Memoirs of a Glacier

 On the 11^th of January, I woke up to someone saying my name and the sound of a door closing. I was plagued by the confusion that comes from being woken in the middle of deep sleep, I called out hello but no one was there. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Seconds later (it was probably longer, but it felt like seconds) Cassie, the trainee doctor, came into my room and turned on the light. ‘They’re letting people on the ice’ she said. I sat straight up, but I was still so out of it. Cassie found my clothes and socks for me and I have no idea how I got dressed or how I made it to the kitchen. People were milling around, smiling and laughing at me. Apparently, I was hard to wake, there were two attempts!

Anyone who has spent any significant amount of time with me knows I am not a morning person. I require coffee and lots of time just sitting and moaning. This whole experience is seen through the eyes of someone not quite awake….

The dream team

Will, Steve, Madi and I were hustled out the tween deck onto the brow (gangplank), and I was standing on frozen water! In front of a glacier, in Antarctica! It was the most magical experience of my life.

Walking on water

The sea ice was crunchy and uneven, but from the top of the brow it looked flat. There were two Adelie penguins in the distance. We walked to the front of the ship and did the photo thing. The penguins were coming closer and I knelt on the ground to get a photo. As soon as I got down on their level, they came hurrying over. I must have looked less imposing on the ground. I couldn’t stop smiling. There was a bit of sun and the floe we were on was huge, I couldn’t see the edge. The Mertz glacier was behind us, I didn’t feel cold or warm, I didn’t feel anything, it was incredible and overwhelming.

My welcome reception Photo by Will Hobbs 

The exact location in front of the Mertz Glacier tongue where I walked on water

We took a few more photos and we walked back over to the ship, as we walked back, I dropped to the ground and grabbed a handful of ice, just to make sure it was real, and then it was finished. I was in shock and the memory felt hazy, it was like a dream, of course I started crying back on the ship like an idiot… I can’t believe how lucky I am. The ice floe was 1.4m thick and apparently it was a great ice station for the sea ice team.

Adelies, my ship home and Mertz glacier 

“I’m floating today”

After the Mertz Glacier, we headed over to the Ninnis Glacier. Another glacier named for a dead member of Mawson’s team. Ninnis had the unlucky fate of falling in a crevice. We originally never planned to go to Ninnis but as we didn’t get to the Totten, it was suggested as a replacement. We are the second ship to ever come to Ninnis, and the first ship since 1979.

The Ninnis Glacier: The brown cliffs are made of dolomite.

We arrived in the Ninnis Polynya for more CTDs, and just like every other amazing thing on this trip, I woke up just as we got there.  Ella woke me telling me I wouldn’t regret getting up. Honestly I didn’t think the Ninnis would be any different to Mertz. You’ve seen one glacier you have seen them all… Beautiful, but I had already seen it, so I could wait a couple of hours more for sleep. But she was right. It was completely different to Mertz. The Mertz was more of an enormously tall ice cliff. The Ninnis was a shorter gentler slope with brown rock cliff peeking through the snow. The sun was out and the water was glassy. It was very beautiful and I’m glad I did get up. I had my coffee up on the heli deck in the sun.

Ice sliding down the glacier to the sea

We only stayed at Ninnis for 24 hrs, it was pretty big, considering how small it looks on a map compared to Mertz. There was a beautiful stretch of fast ice (fast ice is sea ice that is held ‘fast’ to something like land or and iceberg) on the face of the glacier with penguins climbing up and down.

After Ninnis we said goodbye to the continent. I don’t know if I will ever see it again but I want to.

Our last day in the sea ice, I was pretty sad but it was a heck of a last day. The ocean was glassed out again and it stayed glassed out all day. I had no idea the Southern ocean could be so calm before I came down. There was one last ice station and I laid in the sun on the monkey deck. There was no breeze, the sun was out, I just needed a cocktail and it would have been perfect. I also spent some time down in the focsle chatting to penguins. There was a little guy swimming near the ship, so I squawked at him, and he squawked back to me. He swam around squawking, looking for a friend. I think I confused him a bit. But he did find some friends on an ice floe nearby. I think the sun knew it was our last day in the sea ice. The sunset that night was one of the most stunning so far.

My penguin friend

After leaving the sea ice we headed back to the last couple of CTDs on the SR3 transect. We completed our last ever krill trawl. It was a mega swarm; I got gravid (pregnant) ladies for my samples. There were whales feeding on the school, and albatross. I collected my last water samples from the CTD. The science is officially over.

Collecting water from the bottom of the ocean Photo by Mana Inoue

On one of the last nights, I gave a presentation on my PHD work and what kind of samples I was taking throughout the trip, what the heck POPs are, and are there even microplastics in Antarctica? People seemed to enjoy it J I didn’t see anyone asleep anyway…

One the second last night, we witnessed the Aurora Australis, the southern lights. Unfortunately, it was only visible through the camera. I was lying on the deck star gazing and I could see white light in the clouds. I took a photo and, sure enough, it was the aurora.  Everybody came out on deck to see. Note: it's hard to take a great photo of it when the ship is rocking..

Aurora Australis, At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within the Southern Ocean?

All too soon we were back in sight of land, my phone reception returned, I got an awful sunburn sitting outside watching us sail up the Derwent , and we were back. Back from the most amazing experience of my life. 

Sailing up the derwent

Disembarking the ship for the last time

Getting our drink on: followed by the worst hangover of my life... but that's another story 

Sunsets and Seals

Sunset and a seal

The 7/1/17 marked two weeks to go and even this late in the trip I was still getting ‘firsts’. CTDs along the SR3 transect finished up and we headed off to the Mertz. On the way, I saw my first ‘Dirty Iceberg’. It looks a bit like an iceberg with chocolate topping poured over it. When I first saw it, I was like ‘wharr?’ but it makes total sense. Glaciers carve out landscapes, they scape rocks and soil and it becomes part of the ice. When it carves, the rocks and soil are part of the iceberg. The soil and rocks heat up in the sun faster than the ice and start to work their way out of the berg, which is why it look like the soil is dripping out of the berg. Very cool.

Dirty Berg

At this point in the trip I started having some amazing encounters with the non-penguin birds. One day when we were stationary on the sea ice, a South Polar Skua circled the ship several times. It appeared out of nowhere and was hovering over the metal crates on the heli deck. They feel a bit like vultures, scavengers of the dead and vulnerable. Rumor has it, if you lay down face up with your sunnies on, they will land and peck at you glasses (I forgot to try). I think it was looking for scraps, maybe it thought we were a trawler. I was in the right place at the right time and took hundreds of photos. At one point it was so low, it was about 2 m about my head. When I checked back through the photos, I saw it was looking dead at us. In almost every photo. It was switched on and knew we were watching and it didn’t care.

Skua
Image by Amanda Dawson

Watching us watch it
Image by Amanda Dawson

That night I also learnt how Giant Southern Petrels sleep. Around dusk, three of them circled the ship several times, when I was down on the focsle, checking us out. 

After, they had seen enough of us they flew over to an ice floe near the ship and landed. They just landed gracefully on the ice, and went to sleep! They were joined by a white morph southern pertel. They were so frickin cute all tucked up in a ball on the ice having a snooze. By 1 am I saw at least a hundred Giant Southern Petrels all doing the same thing. So many variations of colour; Southern giants have variable amounts of white on them. They were snoozing, then, they’d get up to circle the ship, then land again. 

Snoozing Giant Southern Petrels

Giant Southern Petrels (white and brown morphs)

A bunch landed on this tiny piece of ice about the size of a coffee table and they squabbled over who would get to stay.  I noticed that when one petrel landed on an empty floe, the others would join it quickly. It was like no one wanted to be the first to land, but no one wanted to be left behind. They were so dopey on land too, they waddle, I presume because of their huge wings.

I started staying up every night to watch the sunset – most nights it was around 1am and we had variable amounts of night. Apart from the nights when the sun didn’t set at all, the shortest I remember was around 50 mins of dark.

The first sunrise I saw on the trip was 2:46 am. After 2 hrs of  'night'. Very pretty.

Between SR3 and Mertz, most of the scientists were a bit idle and so we made up experiments for ourselves. There is a theory that people who hate coriander have an enzyme in their mouth that digests coriander making it taste like soap. The theory goes that a person with the soap enzyme chews up coriander spits it out and another person eats it, they will taste the soapy taste. So yeah we tried it. Ella hates coriander, thinks it taste like soap, Madi said she’d try it – for science. We did it blinded, so Madi and Ella both chewed a small chunk of coriander, they both spat it onto a plate. Madi closed her eyes and we mixed up the plates and she ate both without knowing which was which.  AND… She said they both tasted pretty much the same. We came to two conclusions, either there weren’t enough spitty enzymes on the coriander (although ella said it tasted just as horrible as always) or Ella doesn’t make the enzyme and she just hates coriander. Yey science.

Mertz Glacier

When we arrived at the Mertz, I woke up and everyone seemed to be rushing around, heading upstairs. So I got all dressed up and headed out, and there it was, the Mertz glacier. My first glacier. Honestly, I didn’t really know what I was looking at. For one thing, there was coastline on all sides of the ship except the behind us. Which side was glacier? It all looked like icebergs; steep cliffs. Except one side, which was soft rolling hills. I pointed at the cliff, what’s that, It’s the glacier, they say. Which bit is glacier? All of it.

Mertz glacier is the pale blue ice; the ship's position with land on all three sides

Ice cliffs, the glacier is running down the mountain behind it

It’s so big I can’t wrap my head around it. I headed back inside to orientate myself on the sea ice map.  IT IS ALL GLACIER! We are in a little bay on the left side of the glacier. All three sides of the ship are glacier, steep ice cliff. On side also has the rolling hill, which is continent.  It’s too big to photograph, it’s too big for a panorama. If you squint you can see the glacier high up behind the water level cliffs flowing down the side of the continent, rushing down to the sea at an astonishing rate of cms per years. It’s pretty mind boggling.

Ice cliffs of Mertz seconds after a (small) calving 

The tongue used to be 100km long, but it broke off about 6 years ago when a giant iceberg collided with it. As we were approaching Mertz, we sailed along where the tongue used to be, and you couldn't see the coastline from where we were. I can't even imagine anything that big.

Mertz glacier is named after one of Mawson's expeditioners, Xavier Mertz, who died on the glacier. Around 100 years later, his body is still up on the glacier. Can you imagine if it ended up on an iceberg? And you were sailing around the Antarctic and you see a body sticking out of an iceberg??   

Merfie (Mertz Selfie)

We started CTDs again at the front west corner of the Mertz Glacier and then along the west edge of the glacier tongue, keeping about one nm from the glacier itself. The Antarctic plateau, Mt Hunt and Madigan Nunatak can be seen in the distance. Mertz is awesome. We got so close!! Dangerously close, I feel, like maybe 200m away. I felt like it could touch it. I spent so long outside that my fingers went pretty numb. I also saw another skua, it circled the ship 5 or 6 times looking for something to prey on, or someone’s eyes to peck out. 

“I really love skua’s. Like mini cold vultures”.

We had another orca spotting in front of the Mertz. This has happened a few times and the drill is the same. Shoes back on ( I always take them off in the library), sprint as fast as you can to the room to get cold weather gear and camera, run outside. This time, though I didn’t stop at my room, my beanie was in the library, so we sprinted straight up to the focsle. They surfaced in front of the glacier. At least 15 big orcas, with 2-3 males with enormous fins. They were heading away from the ship, they were close enough to see in pretty good detail, swimming in front of the glacier with sea ice floating all around. They were stunning with big black sleek bodies. They were only visible for a minute, and then they moved off out of view.  

Orcas in front of Mertz Glacier Image by Zane Hacker

  

Not Quite Totten

Map of the coastline showing the ice conditions. The orange line is the ship's track from Casey. The Dalton polynya is on the right, next to the Moscow ice shelf. The crack we were going to use to get to the Totten glacier is the red line running from the polynya to the glacier between the fast ice and ex-fast ice. 

Emperor penguin 

The morning before we entered the Dalton polynya, the ship was moving through thick sea ice. The first thing I noticed when I got up, was the thick fog, the second, that the ship was going backwards – that didn’t bode well. It was slow going into the Dalton polynya. When we entered the polynya it was super calm. There was no wind, no swell, the ocean was glassed out. There were emperor penguins everywhere, with Weddell seals and Crabeaters too.

The most stunning icebergs on Earth

That night the ship entered a stretch of giant icebergs. It was like a dreamscape, there was a feeling of serenity that lasted all night.

At the time I realised I had become blasé about where I was and what I was seeing. So few people on earth will get to experience the things I did. It all came back to me up on the bridge, watching these stunning bergs hanging in the stillness. I am so very lucky. We were travelling to somewhere that no other boat has ever been. No humans have ever been this far inside the Dalton polynya or this close to the Totten glacier.

“I will miss the beauty I have seen down here.”

On entering the polynya, the marine science portion of the trip began in earnest. We started collecting CTD’s and almost everyone was involved. CTD’s (Conductivity Temperature Depth) are a type of water sample. Basically a large metal circular frame with 24 niskin bottles arranged around in a rosette is lowered into the ocean close to the bottom.

CTD - niskin bottles arranged in a rosette 

The frame has sensors for chlorophyll, oxygen, turbidity, current, as well as Conductivity Temperature and Depth. As the rosette is winched back up certain bottles are triggered to close and trap the water from that depth inside. Each bottle holds 10 litres and scientists take different measurements from each bottle. I am helping out one of the chlorophyll guys.  Everyone has to wait their turn to collect water, as it is precious and some samples need to be read straight away (e.g.O2 and CO2 sampling is done first, as they are volatile gases). Chlorophyll goes last which is good, there’s less pressure I will fuck it up. Basically I collect water from 6 bottles according to the minimum and maximum depth of chlorophyll, and then I filter about of litre from each bottle. Drop the filter in a cryovial and into liquid N2, easy peasy.

Science with a view

To be honest, I think the water chemistry stuff is pretty boring science (not like exciting microplastics!), but nearly everyone on here are physical oceanographers so I keep those opinions to myself :P I’m only on shift for two hrs a day between 12-2pm, so there a good chance in that time I won’t have to take more than one sample a day when we are in CTD mode. I actually collected some water for Susan from a couple of CTDs but not until we reached the SR3 transect.

On New Year’s Eve we stopped again for the sea ice team to sample a flow.  I spent several hours up on the bridge helping the voyage leader coordinate the sea ice team. Basically, I recorded the people on an off the ice. But I also spotted a crack in the sea ice that we had to keep an eye on. And I was stand-in voyage leader on the radio when he walked off to make tea. Very glamorous job, huge responsibility. The only sucky thing was that one of the sea ice team accidently lost a piece of plastic and it blew off in the sea. It was so depressing. Such a stunning and ‘pristine’ place and we drop rubbish.

Drilling ice cores to look for trace metals

New Year's was pretty ‘chill’. We rang in the near year playing games like ‘ticket to ride’, (which honestly should be Dan's favourite game). Most people were on shift for the CTDs. We spent a good portion of the evening trying to climb around furniture without touching the ground. I sucked at it, by the way. I have no body core strength.

For the stroke of midnight, Steve, Matt, Zane, Tom and I went up to the helideck and counted down to midnight. We came back down to the conference room and celebrated with everyone else. Hugging and drinking mocktails (coke and a slice of orange). Later, we went up to the monkey deck to hang out. We were expecting a blizzard, so the wind had picked up and it was super cold up there, -0.90 °C with a 29kn wind (-10 with the wind chill). We were leaning into the wind and it held us up. Laughing like idiots. My face went numb from the cold. It was so much fun. Icebergs, light at midnight, great company, what a magical way to ring in 2017! Happy New Year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Image by Matt Corkill 

New year’s day marked three weeks to go. My trip was more than half over.
The ‘blizzard’ finally hit, but I don’t think the visibility got low enough to actually classify as a blizzard. But we did have snow and 50kn winds. I was moderately impressed, we weren’t even allowed outside.

We never made it to the Totten Glacier, the crack we were aiming for that ran along the front of the glacier closed up in the strong winds. But we did make it further closer to the glacier than anyone had been since the 70s. So we cut our losses and turned back out the way we came to headed off to the Mertz glacier. We did make it to the Moscow university ice shelf. The Russians are the only ones who had explored that part of Antarctic and all the charts were in Russian, which I thought was pretty funny.

“The sun is finally out! Nope JK. Its gone”.

Blue Whale

As soon as we were cruising in open water the whales returned. I saw humpbacks quite close to the ship. I noticed that whenever we get relatively close to humpbacks, they fin slap – are they trying to shoo us away or say hello? I also saw a long way off in the distance, through the binoculars, a big whale dive, its fluke was all black and quite truncate. I secretly hope it was a sperm whale. We never saw it again.  There were also massive blows out on the horizon, bigger than all the blows closer, straight up and very high. They were Blue whales, with blow that reaches 9 meters. A little humpback calf and its mum came to visit the ship. The calf decided to show off in front of the ship. A couple of us followed them down to the focsle and he surprised us by breaching twice very close by. What a frickin cutie.

A little breaching calf

The ship's position on the 6/1/17

Before reaching the Mertz we stopped off at the SR3 transect to collect more CTDs. The SR3 transect seems to be some of routinely monitored transect to look as water masses. I needed to collect samples from Susan from the CTD along this transect. We were sampling 24hrs a day with krill trawling thrown in the mix (which I was also sampling). Luckily, I had Ella to help me collect samples so I could sleep a few hours between the krill trawls. It was a bit hectic during those days but I didn’t feel as sleep deprived as I thought I would. The SR3 line also took us close to Dumont d'Urville, the French research station, and close enough to the magnetic South Pole that I got to see the ships compass pointing in the wrong direction (pointing south when we were actually travelling east). Luckily, there are more accurate ways to navigate than a compass these days.

“Before this trip I have never eaten so many tim tams in my life, or had this many cups of tea”.

The Colours of Antarctica

For a landscape predominantly made up of water, there was the most amazing array of colours. This post is really just an excuse to show you some of the beauty I got to experience.

The sun burning a hole in the sky

The amazing colours of sunset

The clouds rolling in on a glassed out day

Blue sea ice 

Icicles on sea ice 

The blue of ice under the waters surface was stunning

Sea ice at dusk

The hidden depths of sea ice

The first sunset i saw in the Southern Ocean 

The moon st sunset

Sea ice

Antarctic moss - are there Tardigrades in there?

Sunset

Each sunset was unique

 

Weddell seal

Iceberg at sunset

Sea ice reflections

Overturned Sea ice

 The underside of sea ice is nearly always covered in phytoplankton. This piece of sea ice was overturned by the ship and you can see the layering as it formed. The red on top is the reflection of the ship.

Adelie Penguin

I was calling to this little guy and he came over to say hi.

Iceberg Image by Sven Gastauer

 I didnt have my camera with me when i saw this berg, Sven was nice enough to give me his pictures.