Week 5 Recap

Nov. 6, 2005, McMurdo Station, Antarctica
Another successful week for the team has come and gone. The highlight of this week for me was the helicopter trip out to Mt. Byrd where Shane and I collected samples from 2 juveniles. What a trip! Beautiful sunshine and no wind; I was lucky I wore sunscreen! No joke, Dr. Trumble actually had a bit of sunburn on his face!

I also was able to see a lot more penguins this week, including seeing an Adelie penguin rookery from the helicopter. Despite how funny they look when they walk, they are fast!

Storm!

Mother Nature decided that we were having too much luck the previous week and decided to give us a few "snow days". These snow days are not the kind of snow days I remember from when I was a kid. Those were great days with building snow forts and tobogganing! Snow days in Antarctica are very different. Around here, snow days meaning staying indoors for fear of getting lost in the blinding snow.
View from the lab window during (left) and after (right) the storm.

Another juvenile

With the 2 days of storms past, we were able to get out into the field again. On Wednesday, Dr. Watson and I set out in the Pisten Bully while Dr. Kanatous, Allyson and Dr. Trumble set out on snowmobiles. The snowmobile group can travel ALOT faster than we are able in the Pisten Bully so they scouted out the areas in advance to try to find a juvenile. They finally located one across on the other side of a large crack near Barne glacier.

Barne glacier seen from the air. The arrow indicates where we had to park the Pisten Bully as it was too big to cross the crack. The star indicates where the seal was located. We had to carry our sampling supplies across the pressure crack in snow mobiles. Our mobile lab started as Fish hut #4, became the back of the Pisten Bully and, on this day, was the back of a snowmobile! Being in Antarctica means having to improvise!

Helicopter trip to Mount Byrd

Saturday was an amazing day for a helicopter trip; beautiful sunshine and no wind. Dr Kanatous and I invited a researcher from another group that studies Weddell seals to fly with us. Their group investigates the population dynamics of the Weddell seal in the McMurdo Sound area and have been very helpful in providing us with information about where large groups of seals have been spotted. The helicopter trip gave their group an opportunity to scout the Wohlschlag Bay area and also an opportunity to see the type of research we perform.

We spotted a number of seals on the flight out to Mount Byrd; in particular, a large number of mothers and pups. When we spotted a juvenile seal just north of Mt. Byrd, we had our pilot, Dustin, land on the sea ice about 100m from the seal. Dr. Kanatous ran over to the seal to prevent it from going back into the breathing hole. I followed shortly behind with the seal hood. After a few failed attempts to get the seal hood on the feisty juvenile, I was finally successful and we were able to get our samples.

Map of the McMurdo Sound area. The red line indicates our route. We flew north to Mount Byrd spotting a number of groups of seals on the way. We found a lone juvenile seal at the very northern end of the Mount Byrd area and were able to collect samples from her there. On the way back we found another juvenile seal in the Wohlschlag Bay area and were lucky enough to collect samples from her as well. The green stars indicate the areas where we found the seals. The black ‘tacks’ indicate Adelie penguin rookeries. These areas are quite identifiable from the helicopter and if you open the helicopter window you know there are a lot of penguins there (stinky!). To give you a perspective on distance, it is about 19 km to our fish-hut (B0-018) and takes us over an hour to get there in the Pisten Bully.
Being this far north also gave us the opportunity to see numerous icebergs, including some of the iceberg remnants from the large B-15 iceberg, a large iceberg which broke away or calved from the Ross Ice Shelf. The iceberg, at nearly 300km in length and 40km in width, was one of the largest ever seen at the time of its formation in March 2000. Since then, it has broken into two main icebergs and other smaller ones.

Calving of icebergs from the Antarctic ice-shelf is common. As the snow accumulates it turns into ice and a shelf of ice is pushed out into the surrounding ocean. Eventually, pieces break off the ice-shelf and an iceberg is born. The formation of icebergs in the Antarctic in this manner is completely different from that in the Arctic which leads to icebergs at either end of the world being different shapes. Antarctic icebergs tend to be relatively low and flat but can be very large whilst arctic icebergs are much smaller. Over 90% of the ice locked in icebergs is to be found in Antarctica.
Looking north from Mt. Byrd you can see Beaufort Island and numerous large icebergs.
Large flat-topped iceberg in Wohlsclag Bay area taken from the helicopter. These icebergs are frozen into the sea ice and will have to wait for the summer thaw before they can float away.
After sampling the first juvenile seal we loaded our gear back into the helicopter and headed back into Wohlschlag Bay where we had spotted a juvenile seal on our flight out. Luckily the juvenile seal was still there and we set down again to get our second juvenile seal of the day. I was much more successful at hooding the seal this time and we were able to get sampling right away. After we finished sampling we had a few minutes to take some beautiful pictures before flying back to McMurdo to process our samples.
Looking into Wohlschlag Bay. Mt Byrd is on the left and Mt. Erebus (Ross Island’s active volcano) is on the right of the picture. Notice the glaciers on the slopes of Mt. Byrd.
On the way back to McMurdo station we fly past the Adelie penguin rookery at Cape Evans. It was an amazing sight to see; hundreds of Adelie penguins along the rocks at Cape Evans.
Adelie penguin rookery at Cape Evans from the helicopter. Right panel is a close-up view.

A 2 adult Sunday!

Luck was on our side Sunday. Beautiful sunshine, very little wind; it was so warm that we were only wearing our fleece sweaters! Apparently two adult males found the weather to their liking as well because we found them lounging on the ice at the pressure ridge near the Erebus Glacial Tongue. They were good sized male Weddell seals (394 kg and 348 kg) who, much to our pleasant surprise, were not too upset by our desire to sample some of their muscle. The sampling of both animals took only 2 hours and we were all home in time for Sunday dinner!
Dr. Trumble posing with an adult Weddell seal after sampling. Dr. Kanatous, Dr. Watson and Allyson are finishing up sample processing before we head back to McMurdo.
Although the first 2 days of the week were a complete write-off due to the storm, we still managed to sample 3 juvenile and 2 adult Weddell seals. The other pleasant surprise was how nice the weather has been since the storm. We are all certainly counting ourselves lucky as days like this do not come around often in Antarctica!

Some other pictures:
Barnes Glacier
Wohlschlag Bay
Temperatures from this past week including the projected sunrise (no time) and the sunset (Feb 2006)

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