Less snow means more light

This year there is less snow on the relatively thin ice meaning a lot more light at depth. In previous years, this site has been VERY dark, however now we have a more light to work with. That doesn't mean it is bright underwater but at least much easier to work in.

There seems to be an especially large abundance of the sponge Homaxinella this year at the "Jetty" dive site. This species that can grow quickly here, unlike many of the different and diverse sponges that we find.

For example, this species (Isodictya setifera) is relatively slow growing compared to Homaxinella, however it tends to live for a much longer time.

I'll share more images of todays dive over the next few days. This dive was largely to regain our comfort underwater and make sure the camera gear was working well. All in all a successful dive. The rest of the day was spent prepairing for our first real field trip north, which is a couple days away still.

Check out dive done - ready for science

The last few days have been filled with training and preparation to start the field season in earnest. It is also when the sun has really stopped setting and we only get a few hours of evening glow - The next real sunset will be around 5 months away.

The culmination of the work thus far is our check out /shakedown dive. We start each season with a dive to make sure all of our gear and comfort levels are ok to allow the science to begin. Even though the divers this year (especially my colleagues the dive supervisors Steve and Alex, pictured here) are incredibly experienced, with that experience comes the knowledge to start slow and regain comfort in this alien land. You can see our dive hole from the previous post, now wearing a nice dive hut that is heated and comfortable, out of the wind, and with a variety of extra safety measures, including ladders, emergency oxygen, and a hauling system just in case. Tomorrow, weather willing, we will begin working underwater and slowly add tasks for the next few days, until we are really ready to make significant progress on why we are here. If the weather holds, we will make it out to our main dive site this week.

First Dive hole in!

Always an exciting day when we get our first dive hole in the ice. As you will see over this season there are many ways to get dive holes in... and todays is as easy as it gets. We use a very large drill, driven and operated by the US Antarctic Support Program Heavy Shop. It involves a large drill bit (about 1.2m or 4ft across) and can put a hole in the 1.5m/5ft ice in a matter of no time.

The drilling goes along until we get our goal of a great big gurgle of water that sweeps away a bunch of the ice shavings and gets the hole ready for us to attack with shovels.

In the end we have a nice clean hole to pull a hut over (when we are lucky) and be ready to dive.

We have a few more days of training and preparations and then we can get our check out dive and science really underway.