Jan. 8: Antarctic Diving

Jan. 8, 2011

I’m going to work backwards on this one so bear with me.  I just jumped off of the pier into 34 degree water. I passed on this opportunity while in the Arctic this spring, but it was someone’s birthday and they had never jumped in, so a crew of 13 people took the plunge. 

Apparently, people do this all the time here.  It was definitely not as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it was definitely cold. The hardest part is breathing afterward.  Luckily there is a hot tub on station and we all rushed into it to warm up.  I forgot to mention that this was right after I finished working out at 22:00 and was going back to the lab to work, since we are still setting up our vehicles. So instead of working I find myself sitting in a hot tub and then the glacier across the bay starts calving (big chunks falling off). 

This is an amazing force of nature, which is even impressive from a half a mile away. The sound is similar to a huge explosion and then waves come racing across the bay and break on the rocks right at the station. 

Afterward I walked into the lab and was hit with a wall of smell from the table right next to ours, which was covered with bowls of zooplankton (small (pencil tip) shrimp like organsims) and krill (bigger shrimp like organisms) from the stomachs of the penguins on the surrounding islands. 

This is the food that we will be tracking with our REMUS’s (not in the stomachs of penguins). 

The rest of day involved boating class number 2.  Yesterday I had taken boating class number 1.  We started out by learning how to throw a safety rope, work a GPS, start a fire with a camping stove, and put up a tent. 

These are some of the skills that you may need (hopefully not) if you cannot make it back to the stations.  The station has placed stashes of equipment on different islands within a 3 mile radius of the station that are in barrels and contain anything you would need to survive until rescue team arrives or you can make it back to station. 

Just to make sure everyone understands what I just said, you make not be able to make it back to the station, which is only 3 miles away and usually less due to storms, ice, or some other unforeseen circumstance.  This rarely happens, but seriously?  It is funny thinking about this because I am looking outside and a snow storm just blew by and the whole bay is now covered with ice chunks from the glacier calving.  Things can change pretty quick around here. 

After lunch we got in the zodiacs and drove around the 3 mile boating area to get familiar with all the islands and stash locations.  We learned how to land a boat on the rocks to get on shore, call back to the station on the radios, and rescue a person that has fallen overboard.  We got to go ashore on the island where the original Palmer Station was located for a couple of minutes.

I was taking pictures and out of the corner of my eye I see a Skua coming right at me. Just to paint a picture this is a bird slightly smaller than an eagle and apparently is very territorial.  Now by coming right at me I mean flying head high and not going to alter its flight path until it hits my head.  I left the area!  We saw penguin colonies and southern elephant seals on most of the islands.  Once again, pretty amazing to be in the presence of these animals and this place.

During the man/woman overboard drill we had the option of putting on an immersion suit, which keeps you dry and warm if you fall overboard.  We put on the suits and one person at a time fell of the boat and were then picked up to practice dragging someone out of the water. Really fun, but I termed this drill the Leopard Seal lottery.  

Thank you everyone for passing this around and I hope everyone is enjoying the daily journal.