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