January 16th, 2011
I realized today that we have already been gone for 21 days. I'm not really sure what I remember from the trip so far and I’m not sure if it feels like we have been here for a long time or a short time. This normally happens in field work, but it seems more evident right now. I am really glad I am writing this so I can keep track of everything.
Today was the standard day off at the station, being a Sunday. We slept in a little and worked on getting our vehicles in the test tank to run the batteries down so we know how they are going to react out in the water. We have been having some battery issues lately which affects how we program the vehicles and how far we can go on each mission.
Everything looked pretty good, which gave us more confidence in being able to let the vehicles go. After bringing the vehicles in and getting them charged up for tomorrow, we went to an island called Amsler Island, which is where the original British research station. The American research station, Palmer Station, was created next.
The ground on Amber Island is mostly granite rock, mixed in with some fine sediment that is left from when the glaciers ground up the rocks as the passed over the area. There are still some glaciers covering part of the island, but mostly it is uncovered. There is also some moss and small plant life in areas. We saw a large Skua colony and a group of Elephant seals relaxing in a haul out area.
Some of the Elephant seals were massive and we still haven’t seen one of the giant males or females. They have all either been adolescents or pre-adults. We made our way over the far side of the island (half a mile), which faces a massive glacier. We waited a while for some to fall off, but all we heard was some popping and moving.
We ended the night planning the missions for tomorrow and then watching the Patriots/Jets football game. There was also a Gray whale that came into the harbor so a group went out to take pictures on the zodiacs.
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| Penguin lunch: Antarctic Krill |
On another note: Matt’s glider has also been flying really well after they put it back out, which is nice to hear. We haven’t got any good penguins tracks in the last day or so, so he has tasked it to station itself at a waypoint off of Palmer Canyon.
This allows us to look at water exchange in the canyon and see if how and when different water masses pulse in and out, which will affect was grows in the water and therefore what the penguins will be eating.
It can be tracked at: http://marine.rutgers.edu/cool/auvs/index.php?did=200
The picture today is of Penguin stomach contents (i.e. penguin food/Krill). The penguins pick these individually out of the water column. This is also what we are going to be measuring with our vehicle using sound waves.
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