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Sunday has been a relatively quiet day for the expeditioners and crew of the Aurora Australis. The vessel has remained amidst the wide band of year-old pack ice overnight and continuing through today, while continuing to make additional fresh water reserves in the event we're required to deliver further water to Davis station before returning to Australia.
The crew have made the most of the quiet day to complete a number of drills and safety rounds aboard the vessel, ensuring that systems are working as expected and that each crew member is familiar with essential safety procedures and the location of critical equipment in the event of any emergency. The Atmospheric Radiation Monitoring team continued with their tests and analysis as they have done throughout the voyage, including regular releases of weather balloons from atop the vessel's bridge. The team have endured quite strong winds, heavy swell, drenching salt spray and driving rain or sleet to ensure the range of sensitive instruments fixed across the topmost of the Aurora's decks are functioning and continuing to feed information back to the ship, as well as to a number of sites internationally. They're likely thankful that the higher wind conditions forecast for today haven't materialised, and they've been able to continue their work while overlooking the vast sea ice fields.
The Aurora Australis is a working ship, there are no paying tourists and everyone aboard has a role to play whether crewing the vessel itself, conducting underway scientific activities, monitoring weather, or travelling South to undertake any number of specific duties at one of the three Antarctic and one sub-Antarctic stations. For the resupply of Mawson station, the voyage has been allocated a large contingent of watercraft operators, an expert station refuelling team, a plant operator to provide additional crane and heavy equipment operation expertise at station, a medical officer, a communications technology officer, and a stores management professional amongst others. The voyage management team work with each of these groups and individuals, as well as those at station, to see the voyage objectives safely delivered within the timeframes allocated. Throughout today, the senior watercraft coordinator, refuelling supervisor and the voyage management team worked in consultation with the vessel's Master to determine activities for the next few days, including contingency arrangements which could be put in place in the event of weather events preventing normal operations etc.
In between planning and preparing for operations however, there's still time to pause and take in our surroundings. It's not uncommon for teams to be working on the upper decks, concentrating on watercraft or equipment checks to hear a splash or a squawk behind them and see a few Adelie penguins staring at them from an ice floe only a few metres away. Out amongst the sea ice pack, it's regular to see a variety of seals lazing after a recent meal, or even the odd fin as a group of large whales or orca move in and out between polynya. Encounters with wildlife ashore during operations are even more common, and provided the Division's expeditioners are cautious and don't approach the wildlife themselves, many species actually take it into their own hands to come right amongst us and inspect what's going on. Only yesterday, several Adelie penguins appeared from the water to stand just metres away from the expeditioners transferring cargo from the watercraft – craning their necks and closely watching the movements of people and packages to see what was happening. They're curious little birds which provide plenty of humour as well as being a surreal reminder of the unique and undisturbed nature of the Antarctic environment. Humans are viewed largely as a curiosity, not as a direct threat, by much of the wildlife here and the Australian Antarctic Division has been careful over the years to develop policies which minimise deliberate human interactions with local wildlife around the stations, unless it's on their own terms.
For the vessel out at sea, it's much easier for expeditioners to view wildlife at quite close quarters without fear of breaching any of the protocols for keeping minimum distances. This afternoon, a large Southern Giant Petrel made regular and close laps of the ship in between lazy dives and circles further away over the ice. When the wind conditions travelling past the vessel's upper decks were favourable, the large bird could quite easily maintain an almost motionless appearance while it casually observed what we were doing. We'll call him Barry because Edward Hamilton Fotherington-Booth doesn't quite seem to suit..........
Cheers
Mark, Fred and Barry
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.