By Jan Strugnell This evening the geologists did their first bit of coring of the seabed as part of BAS’s QWAD (Quaternary Western Antarctic Glaciation) project. Geologists with a piece of the core. To determine the consistency of the sea floor they send sound waves from the ship to the seafloor using a piece of kit called TOPAS. The sound waves bounce back to the ship where they are received. Some of these sound waves penetrate the sediment and allow a profile to be built up of the sea floor. This allows the geolo...

By Jan Strugnell Today we set sail for Antarctica at 5pm. Everyone was very excited to finally get going and we all climbed up on the monkey deck as we sailed out from Stanley and started to cross the Drake Passage. There were some seals playing in the water and they were as interested in us as we were in them! It is pretty windy (about 35 knots) and so the ship is rocking a bit, but not too badly. I've managed to avoid seasickness, but have been quite sleepy (a symptom of sea sickness) and so have been sleeping very well despite the rocking. Today we have been getting ready for trawling, which will start in a few days time. Everyone is pretty excited to see what we will catch as very little trawling has been done in this area and there wil...

By Jan Strugnell, British Antarctic Survey Today we all joined the RRS James Clark Ross (JCR) at Port Stanley, Falkland Islands, to get ready for our cruise! The JCR is almost 100m long and seems enormous when it is docked at Stanley. The hull is painted bright red and the words ‘James Clark Ross’ are written in large white letters at the front. The JCR was named after Admiral Sir James Clark Ross, R.N. (1800-1862) who discovered the North Magnetic Pole in 1831. During 1840-43 he also made three voyages to Antarctica in an attempt to reach the South Magnetic Pole, and to undertake a range of scientific studies of the region. The JCR can hold 80 people, and for our cruise we have 24 sc...

As early as 1917, it was recognized that whales were in danger of being hunted to extinction, due in part to the flourishing whaling industry in Antarctic waters. A British Government interdepartmental committee was set up to review the excesses of the industry, but it was not until 1923 that a committee with the required finances and authority was assembled to make "a serious attempt to place the whaling industry on a scientific basis." The steady decrease in the number of whales could only be avoided by controlling whale catching. But effective control could not be planned for a painfully simple reason: not enough was known about the habits of whales, their distribution and migration, or of their main food — the 4-6 cm. long shrimp known as krill. D...

Download PDF pic: Icicles form as meltwater drips from winter sea ice grounded as the tide drops. Rothera Point, Adelaide Island, Antarctica. Pete Bucktrout (British Antarctic Survey) In order to understand how climate change is affecting the Southern Ocean ecosystem, it is necessary to understand the context in which change occurs. What was the Southern Ocean ecosystem like 10 years ago, 50 years ago or 5,000 years ago? Long-term monitoring combined with techniques which provide clues about the distant past, suc...

Submitted February 25: A Wirral, UK, school student is about to set out on the trip of a lifetime to the Canadian High Arctic, as part of an International Polar Year science programme. Emma Brown, a sixth-former at West Kirby Grammar School, will be joining a two-week international scientific expedition, which includes a week on board Canada's state-of-the-art research icebreaker, the CCGS Amundsen. Emma won the chance to represent the UK on the expedition when she entered a competition run by the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory in Liverpool. Her presentation on climate change in the Arctic and her enthusiasm in wanting to help communicate the issues greatly impressed the panel of judges. Emma said, 'I'm so excited about...