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 ;)

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

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

Balleny islands archipelago

February 3-4

We arrived to Balleny islands on Friday, February 3rd. The weather was not so good with really strong winds. We did a full CTD station ahead of the island and hoped for a better day tomorrow. It was still quite a magnificent view:

And magically the weather cooperated the next day. February 4th was sunny, albeit a cold and windy day. Island work was with in full swing. In the morning the helicopters brought the mountaineer and the ice coring party on top of the island. After several hours of work in “real Antarctic conditions” of sub-freezing temperatures and really strong winds they recovered a 17m ice core – a first one from this archipelago.

Meanwhile, the Zodiacs were launched into the water. The swell was rather high, but still operational. Two Zodiacs full of people went on around one of the islands in search of a beach to sample soil, microplastics and such. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any suitable place to land on a Zodiac and after an hour or so in the water they returned back to the ship.

At the same time helicopter operations continued. The "guests" of our cruise went onto the ice, but they got cold quite fast and returned to the well-heated icebreaker. After that, our pilots took the journalists and the ornithology team around the islands to take a detailed survey of the area. This digital photographs will be turned into 3-d maps of Balleny islands archipelago – hopefully helping all the expeditions to follow us. They would not need to spend all the time around the islands and would learn from our photographs where the suitable locations for landings/sampling/visits are.

Another activity we did for two days in a row – trawling for benthic creatures (organisms living at the bottom of the ocean). I went to the benthic lab after the first series of trawling we did and admired the organisms we acquired:

There were cold-water corals, star fish and sea urchins. Also cucumbers, several fish and some weird creature I forgot to ask the name of – these did not make it to the pictures I sent out.

All in all it was rather productive couple of days at Balleny islands. We also did a CTD cast before, in the middle and after the islands to study the island effect on biological productivity. As I sample these CTD casts I’m learning more about oceanography of the Southern Ocean, how to distinguish winter waters from the summer mixed layer waters and so on.

As we were cruising past the islands in the afternoon of February 4th, our chief scientist pointed out that we are the lucky bunch. Not only these archipelago is rarely visited by expeditions – it is quite rare to catch such a sunny day and actually see the islands. So here’s one more picture for all the readers of my blog. You are quite lucky to be seeing this as well!

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.

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 ;)

Acid spill

January 24

Today we hit the roughest sea so far. I am actually not a good judge of whether this storm is worse than the one we hit right after leaving Cape Town. I got sick the first day of leg 1, but I am doing ok today. I think being at sea for a while is definitely helping - we have quite a few people down now. I even had to call the doctor for some of them and help to translate. Not that there is much a doctor can do - the sea will no stop rolling after the doctor's orders.
We did have some unexpected action today though. I was sitting in the CTD dry lab working on my data, when someone told me that there was an acid spill in the wet lab (next door) and suggested I call the bridge and also get the hell out of there. I called the bridge and asked them for help.
It turned out there was a 3L 40% concentration glass bottle of muriatic acid (HCl) on a shelf. It was not secured as well as it should have been, it was in a carton pocket behind a glass in a cabinet. However, someone opened the glass of the cabinet unknowingly and the 3L bottle somehow managed to escape the carton box and crash on to the floor. Did I say we have been rolling a lot?
Anyhow, after I called he bridge and told them that the situation is serious, I was really surprised at their reaction. At least 8 people showed up, they brought respirators with compressed air and two guys (boatswain and Seaman) went in to clean up the spill.

They also brought baking soda to neutralize it, we opened the doors to ventilate and in 20 minutes the worst was over. After it was relatively safe to come in, our chief scientist, one other PI and I spent some time cleaning the rest of the room to make sure it is workable.
I am really grateful to the crew for reacting so fast and for willing to face dangerous situation without any hesitation. They are my heroes!

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…

1.5 km CTD cast

January 14

One of the advantages of deep CTD casts - an ability to make souvenir styrofoam cups. We design normal size white cups, tie it to the rosette going down to a significant depth and they get compressed by pressure. Here's an example of the cups I designed the other day, when we did a 1500 m cast as a SOCCOM float calibration.

I drew different activities we do on board  - launching radiosondes, doing oceanographic stations with a rosette and plankton nets we drag after a slow moving ship to collect plankton and microplastics samples.

We one had only a few cups this time, I am hoping to stock up in Hobart and design more souvenirs during the upcoming legs of the ACE.

Calm waters of the Southern Ocean

January 9

Today we had exceptionally good weather, the sun was shining, there was almost no wind and almost no swell. If we are lucky, we will continue to travel in this anticyclone for a while and enjoy this weather. However, we need to keep up the speed.

 Since the weather was so good, we spent a lot of hours doing oceanographic work - performed the first successful deep CTD and trace metal rosette cast, launched bongo nets to look for microplastics and identify new species of plankton.

I realize that I have pictures of many other people working and no pictures of me working, since I am too busy for the camera.
I recently learned how to clean the rosette, so today it was my job to tidy up after the casts and make sure we do not collect salt and rust on the frame and the delicate instruments. Draining the rosette is quite awkward as it is kept inside and I did not want to flood the room, so I drained niskin bottles into a bucket first. This is why the whole job takes longer than it should, but I have to say it was rather meditative to clean up.
Due to direct sunlight and low winds my atmospheric sensors on the uppermost deck recorded very warm temperatures. I am hoping that whenever it snows, the temperature will be more realistic. Otherwise, we might need to completely rethink the system and put the instruments somewhere else on the ship. This will be a job for Hobart, which I am hoping to outsource, since I want to take a much needed day off the ship. People, who are getting off after Leg 1 (at Hobart) are counting down the days, I have a lot to go, but I am looking forward to seeing my dear friends, who are flying to meet me in Hobart. Thank you so much!!! Can't wait to see you all ♡ !

More than half way to Hobart

January 7

Эпиграф: на судне все идёт своим чередом.

While it feels like we are still just getting settled we have passed the half way point on leg one already. Today is January 7, Russian Orthodox Christmas Day, so Merry Christmas for those celebrating.
I am actually not sure if we crossed the half way distance point, but since we are not stopping at any islands anymore, we will arrive in Hobart in less than a two weeks. Hopefully.

Today was a rather productive day for the ocean-based teams, we did two CTDs (relatively deep and a shallow), trace metal rosette cast, bongo nets to look for phytoplankton, dredging to look for benthic creatures.

The weather has been rather nice, the wind and the swell were quite low, allowing us to do all this work. Yet, you can feel the high latitudes already, one needs a jacket and preferably a hat to go out on the deck even for a short while. It is hard to believe that we will be in summer clothes again soon.

As it is illegal to bring any fruit or veggies to Australia, I am eating an apple a day and sometimes two or three. That grocery trip on the last day in Cape Town was such a treat! And I have to say food on Tryoshnikov is better than in my previous cruises and Antarctic deployments. Alas, it is still getting quite repetitive. The crew meteorologist was joking with me how he can tell what day of the week it is by the soup we are having at lunch and dinner. Once again proving my point of a rather predictable life on a ship. Days of the week do not matter as much, you do your shift work or whatever the day brings, your meals are scheduled, you see the same people every day. It is very routine, but I have to say that I quite enjoy it.

A little adventure

January 5

Today we were lucky enough to get off the icebreaker on a little adventure. Jenny and I and a bunch of biologist loaded two Zodiacs to collect water samples in the bay of the Kerguelen island, where the ship is currently anchored. Jenny was teaching me to use the microcat, so I can continue supporting this little adventure into the next couple of legs.
It was a lot of fun to be so close to the water, to feel the salty spray on my face and to do some science while on it. Tryoshnikov looked so small from afar!

Jenny and Sam on Zodiac near Kerguelen island. Jenny is launching the microcat to take temperature and salinity measurements.

Later in the afternoon when I was safely on the ship and helping heard people off the Zodiacs, the wind picked up. It took some people a few tries to get off the Zodiac into a shaky gangway of Tryoshnikov. I am happy to report that everyone did make it back safely, we did not even loose any science samples.

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

Oceanography work

30 December

13 декабря 1959
Начались океанографические станции: остановки на несколько часов во время которых проводится отбор проб грунта с одна, батолятрия, измерения направления и скорости течений вертушками и элитом, сбор планктона и фитопланктона. Я добровольно помогаю Лёне Клишторину ловить эту тварь в такую длинную и узкую сетку и с изумлением разглядываю потом рачков, креветок и моллюсков, которые в неё попадают, чтобы стать жертвой Лёниных анализов.
Все чаще появляются в разводьях китовые фонтаны, а на льдинах лежат ленивейшие из существ, каких я встречал – крупные тюлени крабоеды. Их много и глупые они до ужаса. Не знают, что людей надо бояться!
Первые пингвины! Сначала плавающие, а потом и стоящие на льдинах как китайские болванчики. До чего это потешная публика! Когда они ходят, то напоминают маленьких ребятишек. Любопытные смертельно: как завидят что-нибудь – так и мчатся изо всех сил. А до чего ловкие в воде, когда играют или охотятся!

It was interesting for me to read my grandfather's journal and realize how little has changed since 1959. We are also going full speed with oceanography work on Tryoshnikov. We have done another 400m CTD cast today followed by a trace metal rosette cast. We have finally lunched bongo nets that  like the phytoplankton and zooplankton. We are interested in taxonomy - identifying species that have not been identified yet.

First attempt at dredging for bentic species during ACE near Marion Island.

The picture depicts the process that my grandfather assisted with back in 1959. It is called dredging - collecting bottom-dwelling (benthic) creatures with nets. You can see a small creature picked up by Christof, that he is showing to one of the journalists we have on board with us. Unlike my grandfather I did not participate in this activity as you see there are already plenty of people with tweezers picking up specimens from the net. I went one deck up to take the picture.

I am, however, making myself useful during each CTD cast - I collect salinity and delO18 samples from the oceanographic profile. This data will help us identify the depth of the mixed layer and determine sources of mixed layer freshening. So every CTD cast is a success from our project's standpoint - we get much needed data.

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 21, 2016

We finally left Cape Town just a little short of midnight today, so officially marked our 24 hour at sea point.
It has been rather rocky ever since we left, becoming worse throughout the day. I will not lie to you, I felt sick most of the day. I think it was mainly due to my general exhaustion of the last week of port call. I needed that break honestly.
Once again both the crew and my fellow colleagues have been wonderful, helping me out with the tasks I needed to complete today and were not physically able to do. What would I have done without them? Alas, I have been helping out everyone a lot too. What a great group of people and I am lucky to be a part of it.

Science wise we did manage to do a test CTD cast today at 2 PM ship time (12 PM UTC). We only went to 200m, it was rather dangerous and rocky. The swell was up to 8 m when we pulled the rosette up - the crew thought that all scientists are a little crazy :).

One thing that I absolutely needed to get up for today was a boat drill. Happy to inform all of you that I "survived", emergency gear is ok and aside from a terrible smell inside the rescue boats they are ok, equipped with water, dry rations, satellite emergency finders etc.

The boat drill and the CTD cast (where I have to admit I was mainly observing) wiped me out and I went back to bed. I did try to help out with translating different minor and not so minor issues on the way, but I decided that my own personal wellbeing should come first. So I had the best nap before dinner and woke up feeling much better.

The weather is predicted to get worse tomorrow, so we are not doing another cast. I am planning to sleep it off and get more adjusted to the rocky seas cause there is more to come. Just to give my observant readers a point of reference - my cabin is one deck below the main deck - the row of windows in the orange: section 

 This is a picture of Tryoshnikov docked in Cape Town for your reference of how high the swell is. 

So today we had water splashing into our cabin window pretty much throughout all day. I wonder what "tomorrow will be worse" mean for our veto out of the window. I mean it changes, sometimes it water,and sometimes it is all clouds. Cool stuff when you are not sick because of it :).

We are also changing clock during the night tomorrow - we will go one hour ahead. Oh, and internet is very limited, so I no pictures so far. It might get a little better or it might get worse, hard to predict...
Till later,
Masha

P.S. That’s how the storm looked before midnight: the snapshot from Global winds map :