Southern Living

2005-12-15T19:07:00.000-07:00

As spring changes to summer, the ice is melting and melt pools form around pressure ridges.

2005-12-15T18:58:00.000-07:00

Vince and Shane playing with a seal pup. After 40 days of nursing, pups now weight 250-300 pounds.

2005-12-15T18:26:00.000-07:00

As the helicopter departs, snow kicks up all around me.
A group of curious Adelie penguins walk over to check out the helicopter.
An Adelie penguin running through a seal colony.

2005-12-15T18:01:00.000-07:00

Steen, the project engineer, exiting a Scott tent. The tent provides some shelter for electronic equipment that Steen is designing to identify fish swimming below the sea-ice. We are interested in learning more about fish (seal prey) distribution and abundance around the seal colonies.

2005-12-15T17:32:00.000-07:00

In the nearby Lewis Bay area, large icebergs are frozen into the shorefast ice and tidal cracks form next to the icebergs. We explored the Lewis Bay area this year and found several seal colonies formed around the icebergs. Many of these animals were tagged Erebus Bay animals. In this picture, I'm checking the seal for tags. The iceberg in the background stands over 100 feet tall.

2005-12-15T16:59:00.000-07:00

Shane takes an overhead photograph of a mother seal while Vince holds the scale bar in the photograph. After calibrating the digital image from the scale bar, the width of the animal's belly is used to predict animal mass. At this point in the season, temperatures are 30 above and we can work without hats and mittens.

2005-12-02T23:42:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving dinner at camp included grilled steak, salmon, rice, watermelon, fresh bread, and pumkin pie. The turkey decoration came all the way from my grandma in Baltimore, MD.

2005-11-24T00:29:00.000-07:00

Adult seals are weighed on the white sled. It is a modified cattle weighing platform mounted on skiis that can be pulle dbehind our snowmachines.
The ice edge.

Vince, Steen, Melissa and Shane take a break from work and pose for a group photo.

2005-11-23T02:02:00.000-07:00

This weeks Antarctic Sun newspaper features the Weddell seal reasearch project. Click on the Antarctic Sun link to view the article.

2005-11-23T01:00:00.000-07:00

An Adelie penguin wandering around a seal colony at Cape Bird, Antarctica.Grounded icebergs are frozen into the shorefast ice and seals live in the tidal cracks that form along the bergs. The tops of the bergs rise about 100 feet above the sea-ice.

Each season, we take several trips outside of the study area to search for Erebus Bay animals that may be pupping elsewhere. We travel by helicopter and land at each seal colony that we find searching for tagged animals. As the helicopter departs, it kicks up snow.

2005-11-21T21:25:00.000-07:00

A mom and pup at Big Razorback Island.

2005-11-17T02:19:00.000-07:00

Life on the ice continues to treat us well. The weather is warming, the ice is melting and the pups are getting fatter by the day. Enjoy a picture of the ice edge taken on one of our reconnaissance flights as well as a few other websites that some of our crew are maintaining.

www.vincentgreen.blogspot.com
www.viking-photography.com

2005-10-27T17:16:00.000-06:00

The Storm by Melissa McKibben

2005-10-27T17:14:00.000-06:00

We've weathered our first storm of the season. While being cooped up in camp during the storm, Melissa wrote the following:

Antarctica is a reminder of how things were, to some extent, in the formative days of the human race- when surviving the environment, not saving it, was the main concern.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The Heroic Age of this continent is long over. We don’t huddle around a Primus stove in a tent, heating a warm milk and seal blubber dinner in the middle of a landbound hurricane. Even those of us away from Mactown have sturdy wooden huts and propane and can call our relatives in the States if the phone lines aren’t too busy (on the weekends, don’t even try). Even here, there are mostly inconveniences: a snowmobile won’t start, the Internet isn’t working, we’re out of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

But then the storms come, and even here in our secure cluster of huts they fill our days and nights, and our minds. Clouds gather in the south, scraping their bellies on the horizon between Black and White Islands. A low pressure opens up, a massive invisible hole in the sky, and in spills the wind, descending like a mudslide on a steep slope, crashing down on the sea ice with the force of an angry god.

The wind first hits twenty, twenty-five miles an hour, and it kind of gets your attention, mostly as an irritation. It burrows into your sleeves, behind your hood, numbs exposed cheeks and nose, makes fingers slow and clumsy. Up to thirty, and even under a blue sky the loose, dry crystals of snow lying everywhere in drifts and clumps will swirl up into a harsh gray fog, a ground blizzard that can obliterate the world beyond a quarter-mile stretch of visibility, or less. By forty miles an hour, the crystals sting when they hit you in the face and it’s definitely time to be home. Navigating by GPS in a whiteout, unable to see more than twenty feet ahead, is unnerving the same way a small earthquake along the San Andreas must be…an annoyance, but with the potential to become so much more.

And then, it’s showtime. Forty miles an hour becomes not the extreme, but the baseline. Behind Big Razorback, usually shielded from the full brunt of the southern gales, we get instead the odd, arrhythmic punches of eddies and turbulence. Unpredictable gusts slam the camp from every direction: fifty-two miles an hour, sixty-five, sixty-nine. When we must travel from hut to hut, we stagger like drunks, often blown backwards several feet by the inexorable force, feet scrabbling for purchase on the frozen blue ripples of sea ice beneath us. The journey to the outhouse, a good twenty-five yards from the nearest trailer, becomes a real effort to avoid cracking elbows or head on the ice, or getting hurled against a building or snowmobile along the way. When you finally reach the tall wooden structure, the south-facing door is often pinned shut by the wind. Wrench it open between gusts, and it’s often torn out of your hands and pinned fully open by the next blast. I’ve wrestled the door with all my strength for five minutes or more before finally getting it shut again behind me. Tales are told of unfortunate souls trapped inside, unable to force the door open again, for hours, while their crewmates back at the hut simply assume they’re off napping in their bunk. (Sidenote: The crew that set up the outhouse before we arrived at camp used strong nylon rope anchored into several feet of ice to secure this structure. On the day we showed up, however, there was no outhouse, just a hole augured into the ice and a few frayed strands of rope flapping from the holes in the ice. Finally someone spotted the building – a tiny black rectangle, barely visible on the white horizon in front of Inaccessible Island. Built on sled runners, it had blasted across the ice ahead of a windstorm that passed through a few days before. It’s now anchored to the ice with four cargo straps, and still we enter and close up behind us during a windstorm with some trepidation, wondering if the next time we get the door open we’ll be in the middle of Cape Crozier. Or the Drake Passage.)

And then by some shift of the wind, Big Razorback will cease to be a sheltering barrier anymore and the full force of the storm will hit us. That, or the winds are so obscenely high beyond our island that the steady winds we get just make it seem like we’re fully exposed. Sustained blasts of fifty or sixty miles an hour, gusts that have topped out (so far this season) at seventy-seven. In the trailers, the beams creak and the windows shudder. Everything strains against the particular mechanism that anchors it to the ice. Go out, and you’re likely to slide helplessly for a few yards across the ice even with crampons on. (From the kitchen hut, we watched one crewmate get pushed past camp and several yards out on to the open ice; to get back he had to drop down and crawl.) Walking is reduced to a lurching, sideways stagger, clinging to any stable surface available, and at the height of each gust you just stop and crouch, precariously balanced between ice and wind, waiting for the next opportunity to take a few steps forward. This particular storm tore the cover of one snowmobile, ripped the windshield off of another, and blew several other machines sideways into a confused jumble so that they resembled cattle huddled in a Wyoming blizzard.

Thursday, Oct 20

2005-10-19T15:55:00.000-06:00

A crabeater seal at Big Razorback Island. Crabeater seals are very rare in the study area. Crabeaters are one of the most abundant mammals on earth, and usually live inthe pack ice. Of the four Antarctic seal species, only the Weddell seal is adapted to live and breed in the shorefast ice environment, but an occasional Crabeater may be spotted in the fast ice. This Crabeater was hauled out with a group of pregnant Weddell seals.

2005-10-19T15:49:00.000-06:00

A mom and pup at Big Razorback Island (where our field camp is located).

Monday, Oct 17

2005-10-19T15:47:00.000-06:00

The pupping season is off to a slow start. There have been only five new pups born in the study area, but it is early in the season and we expect most pups to be born in the next two to three weeks. We’re starting to see pregnant females hauling out in the pupping colonies, and just last night six new females hauled out at Big Razorback, behind our camp.

Saturday, Oct 15

2005-10-19T15:46:00.000-06:00

Our first real day of work. The team splits into two groups of three people and we head out to the seal colonies on our snow machines. It is a 10 mile drive to the first colony, Turks Head, but the drive across rough sea ice is slow and takes 30 minutes. As we approach Turks Head, we are all searching for cracks in the sea ice. The colony is situated around a rock outcrop at the base of Mt. Erebus, and there are two main cracks that the seals use to haul out. We park our snow machines, and pick our way across the sea-ice. We use ice axes to probe the snow and ice as we walk, but find no new cracks in the ice. There is only one mother-pup pair at the colony, and we mark the pup and record the tag numbers of his mother. When we return to camp we search the database and learn the mom is 12 years old and was born at Turks Head. She has had two previous pups in the study area.

2005-10-19T15:41:00.000-06:00

Each animal in the study area is marked with numbered tags in their rear flippers (tags are yellow in this picture). The female in this picture is a 15 year old female that was born in the study area. At this time of year, pregnant females arrive the study area and haul out pup.

Friday, Oct 14

2005-10-19T15:36:00.000-06:00

After two long weeks of travel and preparations, our team has set up a field camp and begun our work. Within the Erebus Bay study area, seals congregate during the pupping season at perennial cracks in the sea ice formed by the action of tidal movement of the fast ice against immovable land or glacial ice. Approximately 400 adult females produce pups in the study area annually. Pupping occurs on the fast ice surface from mid October to November, and pups weight 25-30 kg at birth. Mothers remain on the ice with their pups for 1 -2 weeks, and after this time mothers and pups enter the water periodically. Pairs spend progressively more time in the water as weaning approaches. Pups are weaned at about 40 days and weigh about 100 kg.
During the first part of the field season, our primary objective is to mark every new seal pup that is born into the Erebus Bay Weddell seal population. As part of a long-term marking program that began in 1969, Weddell seal pups born within the study area are tagged with numbered tags in the interdigital area of their rear flippers. Later in the season we will conduct population surveys and record the tag numbers of every animal in the study area. These data will be used to estimate survival and reproductive rates, as well as to determine if the population size is growing, declining, or remaining stable.

2005-10-10T19:47:00.000-06:00

The new team members attended an overnight survival school. From left to right, Steen, Melissa, Vince, and Shane enjoy a cup of warm coffee after spending a chilly night camped out on the sea ice.

Monday, Oct 10

2005-10-10T01:43:00.000-06:00

We've spent the past few days assembling all of the science equipment and camp gear that we will need to operate a remote research camp over the next few weeks. The camp is located on the sea ice adjacent to Big Razorback Island, about 30 miles outside of McMurdo Station. Camp consists of four huts, one for cooking, two sleeping quaters, and one for storing equipment. Each of the huts has propane heat, and there is a solar power system that provides electricity to the kitchen. All of our computers, clothing, food, cook stoves, water and equipment were loaded into the four orange huts, and the huts are dragged across the sea ice with heavy equipment. We are hoping to finish preparations and move into the camp tomorrow.

Thursday, Oct 6

2005-10-07T01:40:00.000-06:00

This morning we begin a series of mandatory safety trainings that we must complete before we can venture onto the sea-ice where the seals and our camp will be located. This season, the Weddell Seal project has a field crew of six: Mark, Vince, Shane, Steen, Melissa, and myself. Four of our crew is new to Antarctica this year, and will begin Happy Camper school in the morning. Happy Campers is a two-day, overnight survival course where new scientists learn to dig an ice trench, build an igloo and snow wall, and survive a night on the sea-ice. The temperature is forecasted to be -74F.

Wednesday, Oct 5

2005-10-07T01:30:00.000-06:00

After a long journey, we arrived McMurdo Station, Antarctica! The U. S. Airforce flew 60 eager scientists and support staff in a C-17 cargo plane. The flight was initially delayed due to weather, but after a late start, the six hour flight went smoothly. All planes land on the sea-ice runway, about 2 miles outside of McMurdo Station. The sea-ice runway needs to be 72" thick to support a 500,000 pound cargo plane for 1 hour. All cargo and passengers must be offloaded and the plane needs to take-off within the hour, or the weight may crack the sea-ice and shut down the runway for the entire season.

Tuesday, Oct 4

2005-10-07T01:07:00.000-06:00

Today we reported to the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) headquarters in Christchurch and were each issued extreme cold weather (ECW) clothing. Each USAP participant receives several layers of long underwear, windproof jackets and pants, hats, mittens, snow-bibs, parka, and bunny boots. Together, a full ECW outfit weighs about 30 pounds, and although it makes it a hard to move, when we get to the ice we'll be glad we've got it!

Monday, Oct 3

2005-10-07T00:56:00.000-06:00

After a long journey, we arrived Christchurch this morning. We have the day off to relax and begin preparations for Antarctica in the morning.

Saturday, Oct 1

2005-10-07T00:51:00.000-06:00

The journey begins! We leave sunny Bozeman and are heading to Salt Lake City, then Los Angeles, then Auckland, and finally Christchurch, New Zealand.