During the Winter Cruise, the UCT Engineers, Sea Ice Team also fished for pancakes in the sea. Those ice floes were fished out of the water using a sophisticated fishing net that was really efficient. That way, fishing for pancakes took only a couple of minutes! That shows that the years of preparation for this…
Our team received several such cores from the drilling directly on the ice. Those ice cores were carefully preserved, transported to the mobile trace metal clean laboratory and then processed according to the vigorous international protocols for sea ice core analyses. The analyses will be conducted in our land-based laboratories later this year.
Have you ever seen people drilling a borehole? The UCT Engineers, Sea Ice Team drilled such holes into the sea ice to retrieve a large number of ice cores that the engineers, physicists, biologists and geochemists on board can analyse. For example, some of the engineers and physicists tested the ice structure and strength, biologists…
I didn’t post in long time as I was travelling overseas to attend conferences and meetings. Half way through the current meeting, the GEOTRACES Summer School in Cadiz, Spain, I decided it is time to finish telling the Winter Cruise adventures, as soon enough, in only two weeks, the Spring Cruise will begin .. So,…
We had a long list of research activities planned in the ice, and we can proudly say that we managed them all! I hope, by now, you can imagine that deploying scientific equipment surrounded by floating ice pancakes is not the easiest task. What you probably did not imagine is how difficult it is to…
Almost a week after departure we finally reached the ice. It was a fine layer first and we were all eagerly awaiting to see whether this is actually the beginning of the marginal (sea) ice zone. But eventually, it became obvious that we had reached the (sea) ice. These types of ice floes are called…
The first ice was preceded by the exciting sightings of our first icebergs (and some cute chinstrap penguins)
The team’s sampling schedule was immense, and so already after the very first stations, the team assembled several hundreds of samples. A couple of hundreds of them were then further sub-sampled for multiple purposes … All those samples had to be carefully labelled. Prior to the cruise the team established strict ways of labeling, that…
Soon after departure, we prepared for our first big sampling stations on board the SA Agulhas II. We sampled three sites at 56 degrees South, one at the prime meridian, one 1 degree East and one 1 degree West of the prime meridian, so that means that we sampled the ocean at sites: 56°S 1°W,…
During our voyage south, we mainly sampled water from the ocean’s surface, as we can do that while the ship is steaming. That means that the ship does not have to stop for surface water sampling, and so, we do not loose time; time is precious on such an expedition. We get a certain number…
During the glider deployment we welcomed a little visitor: a penguin, the first sight of a penguin for many participants on board.
Dr. Lousie Biddle and her team who joined the SA Winter Cruise from Gothenburg University (Sweden) deployed autonomous gliders in the ocean that will provide information on processes in the upper ocean during the coming months. The glider deployments were one of the highlights during our first days at sea. These autonomous gliders brave the…
The first days of the southbound voyage were stormy except for a few sunny moments that were beautiful though. We used those days to prepare our equipment on board, get used to the ship and enjoy the sea. The photo shows Warren and Margret, our pCO2 specialists, enjoying some bird watching.
Once the bottle array (rosette) has been deployed in the water, the “driver” lowers the rosette on the cable down to the desired depth. The bottles are individually triggered to close and trap the water from that depth during the way up back to surface . Desired depths are either pre-selected before deployment or just…
One of our new toys was the so-called “miniGoFlo array”. It is however not really small; just smaller than the system we usually use. Prof Roychoudhury purchased it earlier this year for the team, but this was the first time it was used at sea. Along with it, Prof Roychoudhury purchased a new sample container…
Our sampling systems are very complex and we will provide more explanations as we report back from the cruise over the coming week(s). Part of our work is aimed to sample for analysis of trace elements in the ocean. As you can imagine, trace elements are those that exist only in traces in the ocean.…
Southern Ocean adventures: off the benches, in the waves and in the sky .. 