ROV and penguin encounters

We spent our last two days back up at Evans and working hard to get as many samples of different kinds as possible. It was another wonderful trip.

We don't always get to dive out of the comfort of nice big dive locker but are living pretty good life with our dive tomato. This hut is on skis and is light enough that we can tow it around. The hole in the bottom we can dive through and then at night we hang our drysuits as you see to make sure that the feet are not totally frozen for the second day of diving. We then go camp in tents, we can also get this structure pretty hot with the heater on the far side.

We are working with a small ROV that the Kiwi scientists are very adept at using. That means they go find the site and then the ROV leads us to it. It can survey in a day what would take divers a long time and it has been incredibly helpful to us. The shot at the top of the page is us working with it to collect samples from the seep it found.

Just after our dive, we had some more visitors. They hung around for a long time to the point where we just had to wander away and get back to the science. We never approach birds and mammals here because of the Antarctic Treaty. However, they haven't read it so just come right over to do what they want around the camp.

Another just amazing day in this windy and cold, but beautiful place.

Diving a new site and new Seeps!

Much of this years project is looking for new areas where methane is seeping from the seafloor. Our aim is to understand what is eating the methane and keeping it out of the atmosphere. Here we are focusing on areas like the one to the right which have active methane released from the seafloor leading to that white color. The white is bacteria that eat Sulphur that is a bi-product fo the microbes that eat methane. This is a new site that we just found this year!

Here are Alex and Steve collecting images of the site as we scope it out. Our New Zealand Colleagues found this and then guided us to it. There were many more sites that they also found that we hope to dive on over the next week.

This site has a lot more light so there is algae including the coralline algae that it looks like the urchins and sea stars are eating here.

This includes fleshy red algae such as above, but it lives in the shallows so can be impacted by ice.

Here is some anchor ice that is having a tug-of-war with the algae. The ice is trying to float away and the algae trying to stay. In the ice algae there is a bunch of amphipods that live there. They also live in dense assemblages under the ice

Our bubbles disturb them and sometimes they swarm. Nice to be wearing a drysuit at times like these.

Here is the view up - nothing but brinacles, algae, and amphipods (so an active ecosystem under the ice.)

Overall a wonderful dive. The rest of the dives were working, so we didn't bring cameras and instead used the information we gained on this dive to sample the various new ecosystems discovered.

A Questing Day

Today we headed north to our new temporary camp on the ice - Cape Evans. The weather was calm but hazy - not the best driving conditions since we can't see all the bumps in the snow making it take a lot of attention for the driver to not annoy the passengers. There is NO suspension no the Piston Bully so every bump is noticed by all (but least of all the driver who has a nice seat).

We have to actively measure the sea ice cracks as we go along. This year the ice is dynamic so we have to have "Constant Vigilance!" This is the most important safety concern for us so we measure each of the crossing stations and record any changes. This informs everyone who crosses the state of the ice.

At the end of the day we ended up at our remote field camp which is a historic spot called Cape Evans. We met up with our colleagues from New Zealand and they had already found some exciting new seeps. Part of our work involved flagging the sites that we were guided to by a Remote Operated Vehicle underwater.

I'll talk more about the diving tomorrow, and we jumped right in. But one of the highlights of the day was an evening walk over to the Barn Glacier during one of the last sunset.

The light and experience was truly amazing. And it wasn't even that cold :) - like at least -20 C or so. Maybe even -15!