December 6, 1999

Stephanie Suhr (left), and Tim Ferrero (center) discuss core allocation with Dave DeMaster (right) in the E-Lab, while Sue Boehme looks on.

Craig and Dave touch base with one another at each changing of the watch. They take stock of progress in gathering samples a decide on the agenda for the next shift. One of the main topics is the disposition of core samples: who gets what and when.

Our watch was uneventful. A successful boxcore followed by a frustrating series of failed megacores. We have drifted into an area of very soft sediment and the weight of the coring device has over penetrated the bed. The results have been muddy messes and clear misses. Every now and then we get some strange, otherworldly creature (usually tiny), like a haiku from the seabed. Such are our rewards!

Craig Smith dissecting specimens in the lab.

With the last few days of the cruise ahead of us, the sample gathering is winding down and the groups are getting their samples together and packing them up for transportation to their home institutions. Mark McClintic, one of Dave's graduate students at the University of North Carolina, spent much of the watch securing samples of sediment gathered from the top few centimetres of the seabed. He will have a busy 3 weeks ahead of him, analyzing 234Th, the Thorium tracer with a relatively short half life of 24 days. By using various isotopes with different half-lives as tracers, the scientists hope to piece together a chronology of sedimentation rates and how the sediment is churned up by animal activity. The Thorium analysis will reveal a short-term picture, while Lead tracers will fill in the time cycle in months. Carbon dating will establish a much longer time sequence. Craig Smith stayed up late into the night working on digestive tract dissections, with a view to determining nutrient absorption rates.

At about 5:00am a light snow from a muted sky began to swirl around the ship. The wind has picked up as we drift in the pack ice. It is hard to stay on course while we are coring, as the elements tug at the ship. The morning was spent securing the kasten core and scooping algae from the the ice. It seems with each passing day that there are more and more pockets of yellowish green ice passing the ship. We can see krill just beneath the water and littering the surface of passing pieces of ice. No doubt about it, the austral spring is in full swing. At 11:00am I turned in for some sleep lulled by the sounds of swishing and thumping as ice and slush brushed the bow. My nap was short lived as I was jolted from by bunk with the whirring roar of the bow thrusters of the ship. We were adjusting our position and, on the aft deck, the day watch were preparing to launch an epibenthic sled, to trawl the seafloor for more creatures. The sled is an aluminum vehicle, rigged with a fine net which is open at the mouth of one end. The device will be towed behind the ship for several hours. Tonight will will set a course for open water and revisit one more site before making our way to Palmer Station.

Mark McClintic prepares his samples for 234Th analysis.

Paulo Sumida makes adjustments to the epibenthic sled.