December 13, 1999

Back from the Boating Course, Part 2. (Photo by Steve Dunbar).

With a stiff wind blowing through the night, much of the ice in Arthur Harbor has cleared out. Steve and I hooked up with Ross Hein for the second part of the boating course. Again, for Steve, this was nothing more than a review and an opportunity to get me oriented--it has been a few years since I handled a Zodiac. Like riding a bicycle, it comes back fairly quickly. We practiced various maneuvers and landings in the lee of the Station. The winds were still pretty brisk and boating operations were curtailed when they reach 20 knots. Today they were blowing between 20 and 30 knots so, after the course, we headed back to Station and waited for another opportunity to get out. I practiced tying knots, particularly the bowline knot--pronounced "bo-len", as I was reminded. It has been years since Boy Scouts, and these were skills long forgotten...I had a good laugh at my own expense.

Steve Dunbar deploying the Zodiac at the Palmer Station pier.

Wilson's storm petrels danced above the waves, circling and catching currents as they reeled like swallows around lumbering skuas and bobbing blue-eyed shags who lie low in the water like loons. A bunch of us noticed a skua perched at the edge of the pier--looking intently out in the direction of a small berg that milled about the inlet. In time, a leopard seal poked its massive head up, peering over the ice, scanning for penguins, ducking below the surface and easing around for another gander. The only penguin in sight was a chinstrap who spent the day basking on a patch of snow, well out of harm's way.

With our attempts to record at sea delayed, we turned our attention to installing the aeolian, or wind, harp on the roof of the Bio Lab. The harp comprises a series of piezo electric transducers--of a type adapted from the buzzers in video games and beeping speakers in electronic watches--rigged with guitar strings and copper wire and attached to various parts of the roof. Here they vibrate in the wind, producing a set of tones whose ptiches are determined by the length of wire and the force of the wind. Subtle modulations, sonic details and variations in timbre come from eddies and gusts as well as percussive thuds, when a strong wind slams the building and the antennas to which the wires are attached. Steve and I were joined by Alton "Chip" Dunn, one of the Communications Technicians at Palmer, in setting up the wind harp. It works well--sounding a little like the drone strings on a sitar. I am grateful to Richard Lerman, currently of the Interdisciplinary Arts Department at the University of Arizona--West in Phoenix, who shared this intimate recording technology many years ago, when I was a graduate student. Wind is very much at the heart of the Antarctic soundscape.

After dinner, we make another unsuccessful attempt to launch. We will have to wait until tomorrow...

Doug Quin (left) and Alton "Chip" Dunn (right), installing a wind harp array on the roof of the Bio Lab. (Photo by Steve Dunbar).

Meanwhile, I received this Acoustic Ecology note via e-mail:

OCEANSP@CE, Issue 194, Thursday 9th December 1999-- the FREE online marine science and ocean technology magazine

Weddell seal in McMurdo Sound: one of Antarctica's 'acoustic fatheads'.

FAT HELPS MARINE MAMMALS HEAR

"Darlene Ketter, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and professor of otology and laryngology at Harvard Medical School, has provided the answer to something scientists have long debated--how whales and dolphins, with no conventional external ears--collect sounds and conduct them to the inner and middle ear buried deep within their heads. Presenting her findings at last week's Biology of Marine Mammals conference in Maui she explained the answer was that they are 'acoustic fatheads'.

Fat has long been suspected as having a role in the hearing process, but her research showed, for the first time, the complex shape and coherence of specialised fat bundles along the lower jaw of dolphins and fats sheathing the ear canals of seals. Professor Ketter's research shows that the fats in the head are distinct from other body fats. She believes they don't just collect the sounds but actively process them with what otherwise looks like flabby tissues. She used computerised tomography and magnetic resonance scans to analyse the structure of the fat. See www.discovery.com for more information."