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No person who has not spent a period of his life in those ‘stark and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole’ will understand fully what trees and flowers, sun-flecked turf and running streams mean to the soul of a man. Ernest Shackleton The scenery in Antarctica can be quite beautiful, but it is stark, and…

How inappropriate to call this planet earth when it’s quite clearly ocean. Arthur Clarke I study mixotrophic plankton because I find them fascinating – on land carnivorous plants (e.g. sundews, pitcher plants and venus fly traps) are restricted to certain environments – yet mixotrophs are found in almost all aquatic environments. We’ve known about mixotrophic…

A churning toilet bowl of ice…   So, this is another quote from “Sea Gypsies”, and while perhaps it doesn’t evoke the nicest image, it conveys some of the challenges associated with the Antarctic marine environment. The weather can, and will, get nasty and there are lots of different kinds of ice that can potentially…

“If you can’t sew, you aren’t a sailor” (and other things that seem unrelated to working at sea) I heard this quote in the film “Sea Gypsies” featuring a group of mariners who took their sailboat to Antarctica. There are several amusing quotes in the movie, and I liked this one because it expressed that…

Adventure is just bad planning. Amundsen I think that Amundsen may have had a different concept of ‘adventure’. But even when you plan as carefully and completely as possible, things can go wrong. Sometimes it’s small stuff, other times it’s a bigger issue, or it’s out of your personal control. I’m recalling previous cruise when…

One’s work is a way of keeping a diary. Pablo Picasso This is very likely my last Antarctic research voyage. So, in addition to using this blog to communicate what I’m doing, I’m aiming to create a ‘diary’ that contains written and visual interpretation of the science and the environment that I’m working in. The…

We are finally on our way to carry out our 2022 austral fall/winter Antarctic cruise! Getting to Antarctica is never easy, but the pandemic has definitely made it more complicated. One aspect that we dealt with was quarantine. To keep covid infections out of the Antarctic field programs, we had to progress through a series…

So, one last post before we get back to Punta Arenas. We wrapped up science and got all of our packing done before we arrived at Palmer Station.  The repair of the big crane on the Gould, and the transfer of containers from the Natty B, went very smoothly.  We were allowed to be on…

We are down to our last 2 days of science time on the cruise.  That doesn’t really mean an end to the work though.  We need to wash everything and pack it away for our next cruise in November.  We also need to pack our samples and fill out tons of paper work in order…

A quick post today to wish everyone a Happy Mother’s Day. It was snowing like stink this morning, so we had a collection of birds on deck.  The dark one is a Cape Petrel, and we also had a bunch of the Snow Petrels.  Although the snow was melting quickly, it was falling so fast…