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This morning as I walked onto the bridge I saw an unearthly sight; the sun was out. There have been precious little opportunities to get out the sunglasses on this trip but hopefully we may see more of it as we head south. The visibility is good and we can see a few ice bergs as well. Last night, the other Aurora Australis (the green one) was spotted in the sky so it’s all happening down here on the 59th parallel.
I wanted to mention Ruth’s work in the Skylab. The Skylab is overlooks the trawl deck and is legendarily the shakiest laboratory on the ship especially when we go through ice. Hence it seems the perfect place to set up delicate scientific equipment. Among other things, our CTD instrument measures Conductivity, Temperature and Depth from which can be derived salinity. We got the equipment professionally calibrated before departure but that's not good enough for the scientists who need to be sure so that they can compare our results with other data sets. So Ruth has come along on the voyage to keep the CTD results honest. It's not salty until Ruth says it's salty. And then she'll tell you EXACTLY how many PSU (Practical Salinity Units) you've got in that sampling bottle.
We are just about to complete leg 8 this morning before turning back to the west and beginning another 380 nautical mile transect across BANZARE Bank and into the deep waters beyond. At the moment, we are re-positioning the ship to prepare for a deep cast CTD in 4420m of water which results in some significant rolling and I am occasionally clutching at the contents of my desktop to try and prevent mass escape of paperwork. At the moment; the deck seems like a pretty good place to keep stuff.
Today marks one month at sea since we left Hobart. Technically its day 32 but who’s counting?
WYLLA
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.