Month: June 2011

13th June, 2011 – Back in Punta Arenas

On 11 June the wonderful endeavour of NBP11-03 came to an end. We arrived back in Punta Arenas, and spend a last day with hard work packing up all our gear, cleaning the labs, and unloading the ship. In the evening we then had the well deserved ‘end-of-cruise-party’. Everybody enjoyed a few drinks after five weeks of abstinence  (yes – the Palmer is a dry ship, with zero alcohol policy).

I would like to finish this blog with the facts list from our official cruise blog site:

 …we travelled approximately 2800 nautical miles… …

the biologists collected 1124 samples, representing 13 phyla, 11475 individuals, 1634 octocorals and 649 solitary scleractinians!!!

7 June – Sars Seamount (aka sponge wonderland)

A couple of days ago we left our penultimate sample location, Sars Seamount, where we spent almost a week with dredging, imaging, and water sampling.

Sars is a quite sizeable seamount in the middle of the Drake Passage (~59.44S, ~68.08W), but why are we so interested in it? Sars is conveniently located in the middle of the Drake Passage, and hence in a spot where we should see changes in major water mass configurations on glacial-interglacial time scales. Finding old corals (e.g., corals with ages between 25,000 years ago and today) at Sars would enable us to obtain direct insights into the Southern Ocean’s role in natural climate change since the last glacial maximum (~20,000 years ago).

1 June 2011 – Pretty corals and rocky seas!

 

The last five days had everything the title of this blog promises – pretty corals and rocky seas.

A few days ago, we had our first ‘bad’ weather. It was actually not that bad, but 40 to 50 knot winds (75 to 90 km/hr) are enough to stop our science operations, and to start the chairs and containers in the labs to move around. Under these conditions it is simply not safe anymore to work on the deck and hence we all are stuck inside. Sleeping can also be a bit challenging – I had one night, where I woke up a lot because my duvet kept falling off the bed.