Drake Passage

February, 19 

I am writing this text in the middle of Drake Passage. Somehow this means a lot to me – I remember looking at the world map as a kid – Drake Passage was one of the first names I noticed. I guess it was one of the few titles I could actually reach and read as it was at the bottom just above Antarctica. I never thought I'd get to sail here...

We have been working really hard collecting ocean data from the Southern Ocean and now the Southern Pacific. We had on average at least one CTD station per day. This translates in collecting a lot of ocean water into small bottles, labeling and organizing them. I go up and down the stairs with boxes and bins full of bottles quite frequently now – getting new ones for the future samples and putting away the full ones into cargo containers. I get a lot of comments on my “bottle clicking sound”. I have to say that to me personally the clicking bottle sound associates with a alcoholic collecting empty bottles every the morning in order get a some money for recycling and get a small “morning” drink (опохмелиться). My colleagues tell me the sound reminds them of the milkman coming to their house every morning on milk deliveries. I like their association much better!

Working so hard made us all feel like a team, which is a good feeling. Yesterday we had a station right after dinner around 8pm and then another one at 5 am in the morning. Most of us did not sleep in between, as it was about midnight when we were done sampling, we advanced the clock again and going to bed seems like a stupid idea. After the early morning station and watching the sunrise together we all went to bed – it was funny how we were wishing each other good night around 10 o’clock in the morning.

We are much further North now, so we have real darkness once again. We were working tonight through the night again and it was pitch black. I wanted to take a picture of It, but nothing came out. Such a weird sighting after the perpetual daylight. I have to say polar days are my favorite, you can choose your own schedule and it is pretty outside all the time. I miss polar days!

We only have a few days left in leg two, we are due to arrive in Punta Arenas on February 22nd. With the cruise report due and some repacking to do I am not sure how much I will be able to post to the blog. I will try to update from Punta! I am also expecting to have internet access for a couple of days, so I will be able to read comments from people (I hope there are some comments ;)))). Also recommendations on what to do in Punta Arenas are very much appreciated!

Thank you,
Masha

Science talk

February 10 (again)

On Friday February 10 Irina and I gave a talk about our project to all the scientists, guests and crew. We specifically invited several members of the crew, who have been helping us a lot during the cruise and made an open invitation to everyone through the PA system. We did an experiment talking in both English and Russian to make sure everyone in our audience could understand us.

I have to say it was rather intense – we both talked in both languages as it seems to make more sense, basically presenting each slide twice in a row: once in English and once in Russian. I presented a general introduction and an explanation to our ocean measurements.

Irina talked about the importance of the measuring snow and explained why every time it is snowing we are outside running like crazy people.

Irina also talked about our atmospheric river side project and launching radiosondes in bad weather.

We did explain the science behind all of our measurements, but I will not present the whole talk in this blogpost. In fact, I am still hoping to get more free time to finally finish a long sciency blogpost about our project that I started a while ago and can’t seem to find time to write up completely. I even promised our “official” blog writers (ACE blog) that they can publish it there… So I really need to do it soon.

But right now I just want to thank everyone who came to listen to our talk! And show our “thank you” slide as it was truly awesome:

As for continuing to write seriously about science – I have to take a rain check on that. It is 4:30 in the morning and I should go to bed now… Good night everyone and thanks for reading.

Marie Byrd land coast

February 10

We came close to the Antarctic coast yet again during ACE. It was not necessary planed, but in cruises like this one needs to rely on the weather and sea ice conditions. We were en route to Peter the 1st island, but we learned that it is surrounded with heavy sea ice and we might not be able to get there or will have to lose valuable time getting through the ice.
Mary Byrd Land coast on the other hand was miraculously free of sea ice and the weather was nice. So we decided to do our “island” field work and ice coring on the Siple island. The Russian marine guidebook (лоция) had very limited information about the coast, suggesting that most vessels passing by encountered heavy ice conditions and never came close to the land. We were lucky.

Coming closer to the coast we encountered many beautiful icebergs.

I couldn't stop taking pictures, it was beautiful in all directions. I even felt like a tourist and asked a friend to snap a picture of me

 We also saw quite a few penguins swimming and hanging out on the ice

a few seals and some whales. I was less lucky with spotting whales, but this is just my curse this cruise, I always miss them.

Since we were in uncharted territories our helicopters went off flying and exploring the coast, while a few of us went on Zodiacs to explore nearby icebergs and see the penguins up close. What a great adventure!

Overnight we deployed ROPOS for another dive, but unfortunately this was a short dive, since the ship couldn’t be stable for a long time. Hopefully we will have more dives and get more things collected from the bottom of the ocean.

Ship lag

Idea from February 9, finally written and sent out on February 11

We have been traveling in high latitudes for several days now. I have to say the nature of ACE cruise is different to other science cruises I have been to before – we are stopping at many ports and islands on the way. This effectively means we need to keep up with the local time zone to arrive in port/island on local time. And as I said we have been traveling at high latitudes lately, covering many degrees of longitude in one day. So, we are advancing our ship clocks by one hour every other day. And sometimes every day, cause every two days is not enough. All these changes result in a very weird “ship lag” – a kind of jet lag that creeps up on you gradually. Adjusting by one hour seems trivial, but we have adjusted for three hours in four days and combined with a lot of work these adjustments eat up all our sleep time…
I have measurements I take every three hours on ship time, 3am and 6am ones being the most painful ones. I delegated most of the 6 am ones, but even staying up for 3am and having another hour eaten by the “clock change” made me into a sleeping zombie.
Luckily I have amazing people around me, who are willing to help! My roommate took my 3am shift the other day so I can sleep one night. How awesome is that?

And please don’t think that this is a whiny post, here’s an illustration for you. Yesterday I was launching an XBT in the morning thinking that I would rather still be sleeping, but then I finally opened my eyes, saw all these amazing icebergs we were passing by and realized that of all places on Earth, I would rather be here – admiring all this amazing scenery despite the lack of sleep. I wish someone else was awake at that ungodly hour to take a picture of me launching an XBT with an iceberg background ;). Oh well. You just have to imagine how awesome it looked.

Another perk of traveling at high latitudes in this time of year – we almost have a polar day. Yesterday the sun set and basically rose back up again. So here’s a picture I took at sunset:

There’s an iceberg and a “virga” cloud – a special kind of precipitation usually in the form of ice that never reaches the surface.

I also have rather sporadic internet coverage now, so pardon me for not updating my blog that much. I’m doing well and you can always email me at the ACE expedition email.

Thanks for reading,
Masha

Adventure spirit through generations

February 7

I thought that I would do a very different blog post today. Instead of writing what I do I will write about how I feel. I was re-reading my grandfather’s diaries and letters the other day and I was impressed how similar his feelings were many years ago.

To sum it up – it is a bittersweet combination. On the one hand, you are totally excited and happy to be in Antarctica, see amazing sceneries, penguins, and so on. These trips do not come that often and doing fieldwork while here fills it up with a sense of purpose. I totally share my grandfather’s sentiment that doing work in Antarctica makes the trip much more meaningful.
On another hand, there’s a whole life you left behind, with your family and friends who you miss dearly. It was much harder for my grandfather to reach out than it is for me, but there is still that sense of isolation and even desperation that you feel sometimes. And I totally agree with my grandfather – when things are going badly with fieldwork you miss home much more.

So here are a few quotes that touched me the most in my last read of dedushka Vitaly’s journals:

21 ноября 1959 года
Долго сидел на верхней палубе, смотрел на море и небо и курил. Как-то там сейчас дома, все дальше от которого увозит меня "Обь"... Увидят ли мои мальчишки то, что привелось увидеть их отцу?  Поселится ли в них этот беспокойный дух путешествий, желание побольше видеть? Я ещё ничего не фотографировал, считая, что пока мало впечатлительного для плёнки. Может быть ошибаюсь? Во всяком случае аппарат завтра надо бы зарядить...

November 21, 1959
I set on the upper deck for while smoking and watching the sea and the sky. I wonder how things are at home as I’m traveling further away on my ship Ob’… Would my boys ever get to see the things I get to see on this trip? Would they even have this restless feeling of adventure and an interest to see more? I haven’t taken any pictures yet thinking that it is not significant enough for a film. Am I wrong? I should probably load up the film into my camera tomorrow.

Funny he mentions the adventurous spirit of his offspring. The first thing my dad said when I told him I’m going to Antarctica for the first time (a few years ago) was “why not me?”. Growing up with a penguin does this to you ;)

8 марта 1960 года
Думаешь порой - чёрт дернул тебя в эту Антарктиду, да еще так надолго. Особенно, как мне показалось думается так когда мало работы, когда прошла какая-либо размолвка с товарищами по работе или по дому - ведь все мы люди, а у людей есть один весьма существенный в здешних условиях недостаток - нервы. Очень мешают в Антарктиде эти с нашей точки зрения лишние придатки...

March 8, 1960
And sometimes you think – why the hell did I decide to go as far as Antarctica and for so long? These thoughts mainly appear when there is not enough work or when you had a fight with your colleagues or a misunderstanding with the loved ones back home – we are all people after all. And as people we all have a big disadvantage – our emotions. These “supplementary” things often get in the way in Antarctica…

This is very true – emotions do get in the way. Although I would not disregard them as “supplementary”, sometimes it makes it harder to work in a highly stressful environment and ACE cruise was not an exception in that regard. However, I am happy to say that leg 2 of our journey feels less stressful to me than leg 1 was. I also did not find a connection between not having enough work and being more emotional, maybe because I never found myself in a situation of not enough work during either legs on ACE. I keep thinking that if I have some spare time I will read some papers I need to read for a manuscript I am writing, fill out a form for my project report or code. Instead of that even ACE things keep piling up on me – there is too much to be done…
I went to boot camp yesterday for the first time in a long time (and I totally felt that I skipped so many exercise classes, I need them to function!). It was a gorgeous day, sunny and warm and we were exercising out on the heli deck. I wish I could do it regularly!

23 марта 1961 года
Борт д/э "Обь". 
Впереди Кейптаун! Сожалеем о том, что опять во второй раз приходим в этот порт. А так хорошо было бы зайти в новые места в Австралию, скажем, или в Южную Америку! Интересно, приятно для биографии (ведь осталось только два не посещённых из шести континентов) да и полезно в прозаическом смысле: Кейптаун - это далеко не торговый рай.

March 23, 1961 on board Ob'
Cape town is ahead! We are sorry that we are going through Cape Town port again. It would have been good to visit other places, such as Australia or even South America! It is interesting and nice for my life story (these are the only two continents out of six I did not visit). It also would have been useful too – Cape Town shopping is not that great.

So many comments I want to leave here! First of all – funny how my dedushka envisioned ACE expedition visiting all these ports he was dreaming about. Secondly, South America is going to be my last visited continent as well. I am not sure though if my grandfather ever visited North America, so his comment of the only two continents left is a little deceiving. I know he lived in Eurasia, went to Antarctica through Africa, but I do not remember any family stories about North America where my family happens to live now so many years later.
Thirdly, Cape Town has gone a long way since 1961, the pier area is now one big shopping mall. Besides, it is not that important nowadays as the “deficit” era of the Soviet Union is in the past.

Times change while the adventure spirit of my family stays strong I guess…

And since I'm talking about my grandfather so much – here’s a picture he took from his ship. I have to say the scenery has not changed much:  

Funny how I started the post with saying I will write about my feelings and spent most of it translating my grandfather’s diaries. I think there is a big difference in a way he wrote his letters and journal entries and me blogging. My blog is public – this makes it harder for me to express myself as openly as he did. It also makes it really hard to write about other people, I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, I might have already inadvertently hurt someone and I do apologize for that. I really enjoy the company of my colleagues on board, I hope those of them who get to read it will know this. I think we are a great bunch and we find ways to work together, not “against” each other, which is great. Our expedition is unusual in respect to many different people with various backgrounds and interests using the limited resources we have and we do make it work.

Fixing the winch, the never-ending saga

February 2

Today I had a short night as the CTD station was planned for 5 AM. I woke up around 3 AM to take a water sample, only to learn that Irina stayed up catching snow and already took the sample for me. (Thank you!!!) I got up anyway just to check our ETA at the CTD station and I was rewarded with a view of tabular iceberg coming out of the fog:

As much as I do not like waking up too early, the iceberg made it tolerable. Plus, it is always easier to wake up during the polar day. And as long as I am preparing to sample water from the CTD now, I thought I would tell a little story that has kept me busy for quite some time.
A little background:

Part of our work involves putting instruments into the water to get information about the water masses, collect water samples for analysis on board and back on land. For the profile we use the instrument called CTD (stands for conductivity, temperature, depth – what it measures) and we also have quite a suite of other instruments measuring optics, chemistry, current speeds and so on. All the instruments are attached on a rosette together with niskin bottles that collect water.

Water bottles are closed at certain depths – hence we collect water from different water masses throughout the column.

The winch story:
To pull the rosette up and down we use the winch controlled by the computer built into the winch stand. In the middle of leg one, several winches started acting out – rebooting themselves, not listening to operator’s commands and so on. As if the software expired and needed an upgrade or something like that. I talked to the crew guys, who were very frustrated with the winch behavior, and the operation “get the new version of the software” started. I enlisted the help of Carles, our systems administrator on board. Carles is absolutely wonderful, he is the reason we now have working e-mail and he was instrumental in making many instruments run smoothly. Carles and I went to the winch computer with Artem and Yuri from the crew (who sometimes operate the winch) trying to see if we can get answers without remote support, but concluded that we need to contact the distributing company:

So Carles and I started calling the company, who installed the winches, asking them many questions on how to solve our weird problems. Carles also e-mailed them several times asking for a new version of the software and we finally got it (I have to say it took way longer than it should have, as the tech support people were quite reluctant to give the software away and quite clueless on why we are having issues). Anyhow, we finally got the software updated.

Unfortunately, only a few problems got solved with the software update. We are now going in circles talking to tech support. The winch appears to be working, but sometimes it still gets confused on which way the cable-runner should be going next and the cable is not aligned as perfectly as it should. I have to say though that the crew working the winch are great sport, even now in cold and rather miserable conditions they keep the spirits up and run the semi-workable winches to the best of their ability so we can collect our profiles and water samples.

A short update while still in port

Hello, everyone.

I haven't updated for a while, cause I was super busy trying to get ready. It is not easy in so many ways. I am also spreading myself way too thin trying to organize my own program while helping out my colleagues.

The ship was never meant to have a large science group like ours and even the small amounts of space they have have not been properly maintained. Science instruments the ship nominally has are mostly in a very bad condition. Again, cause there is nobody to take care of it and somehow when people do use them they don't clean up after themselves, don't drain salty water off to prevent rusting and so on. 

The crew for the most part are extremely accommodating, I have a lot of THANK YOUs to give and need to seriously stock up on thank you bottles and thank you cigarette packs ;). But unfortunately sometimes there is a limit on what they can do... The ship will not magically become bigger and the hold is not going to magically get an inside door.

The best word to describe the whole expedition is "opportunistic". I have to say this word worries me. It might result in good science, but most likely it will result in a lot of lost opportunities. Something we could have done along the way, but did not have enough preparation/planning to make it happen. Normally such cruises have a few years to prepare, this one was put together under an extremely tight schedule. Oh well...

NOTE TO MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY: Please don't be worried about safety, I am talking about lost science opportunities. We will be keeping as safe as we can in the Southern Ocean and I do have trust in the crew/operations people.

Another point I wanted to make is a language/cultural barrier. I tried to be really helpful to many-many people, but I am just one and somehow a lot of times I'm getting ignored by some important people, who should have listened. One thing I'm trying to explain over and over again is a cultural difference. In Russian culture we all grew up to answer NO to a question we don't quite understand/know how to answer. So my fellow colleagues and upper management have been getting a lot of unreasonable NOs. I can see how frustrating it can be, I just wish some of them would have taken my advise earlier. Knowing how to ask "but why" is a skill, which I have been offering to share for a few months now. However, I am a single person running my own science project, I can not solve too many issues at once. I could have solved a lot more early on. Another oh well... 

What I am trying to say I guess is this. On a Russian ship sometimes NO does mean NO, but sometimes NO can be negotiated to a YES under specific conditions. We can not risk the safety of people, but we are willingly going to the Southern Ocean to do science, so might as well try to negotiate getting the largest return possible. I am working really hard to make it happen.

On that note, I have to stop, cause we are leaving tomorrow and there's too many things to do.

Thanks for reading!
Masha

Akademik Tryoshnikov in Cape Town

Meanwhile Akademik Tryoshnikov made it to South Africa. This photo was taken by someone on the ship as they were approaching Cape Town:

The ship arrived early morning on December 15, 2016 and by lunchtime they cleared customs and docked at the premium spot at the Waterfront. Just a short walking distance to the touristy bit of Victoria Wharf, cafes, restaurants and hotels.

Swiss Polar Institute put up an educational/promotional display at the Waterfront, where people can learn about our upcoming expedition. There is even ski-doo on display - a rather funny looking machine in the middle of sunny summer wharf filled with tourists.

 Swiss shipping containers and a ski-doo. 

I had to pose on a ski-doo wearing a dress!

I went back to the Swiss house again today and ended up talking to tourists about the crazy work that I do. It was actually quite nice to talk to people, to answer questions about my work and just random questions about Antarctica. And since I am being all philosophical here I want to make an observation. It is amazing how much listening one needs to do in order to answer a question. Random questions asked by people usually had some stories, (mis)conceptions, personal interests and agendas behind them - unraveling them is extremely important before answering a question that  was asked.

Posing near the SPI container after answering questions.

After that we walked to the ship and worked till the sun set. 

My previous Antarctic experience

As I am getting ready to board my first plane of my epic journey, I wanted to share this photo collage:

Photo entitled "working off airplane, 1960" from my grandfather's archives and me hanging from one of an AWS in West Antarctica 2013.

As some of my readers probably know - I have deployed to Antarctica before. I worked with the University of Wisconsin Antarctic Automated Weather Station (AWS) program. It is a unique program maintaining a network of AWSs all over West Antarctica starting from 1980. These data is all available to the public (in real-time) from the website I linked to above.

I deployed with the United State's Antarctic Program, flying to McMurdo station and visiting West Antarctic Ice Station seasonal camp. My work included frequent flights on Twin otter planes (as pictured above) and helicopters to visit AWS locations and bring stations to live, but replacing broken equipment, replacing batteries and digging buried station out of the snow. I remember commenting to friends, that a shovel was the most important tool I used - nothing basically changed in Antarctic research since 1960.

Since I still have internet - I am happy to share a few pictures from my trip to Antarctica in during the 2012-2013 summer season. I also wrote a blog from McMurdo:

As far south as you can go

This is me at the southernmost site I visited

My best selfie to date

Very excited to be in a helicopter