs:

Leg 1: Cape Town, South Africa to Hobart, Australia

Leg 2: Hobart to Punta Arenas, Chile

Leg 3: Punta Arenas to Cape Town

I will be participating in all three legs, which means about three months at sea. I am excited and terrified at the same time. It would be an unforgettable journey for sure. We have rather ambitious scientific objectives to fulfill, I am sure many of them will get somewhat modified and shaped to suite the existing conditions.

Our project for this cruise is interdisciplinary. Here's a short summary of our project on the Swiss Polar Institute website.

My primary science responsibilities for the field data collection will be two-fold:

ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE

I/we will be collecting meteorological data on the snow particle distribution. We will install several sensors to capture this, plus I will take macro-photos of snow flakes to determine particle distribution and crystal structure. This part of my work I usually entitle "taking pictures of snowflakes".  This line works great at social gatherings, believe me :).

We are also collaborating with other atmospheric scientist measuring weather conditions, collecting precipitation samples and such. In expeditions like that all collected data are usually shared among interested science groups, so that each person can concentrate on maintaining their own instruments and obtaining in situ data of the best quality.

We will also be launching radiosondes collecting information about the vertical profile of the atmosphere. We will do semi-regular launches, but also hope to get several profiles crossing atmospheric river events. My colleague Irina and I identified the first atmospheric river reaching Antarctic continent and we are keen to experience an event like this and gather more data. 

Here's a link to our first paper on atmospheric rivers if anyone is interested. 

OCEANOGRAPHY 

I/we will be measuring the saltiness of the Southern Ocean. We are primarily interested in the mixed (top) layer, but we will run all the salinity analysis for everyone else's needs as part of our contribution to the scientific effort of the expedition.

On top of that we will be collecting water samples from the mixed (top) layer of the Southern Ocean for isotope analysis back on land.  Upon our return we will analyze these samples in the lab at British Geological Survey (BIG THANKS!) to determine the sources of water, particularly focusing on abnormally fresh water sources. The goal and the title of our project is to determine the sources of recent freshening of the mixed layers of the Southern Ocean.

We will be deploying six SOCCOM floats - unique long-term laboratories autonomously reporting and collecting physical and chemical data from the Southern Ocean. Deploying these floats will be an adventure and I will try to write more about it as it unfolds.

My one sentence response on what else I will be doing on the cruise besides taking pictures of snowflakes is that I will finally "become an oceanographer".

Ok, this is the end of the science update. Here are a few images for everyone to get excited again:

Me by the docked Akademik Tryoshnikov in Bremerhaven.

Irina on the main deck of Tryoshnikov as it is about to leave the port.

The ship is currently sailing from Bremerhaven, Germany to Cape Town. There is a summer school on-board the ship and this part of the journey is called LEG ZERO. I am (well all of us really are) particularly grateful to students and scientists onboard testing our equipment and identifying potential problems. Even though my inbox everyday is filled with disaster emails, it's better to know now and come up with solutions.

Our hard-working students Nastya and Franzi, Irina and I saying the last-good byes in Bremerhaven.