Day 5 Wanderers, a whale and a box full of sand

The box corer is deployed

Antarctic Minke whale

Albatross in flight

Albatross

The James Clark Ross is nearly 200 miles from the Falklands. On the science menu for today is more coring - if possible we'd like another sediment core from the long gravity corer which worked so well yesterday. But nobody has looked at the seafloor in this area before, so sending down the long steel tube into what could be solid bedrock would be a bad idea, so we first check the composition of the seabed.

On the way to the designated site, the coring scienists monitor the TOPAS display on the ship computer system. Topas is a sub-bottom profiler that can see through the first few metres of sea bed and give clues to what it is composed of. The instrument sends sharp acoustic pings through the water column and into the seafloor. From the returned echo an approximate image sea bed and what lies beneath is reconstructed. This thing is like an echo sounder on steroids - a bit like an x-ray fish finder, but way more powerful.

The ship did a couple of laps around the site to sample the seabed at 3000m water depth. The sub-bottom profiler was switched on the whole time. At first the output didn't look too good, but as long as it's not solid rock we should be able to grab a core. If a site is surveyed for the first time it's much safer to send a box corer down first. This is a large steel crate with a spring-loaded shutter at the bottom - just like a very heavy mouse trap but catching mud instead. When it hits the bottom, the box sinks into the mud, and the spring releases to close the box before its precious contents are hoisted back on deck. This device is used to sample the very top of the slushy sediment layer where the mud meets the water. The gravity corer on the other hand samples the deeper layers of sediments, but often loses the mushy bits at the top, so having cores from both devices gives the complete picture of sediment accumulation.

The box corer is winched down to 3000m at 30 to 60 metres per minute while the cable carries over 2 tons of tension. Nearly 2 hours later the box corer came back up to the deck, but the crew didn't seem too happy - There was no mud in the box. Somehow the mouse trap hadn't triggered? Several theories as to why that could happen were considered, but it didn't change the outcome. There was no mud!

On the second attempt things looked better - the winch paid out lots of cable until it went slack. That's a good sign because the lack of tension triggers the shutter mechanism. If the box corer had hit the seabed upright and sunk into the bottom substrate we'd get a good sample, so everyone was hopeful that the corer had struck proper mud this time. An hour passed before the corer was on deck again. Everyone's eyes were on the crew who opened the box to take a look inside. They unscrewed the box and signalled the waiting scientists:

Thumbs down!

So no luck again. There was no soft sediment at this site, but at least the box corer had gathered material from the sea floor. All that was in the box was sand! Pretty coarse sand actually, which is surprising this far from land. But still it was only sand and no fine sediments with clues to thousands of years of ocean climate. The sand would give us some answers, just not the expected ones. That's science for you! Best
of all, finding the sand had prevented damage to the gravity corer. If we had sent the gravity corer with the long tube into this coarse material it would certainly have bent or been damaged somehow. Just poke
a stick into fine silt and it glides in - poke a stick into wet sand and the harder you strike it the more the sand turns to concrete. That's what the box corer is used on sites that are unknown. It only samples the top half metre of sea bed with a really robust mechanism and can therefore prevent damage to more fragile equipment. However, a small plastic bag of the sand would go to the lab for analysis, but that was to be all for science at this place.

While most of us were assembled on the deck to watch the recovery of the box corer, an antarctic minke whale came to the side of the boat. It breathed out just 10m from us over on the starboard side. Antarctic minke whales are known not to blow, so the exhalatin sounded more like a sigh instead. Nobody had their cameras ready for this unexpected encounter. My photo above is of the second time it breathed, but this
was already much further away.

Spurred on by a close call with southern mega fauna, I stayed on deck with binoculars and camera and watched the albatrosses that had gathered around the ship. This was the first time I saw a Wandering Albatross close-up - it had settled on the water just over the stern. These huge birds have a wing span of up to 3 metres, but at a distance look just like a sea gull. Only when they come to within a few metres of the ship it becomes obvious how absolutely massive they really are. The photo of the albatross in flight shows a Royal Albatross - also a big bird, but not quite as huge as a wanderer. Whichever species it is, their flight is one of the great experiences of the Southern Ocean. They glide over the waves, wings far outstretched and the wing tips almost touching the waves. They use the ground effect like they'd studied airplane dynamics and ride the updraft created by individual waves. The wings hardly move, as most of the energy comes from the wind itself and the albatross is
just going for a ride.

I wish I could put something for scale next to an albatross. Let's say a rottweiler or a small child - a fully grown wandering albatross could match that size. But don't think of them as freakishly big sea gulls - the bird experts on board wouldn't be happy about that ;)

We are now in transit to our next station - over 1 and a half days sailing away - at Orkney passage, a gap in a sea floor ridge near the South Orkney Islands. These slands lie south of 60 degrees and are part of the British Antarctic Territories. South of 60 I shall be in Antarctica proper and I brought a special beer can with me to celebrate this occasion. But we're still in the 50s (degrees of latitudes) and it's still a long way through the Southern Ocean.

Day 4 First core

Coring tube is lowered onto frame

Frame is rotated into the water

Corer is lowered into the water

First segment of core is cut off

Success! The first core of the cruise

Sediment samples are taken for analysis

All the gazillions of tiny planktonic creatures that live in the ocean will eventually die and get eaten, dissolve or sink down to the sea floor. While the food chain and who eats what is important to a marine biologist, the paleooceanographer is after those critters that die and settle on the bottom. Gradually over geological time scales of thousands of years, layer upon layer builds up of these dead creatures and other particles like wind-blown dust or silt from nearby rivers. Each layer that settles on the sea bed contains a signature of the environmental conditions at the time when the creatures buried within were still alive. If left undisturbed in the depths of the ocean the sediment buildup acts like growth rings on a tree - the chemical and biological signals in the deposited sediments encode the climatic history of our planet, and this what the paleo team has come to the Southern Ocean to study.

A corer is used to retrieve the sediment layering. It is essentially a long metal tube that is lined with plastic lining on the inside and a a massive weight (about 1 metric ton) attached to the top end. When the bottom end, which is open, hits the seafloor the coring tube will punch through the sediments driven by the weight from above. Inside the plastic liner it traps layer upon layer of past climatic records. The photos show some of the deployment procedure. First the empty core is laid out horizontally on deck and then winched onto a frame. Then the top end of the tube is connected to the weight and all segments are securely fastened together. Then the frame cradling the entire corer is rotated into the vertical on the side of the ship. From there the winch takes over and grabs the corer (now weighing well over a ton) and lowers it into the water. At the first site it's 600m deep, so at a rate of  1m/s the corer reaches the seafloor in about 10 minutes. Then the coring tube sinks into the sea floor mud driven by the huge weight. The corer settles and the winch cable goes slack - a tense moment. Will the shutter at the bottom of the coring tube shut properly or will all the mud spill out of the bottom? Has the corer entered the sea bed vertically, or could it have hit a rock and bent out of shape?

When the corer is winched up again, all looks fine. The shutter closed proberly, the whole tube is straight and undamaged and its side are smeared with sediments - this is a good sign. The core now contains hundreds of kilos of layered sediments, or to the rest of us: "mud"! Back on the ship the core is laid out on the deck and the plastic lining is pushed out of the metal outer tube. In regular intervals the plastic core is cut off and brought to the lab. Now it's time to take first swabs of the glorious smelly mud. The team can't wait to put the samples under the microscope and look which species of microscopic critters died at the time that particular layer of sediment was deposited on the sea bed. What looks like ordinary mud will be full of clues about the past history of the oceans.

The various species of micro-organisms change with environmental factors such as water temperature, and amongst the layers of mud the team hopes to find clues of when colder or warmer ocean currents were prevalent at this site. From a first estimate we think that the core taken today can reveal that sort of information up to 50,000 years into the past, maybe even further back in time. Only by knowing how the oceans changed in the past we can hope to understand how they will change in the furture. At a time when these changes, accelerated by human activity, happen so rapidly these clues from the past are priceless. Even if they come from smelly mud and dead bits of plankton.

This was a truly exciting day of science on the James Clark Ross. The crew was fantastic in deploying the equipment safely and the science team gained lots and lots of data which will keep us busy analysing for a long time.

Did I mention there was a bar on board?? Well, Cheers!

Day 4 First CTD

Proposed cruise track

CTD rosette on deck

Bosun at the winch controls

The CTD is deployed

Monitoring the progress of the CTD deployment

There seems to be a motto about research cruises: "Hurry up and wait!" so while everyone has been busy on the ship, there has also been a lot of waiting. Unscheduled flight stopovers, refueling delays, unexpected weather etc. The location of the shortfetch work on air-sea gas exchanges to the west of the Falkland Islands was dictated by the weather (we needed enough wind and breaking waves with whitecaps), but
today arrived at our first scheduled site. One picture above shows the cruise plan - the fat dots are for taking sediment cores (for paleoceanography) and the occasional CTD cast, and the regularly spaced blue dots mark the sites fo the CTD transect (for physical oceanography).

The JCR had been steaming all night to arrive at the green dot, and it was time for some action! The physical oceanography team (i.e. incl. me!) was first up with their CTD cast. A CTD measures Conductivity-Temperature-Depth which is used to determine the physical paremeters of seawater, such as its density at various different depths from which pther parameters like the sound speed can be derived.

Why do we need to know the density of seawater? Heavier water sinks and lighter water rises, so slight changes in density can send huge chunks of water on the move and ocean currents develop. And we are here to study the deep ocean currents flowing out of Antarctica, so measuring the exact density is crucial for a complete picture. Density is calculated from temperature, salinity and depth - the salinity is measured with a conductivity probe and the depth comes from a pressure sensor on the instrument. See my previous post  (Day 2 Salinity labwork) on how this is calibrated to very exact values.

Why do we need to know the sound speed? Well, it is e.g. used to calibrate the echo sounder that tells the ship how deep the water is. The echo sounder works by sending out acoustic "pings" of sound and measures how long it takes for them to be reflected off the seafloor. So if you measure the time of the echo and you know how fast sounds travels in water, you know the depth of water under the keel. As sound travels slower in denser water, and faster in lighter water we use the profile of density from the CTD probe to calibrate the various depth sounders on the ship (there are many, and I'll describe some of them at a later
date). Without knowing the precise density distribution of the water, the depth sounders may well be a few metres out, hence the density measurements from the CTD come in handy.

The CTD itself is mounted on a larger frame holding an array of water sampling bottles, known as a rosette. Each bottle can be individually electronically triggered to close at both ends at a given depth. This traps a sample of water inside which can be analysed further. To prepare the CTD before deployment we "cocked" all bottles in the open position, and ran the pre-deployment checks on the control computer. The equipment passed all the tests, and the probe was ready to go. I went up to the winch room to watch the deployment, as the deck work is done by the ship's experienced crew. The bosun operated the winch and dipped the CTD carefully into the ocean (photo above). First it goes to 10 metres where all the instruments are tested again. When all the readings check out the probe comes back up from the surface and the begings its descent to the bottom.

The winch drops the probe at 60 metres per minutes, or 1 metre per second. We were in relatively "shallow" water for this deployment - only 600m, so the descent didn't take too long. During the descent we monitored the readings from the CTD probe (photo above). We also monitor the amount of cable that is spooled off the winch drum. When this suggests that the probe is getting near the bottom the altimeter takes over. This is an instrument which measures the distance down to the sea bed. Its readings came in as a yellow line that was cautiously creeping towards zero. This is a reading you do not ever want to get - hitting the bottom could mean the potential loss or damage of hundreds of thousands of pouinds worth of high precision equipment. A few tense moments later the altimetre reading had stabilised at 10m. Everything was fine - the winch had stopped and the probe now dangled 10m above the sea floor in 600m depth.

Everything was now ready for the descent back up to the surface, but we still hadn't operated any of the water sampling bottles. A few mouse clicks on the control terminal and the first bottle "fired". An electronic pulse is sent down the wire to release a magnetic trigger that has been holding the bottle open like a mouse trap. When the spring loaded mechnism releases the water at the given depth is sealed tight. We fired a couple of bottles at the bottom and several more on the way up until the whole set of bottles has sealed shut. The last bottles went at 15m depth, and not long after the CTD was back on deck.

One by one we opened up the bottles and decanted the water samples from the rosette into smaller glass bottles for analysis. These water samples will, amongst other uses, help us calibrate the conductivity sensor, to make sure that salinity that is measured during the deployment agrees perfectly with the more precise salinity measurements that can be perfomed in the lab. But before we run the salinity tests, the bottles need to go into the lab and sit there for 24h. This makes sure that they are at the same temperature as the lab in which they will be analysed.

After taking the water samples, we downloaded the data from the CTD onto the ship's computers. The data is then processed and stored in multiple backup systems. The echo sounders use that data to get their exact sound speed profile, but the really insteresting use of the data comes when we analyse the the CTD profiles to learn more about the ocean circulation and how it affects our lime system. This analysis will take many more CTD casts and many months of poring over graphs and figures. But we hadn't arrived at the site of the green dot (see map above) just for a CTD, the paleao team still wanted to take a sediment core. While the ship held its position precisely over the designated GPS position, the other team went to work.... (see next post).

Day 3 String watch

The bubble buoy on a tether (marked by the red float)

Fred on string watch

Dolphins around the bubble buoy

Albatross pecking at the tether

The science program for today included the spar buoy which measures wave activity. During the experiment the sensors at the foremast and in the hull of the ship measure the concentration of gasses (it's mostly CO2 we're after) in the atmopshere and in the surface layer of the ocean. The difference in CO2 concentration between the two is crucial, as it decides whether CO2 is drawn out of the atmosphere into the ocean or vice versa. The goal of these experiments is to relate the CO2 transfer to wind and wave activity, particularly breaking waves. Waves grow higher and eventually break if the wind is stronger and/or the fetch (length over which the wind blows) is greater. The speed at which CO2 is drawn out of the atmosphere into the ocean depends on a number of these variables - wind speed, fetch length, wave breaking, background sea state, existing gas concentrations in air and water etc. I already talked about the role of bubble formation during wave breaking in previous articles. This aspect is also being investigated here.

Several theories exist for a formula that calculates the rate of CO2 transfer between ocean and atmosphere. But these equations need to be confimed by actual field experiments, and that's why the air-sea gas exchange team is here to take these measurements. Measuring gas concentrations is a tricky business and the instruments needs to be very precise as there are only very small differences in the CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere compared to the oceans. These differences are so tiny that they are close to the accuracy of the instruments. That'ss why it pays to go to the Southern Ocean where the air contains measurably more CO2 than the ocean compared to other parts  of the world.

The spar buoy with its wave sensor was deployed in the water for the entire day, and in the afternoon I took over "String watch" - co called because the buoy is tethered to the ship by a rope (the 'string') and we need to watch it so it doesn't drift into the propellers of the ship. During my round of stringwatching I kept an eye on the tether, but mainly observed the wild life around the ship. Black-browed albatrosses and giant petrels whizzed around the ship and the buoy all day. Rock shags fluttered by, and Gentoo penguins from a nearby colony occasionally popped up at the surface to check us out. The most fun was to watch a pod of Peal's dolphins that kept appearing in regular intervals. Between 3 and 7 of them were visible at the surface at any one time, and once they swam past the buoy in formation. I wonder whether the splash they created (photo above) will be visible in the wave data.

The buoy will be out for a while longer - into the small hours of the morning - and the night shift of string watch will be keeping an eye on everything. Tomorrow we will take up position further south.

Day 3 Remembering Scott's final entry

RRS James Clark Ross off the Falkland Islands

The sea outside my porthole is calm, with only occasional whitecaps. The sun just creeps above the horizon in a near cloudless sky. About a hundred black-browed albatrosses have gathered around the ship, possibly in the expectation that any minute now we would be hauling up a huge net full of fish for their breakfast. No such thing materialises for the albatrosses, but a Full English awaits the science party in the galley. My stomach isn't quite up to the task yet, and the effects of the sea sickness pills only add to my constant feeling of slight drunkenness.

I had been gently rocked side to side all night, but when I take my first steps in the morning my body seems to need a few moment to realise that everything is moving. As I move a foot to take a step, the ship has shifted slightly by the time it touches the ground. I feel better after a light breakfast, but at the same time still sleepy. We are at 51° 27.95 South, 57°35.95 West just a few miles off Volunteer Point west of  the Falkland Islands. The sun shines and a cool breeze is blowing at 20  knots - a rather fine day to be out at sea.

A far cry from the conditions Robert Falcon Scott's polar party encountered at the South Pole in January 1912 when he wrote in his diary "Great God! this is an awful place". All five who went to claim the pole for Britain didn't make it back. Today is the centenary of Scott's last diary entry. His team had grown worryingly weak whilst hauling their sledges back from the pole back. In February Evans had succumbed to
exhaustion. In mid-March Captain Oates who suffered from severe frostbite and gangrene had walked out of their tent into the Antarctic blizzard with the immortal words "I am just going outside, and may be
some time". The remaining three men had carried on until they were halted again by a fierce blizzard just 11 miles from their next food depot that would have saved Scott, Wilson and Bowers.

The three men holed up in their tent in the impenetrable storm had come to accept the inevitability of death. On 29th March 2912, exactly 100 years ago today, Scott wrote in his diary: "We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more. For God's sake look after our people." They are thought to have died shortly afterwards and their bodies together with their diaries and scientific samples weren't recovered until November 1912.

The tragedy made headlines around the world and especially captured the imagination of the British public who, on the brink of World War I was in dire need of national heroes. While most English school children will probably name Scott as the first man to stand on the South Pole it was indeed Amundsen who beat them to it. The Norwegian was ahead of Scott from the start and he set off with sledge dogs that allowed the men in Amundsen's party to carry a lighter load. While Amundsen did not pursue any scientific endeavours - he was after the pole and not much else - Scott dedicated much of his time to the collection of specimen, map making and weather recording. It almost feels that if Scott might have had an inkling that he wouldn't' be the first the pole and the science would give his expedition, should it fail, a lasting legacy. The science would give Scott credibility and recognition of lasting impact.

One hundred years after Scott penned his famous last words I am writing this blog post on board a research vessel of the British Antarctic Survey. Few would dispute that Scott's scientific discoveries laid the foundations for future Antarctic research. So I see myself being here, about to depart for Antarctic Waters, as a direct consequence of Scott's expedition and how the tragedy that befell him and his men captured the public imagination.

Day 2 Salinity labwork

The Guildline salinometer in the salt lab

My mascot pingu at the winch controls

The CTD control terminal

While the air-sea gas exchange team is measuring how the ocean breathes (see previous post) I was learning how to perform some basic tasks within the physical oceanography team. The physics of the ocean are driven primarily by the density of the water (which controls its buoyancy - dense water sinks and lighter water rise up) and the velocity (speed and direction of currents). To measure the density one needs to know the salinity, temperature and the sampling depth. None of these parameters are easy to come by when things need to be done accurately.

The depth can be derived from a pressure sensor, and the temperature can be measured electronically. How does one measure the salinity of the seawater? How do we know how much salt is in the water at a given depth? Those who have seen how sea salt is manufactured by evaporation might  suggest that simply boiling up a water sample would reveal the amount of  salts in the residue that's left over, but things are much much more complicated than this.

It turns out that the most practical way of measuring salinity of seawater is to measure its conductivity. Stick two wires into the water, measure how well it conducts electricity and you have an idea about its salinity. The better it conducts electricity the more saline it is. And instruments measuring this effect can be unbelievably precise. And because they are so precise (they really need to be, more on that later) they need to be constantly calibrated.

The device that measures the parameters required for the density of the water is called a CTD, short for Conductivity, Temperature, Depth. As salinity is derived from conductivity, those 3 values is all a physical oceanographer needs for the density (the other main interest of physical oceanography - current velocity - is measured using other means). The CTD probe is lowered into the ocean from a long cable (the winch controls are operated by Pingu, my mascot, as seen in the photo above) and it transmits its data to a computer on the ship (the work place with the blue chair in the photo above). The computer compiles a detailed profile of temperature and salinity and computes the density which is so crucial to the physics of how the ocean works.

Today my lab work involved learning how to operate the salinometer. The salinometer is the big box in one photo with a bucket at the lower end. One can easily grasp that "salinometer" is a device measuring salinity, but if the CTD probe already measures the conductivity, i.e. the salinity, why do we need to measure it again in the lab. Well, the reason is accuracy. The changes in salinity from the surface to the bottom are relatively big and the accuracy of the conductivity probe mounted on the CTD would be more than sufficient. When working in the deep ocean, however, the salinity readings may vary by only tiny amounts - several digits after the decimal point. Not only may the salinity near the bottom be virtually identical to the salinity several hundred metres further up, it may also only vary by a tiny amount from year to year. But even the smallest changes are significant for the processes that drive the ocean currents on a global scale.

To ensure that the conductivity probe on the CTD remains accurate it is constantly calibrated. To do this water samples are brought up (I'll show this process in a couple of posts time) and analysed in the lab. The analyser which never leaves a temperature-controlled laboratory is more accurate that the probe which gets hoisted over the side and dunked into the ocean every day. Using the accurately measured salinity from the water samples, the electronically recorded profile from the CTD can be calibrated to a given standard, which is used by all oceanographers regardless which ship they work on or which equipment they use. This ensures that all measurements are as accurately as is currently technologically feasible.

In the next few days I shall report more on the science experiments. Take a look at Helen Czerki's blog in the Guardian's science section, where she blogs about life on board and her experiments measuring bubbles in the ocean. The address for that blog is http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/series/scientific-log-southern-ocean

Day 2 Instruments are in the water

Sunrise on deck

The spar buoy is prepared to measure waves and bubbles

The spar buoy and a red float marking its tether

The buoy is recovered again

It's day 2 of the cruise and the science programme on the James Clark Ross is well under way. We are in position just west of the Falklands Islands opposite Volunteer Point. When we were waiting for the ship toget ready we didn't have the time to visit this on land - the beach at Volunteer Point is know for its large penguin colony whith several breeding pairs of King penguins. I kept a good lookout but couldn't see any Kings visiting the ship. I did see several groups of Gentoo and Magellanic penguins purpoising past on their way back to the colony. The team studying gas exchanges between the ocean and the atmosphere was busy taking measurements with their spar buoy. It is basically a long yellow rod, which is light at the top and weighted at the bottom, so it rights itself in the water like a float used for coarse fishing. Several instruments are attached to this buoy to measure the activity of the waves (bobbing the buoy up and down) and the effects of breaking waves.

One of the science experiments studies the bubbles that form when a wave breaks. Some bubbles are microscopic so they stay under water for a while. I just takes a glass of mineral water to see that bigger bubbles rise quicker than smaller ones. These bubbles trap gasses from the air and transfer them into the ocean and vice versa they also take onboard dissolved gasses from the ocean and transfer them back into the atmosphere. The ocean is practically "breathing" every time a wave breaks.

One of the scientists who are studying the bubbles is Helen Czerski who writes a blog on the science pages of the Guardian newspaper. Her blog explains much her work better and also gives some more insight into the science onboard our cruise. The link to the series of articles is: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/series/scientific-log-southern-ocean

The photos above show a beautiful sunrise out at sea, and the work with the yellow spar buoy. During measurements the buoy remains tethered to the ship, so it can easily be pulled back to the side and hoisted over the gunwhales with a crane.

Day 1 Setting sail and the first whale sighting

Leaving Choiseul Sound (Falkland Islands)

View over the bow

Commerson's dolphins riding the bow wave

After much preparation in port the day had come to set sail. A tugboat helped the James Clark Ross out of her berth at Mare Harbour and we steamed over into Choiseul Sound. Mere minutes after the ship had fired up its engines and started moving a small pod of Commerson's dolphins swam over and rode our bow wave for a few fin strokes. They spinned around and twisted into the turbulence before departing just as quickly as they had appeared.

Before going into the open ocean we completed a set of sea drills while the ship was at anchor. An ear-piercing alarm sounded at every grabbed their life jacket and assembled at the muster station. All names were called out and we were marched to the life boats and strapped ourselves in. The life boat is roughly the shape of two bathtub stuck together by their open ends. The top half is orange, so it can be spotted easily from rescue planes should that ever be required.

A crew member stood by the door of the life boat to tick our names of the sheet. He announced cheerily that we should have our passports and boarding passes ready and stow our hand luggage in the overhead compartments. Inside the craft are rows of benches with seatbelts that resemble in part those on a plane, but include the upper body too (a bit like those used in rally cars). The life jackets were uncomfortable as it is, but in the event of an emergency we might also be wearing immersion suits - an insulated neoprene overall which keeps the person dry in case one has to abandon ship and go into the drink.

The life boat drill lightened the mood, as we had been waiting around for quite a while. Not it wouldn't be long before the open ocean. The crew completed some extra drills - they actually launched the life boats into the water, but the scientists weren't required for that. Finally we weighed anchor and steamed into open water. I went up to the roof of the navigation bridge called "monkey island" and scanned the sea surface for signs of life.

There was flocks of sooty shearwaters again, but not the huge masses of birds we saw yesterday. Black-browed albatrosses skimmed the crests of the waves as if to tell us that the open ocean was near. It didn't take long until I heard a very welcome shout:

W H A L E !!!

and my eyes strained in the general direction Hugh was pointing his arm as one would do in a man-overboard situation. And there it was - a blow at 1 o'clock off the bow. A short time later another blow at 2 o'clock. Such a shame that it was already too dark to take a photo. When the whale passed across the starboard beam I caught a brief glimpse of its dorsal fin, which might have belonged to a Sei whale. I didn't see much more than the fin as the animal arched its back to dive, but if it was this easy to see whales within an hour from land then I could be hopeful for many more whale encounters to come.

Just one more penguin interlude before the start of science

Gentoo penguins

Well, you might have noticed by now that penguins amuse me. For years I have been looking for a chance to use a word that's undeservedly underused nowadays: "DROLL". If there is a word that describes these fascinating creatures, then it's "droll". Enjoy these few pictures from the East Cove colony west of Bertha's Beach.

Science is due to start soon. We're getting ready to depart into the Southern Ocean to measure how this ocean both creates our climate as we know it and how it reacts to changes. There are many days ahead of exciting experiments with hi-tec equipment on deck and hard graft and repetitive work below deck.

Thousands of birds, a vulture and more penguins

Beach at East Cove, Falkland Islands

Turkey vulture and war memorial

Tens of thousands of sooty shearwaters

Gentoo penguins and Royal Navy war ship

Commerson's dolphins feeding in the surf

Everyone in the party of scientists is nearly ready to go. The boxes are unpacked, and all kinds of esoteric equipment is liberated from the holds of the ships. As part of the physical oceanography team I don't have that much to prepare. I printed off a couple of logshets, pored over charts of the Southern Ocean and familiarised with the ship a bit more. I found the salinometer lab again, and my team had a practice run on the CTD device which measures Conductivity-Temperature-Depth and takes water samples for lab analysis.

In the afternoon there is time for a last stroll around the headland. Hugh and I packed out binoculars and cameras and headed out to the other part of the headland enclosing East Cove, some 40 miles south of Stanley. The coast is fringed by wide sandy beaches, and extensive dunes shield precious wetland areas from the stormy assault of the roaring South Atlantic. The weather had calmed considerably. Yesterday we got lashed by sideways rain, and today it was calm without even a breath of wind. The sea was flat and the countryside looked serene and content.

The path takes us to the sound end of Bertha's Beach, but this time we turn south over the dunes towards Fox Point. I scan the sea and the beach for wildlife and spot a motionless turkey vulture spreading its wings to dry. It was only a split second when the vulture had noticed us and began to move up the beach a little that I realised what the bird was perching on. The vulture had inadvertently given us a poignant reminder of the Falklands war because it had decided to settle on a war memorial dedicated to the soldiers of Landing Craft F4 from HMS Fearless who died in action in Choiseul Sound on 8th June 1982.

After taking photos of the vulture in this macabre setting we continued our walk to the next beach in the south of the headland. We made for a break in the dunes and not long after we could see the ocean again through the break. The sea surface seems black and it was moving. Like there was a thick cloud hanging over it. Hugh, a keen birdwatcher, checked with his industrial strength binoculars. The swirling clouds turned out to be thousands and thousands of birds. I AM GOING THERE, he proclaimed and stormed off. I could hardly keep up with Hugh as he strode through the terrain and climbed up the crest of the dune.

The spectacle that unfolded was certainly impressive to a non-enthusiast, like me, but Hugh who is generally a calm and collected person suddenly was practically ecstatic. What we had infront of us was a giant swirling vortex of tens of thousands of Sooty Shearwaters, who covered the sea surface within a field of view of about 140 degrees. These birds are good flyers and swimmers, and they appeared to be feeding. I can't imagine the amount of prey in the water that this congergation of bird must have consumed in just the short period we observed them.

I still wanted to visit the penguin colony at the far end of the headland, so I left Hugh on the beach to watch the shearwaters' feeding frenzy and stomped off to the next beach. Again, my imminent arrival at the colony was announced by several groups of Gentoo penguins hopping in and out of the water. They too were feeding in small groups and as soon as I poked my head around the corner I had reached the colony. Hundreds of birds were perched on rocks and up on the peaty slopes. The inland scenery looks liek Dartmoor, while the rocky shore reminded me of Cornwall. Even the warship in the background could have just left Devonport docks in Plymouth - it probably had done so some time ago. It was only the penguins that didn't fit the picture of a walk in the English South-West.

Crouching low and advancing on all fours I inched closer towards the penguins and watched them for a good half-hour hidden behind a small bluff on the beach. On my way back to catch up with Hugh I saw more groups of feeding Gentoos and Commerson's dolphins playing in the surf. Well I say playing - that's what it looked like to me - but they were actually feeding. The spectacle of dolphins a few metres from us kept us on the beach for almost too long. Just in time we remembered to head back for dinner - the ship's cook wasn't going to wait. Ship time doesn't make allowances for penguins and dolphins.

Penguins on Bertha's Beach

Bertha's beach

Dolphins in the surf

Gentoo penguins

Penguin colony on Bertha's beach

While the ship was still berthed in port we had some more time to explore the Falkland Islands. Some scientists opted to go to town to Stanley for shopping, phone calls or other engagements with the outside world. Some of our science party decided instead to explore the corner of the island around Mare Harbour, about 40 miles south of Stanley. The port is a military installation - no photography is allowed and everything is fenced off with rolls of barbed wire. We found a break in the barbed wire and hopped over it to get out onto the path to Bertha's Beach. The beach is named after the wreck of the "Bertha" which foundered nearby in 1892. Nowadays the beach is more famous for its wetlands and a Gentoo penguin colony.

Walking along the beach I kept a lookout to sea. It was stormy, rain lashed us sideways and the sea was whipped up into a boiling broth. Suddenly a couple dorsal fins arched amongst the waves, and soon enough we spotted the black and white sides markings of a couple of Commerson's dolphins. The appeared to be surfing in the surf zone. Whenever a particularly large wave was about to roll in (the dolphins always knew which one) they would gather in formation and 2 to 4 dolphins charged towards the beach, riding the wave into the shallows. It was amazing to watch the skill with which these animals surfed the waves.

At first I was convinced that the dolphins are doing this for fun - well, that's what it looked like. It looked like a lot of fun to play in the surf, and I thought about my surfboard back home and how I'd have liked to have it with me. Hugh took a couple of photos with a long zoom lens which I inspected a little closer later on. It turns out that they weren't just playing around for fun but the dolphins were actually fishing. The photo zoom revealed a swarm of tiny fish leaping out of the water when the dolphins drove them inshore. To the fish the water surface is as much a barrier as the bottom, so with nowhere to go they become easy prey for the dolphins. Eventually the rain stopped and we continued our walk towards the north end of Bertha's Beach to find the penguin colony.

Before even reaching the colony, I already saw the penguins in the water. I imagined they'd be fishing too. Every so often a group of about 5-10 penguins emerged from the water, hopped out of the swash zone and waddled onto the beach. We stopped and kept a low profile as not to disturb them. The penguins did a lot more waddling, shaking off their feathers and started heading up towards the dunes - very orderly and in single file!

The full scale of the numbers of penguins on this beach became apparent when we peered over the dunes. In the peaty, grassy slopes of the islands stood hundreds of them. The hillside was covered in several very large groups, and I estimated there to be about 300 animals. Gentoo penguins don't seem to make a lot of noise, apart from the occasional squawking, so the scene was rather quiet and serene.

Hiding behind a small bluff overlooking the colony I watched them for a good while. Most people would associate penguins with ice floes, but here there was lots of them wadling around in the grass. They might not hve been doing much, as breeding season was over, but for me as a first-timer to the South Atlantic it was enough to just see them there. And in such large numbers. Who wouldn't smile when seeing them waddle along. So crouched on the ground on all fours I was a very happy man.

Overview of the RRS James Clark Ross

Schematic layout of the RRS James Clark Ross

The RRS James Clark Ross is operated by the British Antarctic Survey. It was named after Admiral Sir James Clark Ross, R.N. (1800-1862) who discovered the North Magnetic Pole in 1831. During 1840-43 he 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 finished construction in 1991 and she was launched by HRH The Queen herself. Signed portraits of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip are hung up in the officers' mess to commemorate the occasion. The vessel is 99m long with a beam of nearly 19m. Her home port is Stanley in the Falkland Islands.

* Historic information taken from BAS website. See http://www.antarctica.ac.uk for more information.

Going aboard the James Clark Ross

The RRS James Clark Ross

Officers' and scientists' bar

Science lab

Whilst still glowing inside from the amazing wildlife encounters of the previous day (read about my first sighting of wild penguins in a previous post) my next first encounter was going to be of a different nature. At 9:00 in the morning we left Stanley for Mare Harbour, a military port 40 miles to the south where we would be embarking our ship - the RRS James Clark Ross (JCR for short from now on).

There are 16 people in the science party, split up into 3 teams undertaking different types of oceanographic research. I will write more about the science and what we'll do on board later in the cruise (once we've started our experiments). I was shown to my cabin "Scientist #1", which in no way reflected my status on board - I am actually the most junior member of the team. Everyone else has been to sea on this type of cruise before. My longest experience at sea has been a 3-day Irish Sea Observatory cruise on the Prince Madog out of Liverpool. This time I would be at sea for almost a month. Having a whole cabin to myself meant plenty of space to stow all my gear.

Our first day onboard was taken up with safety briefings, a quick lifeboat drill, a tour of the ship and introductions to some of the equipment. It'll take me a while to find my way round the ship, but I quickly learnt that my cabin is on the deck with the red carpet, and the food is served on the deck with the blue carpet. The meals are quite an exquisit affair on the JCR. The scientists dine with the senior officers, and for evenings meals we were reminded to wear shirt, trousers and shoes. I am told that not long ago it was shirt and tie for meal times. I am glad I knew this before I left England, as I hadn't worn anything with a collar in quite a while and certainly didn't expect to be "dressing up" whilst on the ship.

The personell is divided up not only for meal times, but also for entertainment. Right next to my cabin #1 is the Officers' & Scientists' Bar shown in one of the photos. Drinks are self-service with an honesty tick sheet. In the photo of the ship you can the JCR berthed in Mare Harbour during loading and the palette being lifted onboard is stacked with crates of Becks Beer. I feel that I have to learn a lot about life at sea!

The last photo shows the science lab where I'll be working. During the first few days we've set up computers on the desks, networked them to the ship's intranet and loaded all the software for data logging and processing. The lab has control terminals for various pieces of deck equipment and a display showing the official ship time (in GMT) and the current position. I am looking for the special occasion when we cross 60 degrees latitude, which is the official boundary of the Antarctic Treaty. But for now we haven't even moved yet. We still have a day in port which is mostly free to enjoy the scenery and explore the wild life. I'll report back with more penguins later.

The Lady Elizabeth

The "Lady Elizabeth" wreck in whalebone cove, Falkland Islands

The "Lady Elizabeth" was built in 1879 in Sunderland. She is an iron construction of 68 m length and 1208 tons in weight. In 1913 she was on her way from Vancouver laden with bricks and cement for a new cathedral in Stanley, but she ran into trouble in severe gales around Cape Horn.

Together with some of her deck cargo four men were also washed into the sea. The ship sustained damage and she limped to the Falklands where she was going to be repaired but instead she holed on a rock, damaging her even further. The repairs never materialised due to lack of funds, so the rigging and the hull were sold off. The hulk was used as a warehouse for a while until another storm moved her into her current position on the beach of Whalebone Cove near Stanley (*).

* Information abridged from "Falkland Islands" by William Wagstaff, Bradt Travel Guide