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This morning finds us pushing steadily through small floes at around 8 knots under grey skies. The visibility is better today and, taking advantage of the calm conditions, a small group of people are gathered on the foredeck hunting wildlife with long lenses. There are lots of birds. Giant Petrels have been a constant companion for a few days.
Overnight we did a further deep MIDOC trawl while outside the pack and then a CTD and a Trace Metals Dip. Trawling in this amount of ice is not really an option and we are currently navigating our way eastwards around a large area of concentrated pack ice in an effort to get into a large area of open water to our south. Hopefully it will still be open water when we get there.
Highlights of yesterday included target trawling for krill. Late in the afternoon, several large swarms of krill were seen on the sounders, so we put the RMT (Rectangular Midwater Trawl) down and tried to scoop some up. We were very successful on our first run but the second effort showed that the combined efforts of crew, marine scientists, electronics engineers and at least 5 computers are no match for a bunch of krill who have just had a 90m red sea monster sail over the top of them. They promptly vanished into thin water and didn’t give us a second chance.
A lowlight of yesterday was discovering that the RMT electronics package which had failed the day before was full of sea water. So the afternoon was spent “doing the washing up” which involves taking advanced electronics apart and soaking it in a tub of freshwater, etc. The prognosis is probably 50/50 and we’ll keep you posted on the results. (Don’t try this at home…) Fortunately our spare unit is currently doing the business.
Lloyd and 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.