Wednesday 26th December 2007 By Margot Foster The weather pattern changed overnight and the captain hove to at 0300 in the face of gale force winds gusting to 50 knots with snowstorms and sleet limiting visibility. The swell rose to 6metres. We woke up to the news that operations have been postponed and all decks closed until it’s safe to work…which may take 12 hours. There’s some time off for those on day shift. Musicians gather in the bar, which is the most stable part of the ship, for a jam. Four of us met there later in the day for a yoga session, our mats placed to follow the rolling of the ship, and the focus on sitting positions. I spent time on the bridge watching the ice crystals begin to form mounds...

Written Tuesday 25th December A lookout from the bridge is always rewarding. I watched Adelie penguins swimming sportily in circles, popping up and diving down then popping up somewhere else in a dead calm, silver sea. Then a pair of minke whales appeared and I watched their elegant curving and spouting until they passed the ship. The sun does not set and it’s very beautiful moving in and out of the polynyas and pack ice with the soft white curve of the continent sometimes sighted. The trawls have all been down now – the benthic sled, the French Beam, the AAD Beam trawl and the box core. Each one is specialised. The AAD Beam trawl has an under water digital stills camera attached. A crowd gathered around the computer when the images came up....

Written Monday 24th December These are early days in the trawl program and these first stations are taking some time as the equipment is tested and the process fine-tuned. Martin reports “Each haul of the sleds and trawls is bringing up new and interesting material, a highlight this morning being the first Antarctic record for a particular group of molluscs. Yesterday the first run of the GA underwater video camera allowed us to see what the sea-bed we are sampling actually looks like.” Rob Beaman has pictures of the sea-bed. He flicks through his computer screens to show images from the side-scanner which returned this morning with images taken beneath the ship representing a sweep of half a kilometre. He explains with relish the marvel of...

Written Friday 21st December ‘Happy Christmas’… ‘Merry Christmas’ echoes along the corridors. To mark the day breakfast is 0830 rather than 7.30 and there will be a long lunch. We are at -62 48, 142 51 for our Antarctic Christmas. It’s freezing outside, the fog has lifted and seas are rippled with a northwesterly swell to 2m. Our sitrep reports ‘In transit to the main sampling area for both CEAMARC and the southern CASO sites. Expeditioners and crew are busy with last minute preparations for Christmas lunch and festivities this afternoon. The 3rd CPR is currently in the water. Yesterday afternoon the first bulk seawater sample was collected for metagenomic analysis using techniques based on those developed for sequencing the human...

Written Sunday 23rd December, 2007 By Margot Foster Conditions are ideal for the work we are doing. There’s very little wind, a bit of high cloud and the patches of sunshine make it almost balmy at around minus 2 degrees. The scientific program is in full flight. Overnight the last three moorings were sent to the deep. Very early this morning we were heading through the loose pack-ice to CEAMARC 27 – the first station of the project, (the Collaborative East Antarcticta Marine Census). There are 67 points marked on the map covering the sea between Dumont d’Urville and the Mertz glacier. It’s an ambitious plan to fully sample each of those positions in the coming weeks. The first equipment out was the epibenthic sled. It sc...

Written Saturday 22nd December By Margot Foster Finally, notes on the ice have made it into the Sitrep. “ICE CONDITIONS: 4/10 loose pack, few icebergs.” In my cabin the lowered blind has been lit at the edges all night by the sun. I woke disoriented at 0400 by the clunking sound as the metal ship moved through bits of ice and was on the bridge early to watch us glide into the pack at around 0700. It’s down to minus 2 and I can feel the chill through the floor. Big socks and ugg boots now with gloves and hat in the pockets of the snow jacket. We saw another ship on the horizon – the ‘Orion’ leaving Commonwealth Bay. At 6nm distant it may have been an iceberg but the whale and bird watchers confirmed the ...

Written Thursday 20th December 07 By Margot Foster A social day with the inaugural ‘Shipboard Seminar’ scheduled at 1300hrs These are to be held in ‘D’ deck recreation room twice a week. Today’s bill: “Dr Bryan G. Fry, from the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at the University of Melbourne is speaking on ‘Evolution of an Arsenal: Diversification of the Reptile Venom System’. Dr Fry will show some marvellous pictures of dangerous reptiles” We have more offers of talks than there are spaces for them so I’ll offer a ‘Speakers Corner’ in the evenings as well. We have crossed the line – the 60th parallel, and are officially in Antarctica. The event is marked by a vi...

Written Wednesday 19th December 2007 By Margot Foster Pleased to report that I've found my sea legs and am spending longer in the galley after a gingery start. I’ve been prowling the ship and everywhere you turn there's an experiment or research underway - whether it’s the continuous plankton recorder (CPR) or testing the water's chemical composition, every lab is busy. The temperature is down to 6 degrees now we are in mid fifty latitudes I watched the CPR being winched in from the trawl deck with its silk roll trapping plankton during an overnight trawl. What a remarkable contraption it is! It’s like a chunky little silver rocket with a propeller behind it. It’s so simple and elegant and successful that this piece of...

Written Tuesday 18th December 2007 By Margot Foster I am fragile this morning and take a simple breakfast of toast and vegemite. I find that keeping busy is the key so I head for the bridge and a chat with the ship’s master. Captain Ian Moodie has made dozens of trips into the ice. These conditions, ‘pitching in a 3 metre swell’, as he notes in the ship log, are perfect. We are very lucky to have such ideal conditions for the deployment of moorings. The crew on the exposed trawl deck man-handle large and heavy equipment into place for deployment into the sea assisted by winches, ropes and chain. Perfect conditions indeed. But why do I have the queasy creep? I think it’s because we are sloshing around in the swell; at time...

Written Monday 17th December 2007 By Margot Foster A queasy start. How can it be? We are rolling around in the swell because we are dead slow in the water deploying a mooring. One vomit and two tablets is the scale of my disaster. I should never have boasted about my last trip and my capacity for kippers at breakfast and the joyrides on the bridge in heavy seas. Scientists excel at providing acronyms. Today’s included ADCP - the Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler. Work on the device delayed our departure by three hours but it’s now tested in the water and providing data to depths of up to500-700m. I watched the laying out of the PULSE mooring - a trial surface mooring. Three kilometres of line hold data collecti...