Paul: ‘Blawg.

Don’t miss it!  Scott is an amazing photographer and wonderful man, with a singular perspective that he brought to Palmer (and used to create the images on display).

April 16th, 6-9PM at LaGuardia Community College

If you can’t make the opening, the exhibit will be open April 3 through May 31 in New York.  Here’s a portrait he shot of me on DeLaca Island this austral summer:

Photo copyright 2008 Scott Sternbach

A picture I took of him early in the season, shooting landscapes on Jacobs Island in the Palmer area:

More:

http://antarcticsun.usap.gov/features/contentHandler.cfm?id=1605
http://www.popphoto.com/Features/A-Large-format-Antarctic-Expedition
http://en.wordpress.com/tag/scott-sternbach/
http://www.lagcc.cuny.edu/ph/

Climate-related Changes on the Antarctic Peninsula Being Driven from the Top and the Bottom of the Ecosystem

Scientists have long established that the Antarctic Peninsula is one of the most rapidly warming spots on Earth. Now, new research using detailed satellite data indicates that the changing climate is affecting not just the penguins at the apex of the food chain, but simultaneously the microscopic life that is the base of the ecosystem.

The research was published in the March 13 edition of Science magazine by researchers with the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) LTER (Long …

More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=114377&govDel=USNSF_51

British, NSF-funded Researchers Deploy Automated Submarine to Better Understand the Mechanics of Antarctic Ice Sheets

More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=114381&govDel=USNSF_51

Arctic and Antarctic-themed Activities to Bring a Breath of Polar Air to Baltimore

More at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=114340&govDel=USNSF_51

A picture I took recently.

Our Research and supply vessel has been out this month on the annual Long Term Ecological Research cruise of the peninsula, and decided to mark the inaugural occasion last week by naming a station after the new president:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/01/20/antarctic_climate_researchers.html?wprss=44

Another great read for recent news from the Gould and the LTER cruise is Alex’s blog for the phytoplankton and glider component.

Yesterday Andy and I took Cheryl and Oona outside flag line up on the glacier to a crevasse I scoped out last week with some Glacier Search and Rescue teammates. Here’s how Cheryl described the trip.

I stopped by Torgersen Island on Saturday to say hello to the penguins — there’s a new, pleasant little peeping sound from many nests.

The wind and snow were blowing a bit, so they weren’t off the nests much, except to feed the new young or rotate an egg (or change out with the other parent for their turn providing warmth and protection, while the first goes for food and a bath)

The Ushuaia is in pretty good shape, waiting to go North across the Drake, and the whole incident turned out about as well as I think one could hope (for a ship grounding in the Antarctic). The latest here.

Alex and Elizabeth posted a fun video of the Birders being checked out by a leopard seal as they pulled back into station the other day, pretty cool:

IAATO sit rep:
http://www.iaato.org/press/MV_Ushuaia_Situation_Report_Dec_5_2008_1500UTC_2.pdf

Excerpt:
1500 UTC, 5 December, 2008
At 0530 LT / 0830 UTC, all passengers plus five staff and their luggage were transferred from the MV Ushuaia to the Chilean Naval Vessel Achiles, using Zodiac landing craft from the MV Ushuaia and the MV Antarctic Dream. An additional Zodiac landing craft from the Achiles with a rescue team and a diver was also on standby. The crew of the MV Ushuaia plus two staff of Antarpply Expeditions, the operator of the MV Ushuaia, remain aboard the grounded vessel.


The passengers are settled in their new accommodation and were very appreciative of the welcome and breakfast with which the crew of the Achiles greeted them. At 0930 LT / 1230UTC, the Achiles left the vicinity of the MV Ushuaia and is now underway towards Eduardo Frei Station (Chile), Maxwell Bay, King George Island.

The vessel that visited us two days ago (see post below) ran aground today, about 50 miles NE of us:
news.google.com search “ushuaia run aground”

From the early reports, there’s no immediate threat to life, and only a very small diesel leak (cross your fingers on this). Other ships in the area are already helping, a combined Chilean and Argentinean naval response planned.

UPDATE: The International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO) has all the details in this Press Release on the front page of their website.

This morning we enjoyed a visit from the small cruise ship Ushuaia to Arthur Harbor and station, an ex-NOAA vessel refurbished and now operated by Antarpply. They stopped by during one of their Classic Antarctica cruises of the peninsula and South Shetland islands, typically an eleven day round-trip from Ushuaia, Argentina (the primary port for Antarctic tourism).

We’ll host twelve such tour ship visits this summer season — we’ve already seen the Kapitan Khlebnikov and The Endeavour — as part of the Outreach element of the US Antarctic Program, and in coordination with IAATO.

It’s a good time when ships like this arrive, I’m finding — typically a diverse group of folk (many ages and countries of origin) who are extremely excited to be catching a glimpse of this continent, and who are very interested in all aspects of the Program, station life, and my experiences. The tour I led today, like those during previous visits, was quite fun! From 0900-1200 we showed eight zodiac-fulls of passengers around Palmer.

Since the summer season started, our Glacier Search and Rescue team training days have fallen at inconvenient times — overlapping with an aggressive port call schedule with the LMG here, or amidst a busy week, there… so I’d been planning for a while to use almost the full day for our November training. Our fourth-Thursday-of-the-month slot landed on Thanksgiving day, but actually worked out great (as we worked Thu and Fri, treating Fri as a typical Sat, celebrating the holiday Fri PM, and kicking off this two-day weekend we’re still enjoying).

After some review of knots and roping as a team, we reviewed self-rescue and practiced ascending fixed ropes with prusiks. Then we packed some food and headed out the backyard to the glacier:

…and up to the top of the flagged-in safe area on our little section of the Marr Ice Piedmont that covers Anvers island:

Here we got on rope, three teams of three, and headed outside the flag line on the glacier route toward Point 8, a small, rocky peninsula southeast of station sticking south toward Biscoe Bay. It was a fun, straightforward hike, good practice to be on rope, on glacier, for a long while. We got to Point 8 without encountering any crevasse hazard, and enjoyed a picnic lunch on the pebble beach with the elephant seals and gentoo and chinstrap penguins:

The stretch of glacier behind us to the north is incredibly active, calving a dozen times while we were there, including a few huge seracs. A few chinnies popped out of the ocean to say hello

We roped up and traveled up and over to the west, to confirm we had glacier access to a little spit of land next to a neat ice cave visible from the ocean by zodiac. We skirted the roof of the cave and dropped down:

The weather picked up, blowing snow up to 30-35 knots, but it was brief enough to simply enhance the trip. We were back on station by 1500, having completed a 4 mile round-trip:

It was an excellent day, great to get off-station by land and see some new parts of the glacier, and travel on rope with the team, practicing rope team fall arrests, etc. If you have to work on Thanksgiving, this is the type of work I’d pick

“Science” is the mission around here, and one of the real highlights. While we all have primary work responsibilities (e.g. I usually administer our servers, network infrastructure, provide helpdesk support to grantees and other support staff, etc) we also get to volunteer with the research groups.

This morning was my turn on the volunteer schedule with B-019-P, Oscar Schofield’s phytoplankton research group… they’re here as one fourth of the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) project, studying primary production and bio-optics along the peninsula. Alex is a post-doc from Rutgers, and is leading B-019’s research on station with assistance from Elizabeth.

Most of their field work around station occurs from a zodiac — in this case, “Bruiser” is the platform, providing a solid foundation to the davit and winch used for raising and lowering a CTD unit (which measures conductivity, temperature, and depth as it travels through the water column) or water sampling tubes. We had a great morning collecting data (offloaded to a Panasonic Toughbook laptop in Bruiser) and samples, enjoying a few visits from porpoising gentoos and chinstraps (plus, minimal seasickness!)

I’ll post more about the gliders they’ll be deploying here (and during the LTER cruise in Jan) as they put them into action.