Time for your close up

So lots of the things we look at are small - including the amazing things that Dexter wrote about in the last post. Much of the seafloor and water is full of small and medium things that are lost in the spectacular landscapes that surround us. While the ctenaphone above is not small...the intricacies of its body is still lost when viewed from afar.

These cnidarians (octocorals) are another example of amazing detail. They carpet the seafloor at Dayton's wall and much of the region. The tentacles are mesmerizing when viewed up close.

Even the large anemones have amazing microstructure. This one is the size of my hand, but up close shows even more beauty.

I don't make a pattern of posting the back end of animals, but even the rear of this nudibranch is a good angle.

And how can one not love all the legs and finer bits of a big sea spider.

At all scales, the underwater world in Antarctica is astounding.

Antarctica Under the Microscope

On top of the ice lie penguins, seals and skuas in Antarctica. Under the ice are fields of sea stars, sponges, corals and nemertean worms. But what about under the seafloor? Here is a collage I put together from this season of many of the invertebrates that burrow and crawl around the sediment.

One of the types of collections we're doing during our SCUBA dives here are infaunal sediment cores. This means cores of the seafloor to look at the animals that live inside. We take multiple cores at different depths, sites, and levels of methane release.

I spend many hours under the microscope sorting through these rocks and gravel picking out all the animals to study which animals live there and how abundant they are.

These are the three most dominant animals: an anemone called Edwardsia meridionalis, a tube-building worm called Spiophanes tcherniai, and a protist called Gromia oviformis. The collage above showcases some of the other animals including amphipods, clams, snails, shrimp, ostracods, mites, kinorynchs, and other worms.

These may be animals that most people will never see as they're mostly smaller than 1 millimeter. However, they all play an important role in how nutrients and chemicals are cycled through the ocean. This work will help us decipher how the methane seeps we are studying impact the animals communities in McMurdo Sound.

Kowalski, we found humans!

This past week McMurdo Station got a surprise visit from Emperor Penguins, a flock of more than 50 individuals! In the middle of the day, just as we were about to head to the Dive Locker, time paused for everyone at the station. In less than 20 minutes, Andrew filed the field plan permit (eFoot Plan) and we were on our way on the sea ice just in time to receive them!

Words truly cannot describe our excitement of seeing penguins in Antarctica for the first time this season. As the curious emperor penguins made their way towards the entrance of the station, you could hear their calls to their friends to come and see the humans. From the sound of their steps in the snow, to their "thump" sound as they go in their bellies to slide around, these 3ft+ tall birds quickly became one of our core Antarctic season highlights.

As established in the Antarctic Treaty, we only approach them to no closer than 5m (15ft) to avoid disturbing them in any way. Keeping our distance allows us to also see them in their natural habitat and behavior!

If there should be a written rule about our team's daily plan, it is: there is always time for penguins! Antarctica is full of surprises, and each one of them has only brought us closer to nature and taught me the importance of being present in the moment.