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Pancakes, bacon and eggs today, The food never stops amazing us. And
that's just breakfast. Everyone luck enough to have a birthday onboard
gets an amazing home made birthday cake, and we have over 20 birthdays
during SIPEX II! A consequence of sailing 9 months after Christmas/new
year perhaps?
We are still at ice station 3 and it has been snowing for the last few
hours. A couple of scientists ventured onto the ice to collect the last
of the cores and samples. Katie took down the drifting snow weather
station after Ted mapped the terrain with a terrestrial laser scanner.
Meanwhile The Aurora Australis crew used a tram wheel on the aft crane
to punch a hole in the refrozen sea ice below the CTD room door so we
could deploy a CTD (Conductivity, temperature and depth) which will
sample the ocean from the ship to the sea floor 3700m below us. It will
also take high resolution video footage and a trap will capture any
krill unlucky enough to swim by near the sea floor.
Once a TMR (Trace Metal Rosette) has been lowered to a similar depth
we'll be off in search of ice station 4. It is worth noting that the TMR
and CTD both take water samples from similar depths in the water column,
although the samples are used for different purposes...
Cheers
Andy, Brett
Map
A map showing Australia and Antarctica. The map shows the journey of one voyage that has occured in the season, with each route highlighted in a distinct colour.