Mike Castellini in Antarctica

Cruise Report

January 11, 2000
2030 hours, Ship time, Lat 74 south, 135 west, Antarctica

January 10, 2000
Alaska time

We have had an amazing week here and have finished our cruise through the open coastal water along the shore east of the Ross Ice Shelf. It was strange to be working with navigation charts where there would be whole sections of coastline listed as "uncharted", or "possible island" or to find that whole islands were in completely different locations than on the maps. Here we are in 2000 with coastlines on the planet that are essentially unknown. I can see how it happens though, because in some cases we could not get closer than about 25 miles from the "land" because of the ice. The land ice and glaciers just sort of continue onto the sea ice and you can't tell where the two connect. The land is mostly covered with ice anyway, so we had many lively debates trying to figure out if we were seeing land or icebergs!

We finished our day today with two helicopter flights deep into a bay where there were about 100 Weddell seals. The challenge was that the light was getting so flat and the bay was so large that you could not see the ground when we were flying. I was staring out the window trying to see the ice below when we would fly over a seal at about 800 ft altitude. It was easy to see and would allow my eyes to focus on that distance. But, as soon as we flew over, the ice surface would disappear again. Luckily, the pilots had many ice flying hours and knew all the tricks for flying under these conditions. For example, the first helo landed by using a tide crack and some nearby seals in order to "see" the ground. Then, they painted a large "X" on the ice and we were able to use the helo on the ground and the "X" to land our helo. Yesterday, I was out in similar conditions and we made a huge pile of our survival gear and then stood about 50 yards away so that the pilot could see two reference points to land.

The genetics team has collected tissue samples from over 60 animals here on the coast and our physiology and medicine teams have collected samples from over 15 seals. We are processing a great deal of the blood here on the ship and our laboratory is set up to measure the number of red and white blood cells, the amount of hemoglobin per cell, the size of the cells and several other factors that can be assessed using fresh seal blood samples. We are then freezing the remaining blood and plasma at -80 for transport back to the United States for analysis later in the year.

One of the most interesting findings here on the coast is that the Weddell seals are either much younger or much smaller than the ones that we usually study near McMurdo station. It is hard to tell which is which at this point, but we hope that we can figure it out in the next month of sampling.

We are sailing tonight back out into the pack ice to begin a series of four transects across the pack ice from the shore to the pack ice edge. During these lines, we count seals from the boat 24 hours per day and fly helicopters everyday to count animals away from the boat line. We use these data to figure out how many seals live in the ice and where the are concentrated. We will also try to collect measurements and blood samples from about 2 seals per day for the remaining month of the cruise. While the boat is stopped and we are working with the seals, divers go into the water to catch and measure krill, measurements are made of the water salinity and temperature, we use acoustics to sense fish and krill populations under the boat and the ice team goes out onto the ice to take ice cores and measure the ice thickness. When we sail away from these stopping site, the other teams run fishing trawls to catch both fish and krill. This will pretty much be our routine now for the next four weeks until we arrive back in McMurdo on Feb. 10.

From Jan 12, 2000

An interesting day today: Trying to type this with one hand. I got run over by a crabeater today that was theoretically drugged on ketamine. I was a good 20 ft away from it and facing it and it was in a net being held by Steve. In a fit of demonic ketamine induced levitation, it spun itself into a whirling dervish and came spinning and rolling over the ice. Everyone was yelling at me to get out of the way,but it crashed into me before I could move away. All I remember was nets, seals ,hands ,arms and legs. It smacked my right hand pretty bad. No broken parts, but it is really swollen and my whole arm is kind of sore. Expecting some swelling for a while and some good bruising. I have it on and off ice and trying to keep it elevated and taking Advil.

From Jan 13, 2000

I am ambidextrous for typing again,but will not go out on seals today if we go by boat. I don't want to hurt the hand by having to grab the boat or the line or something. If we walk out, I may go to take notes and provide armchair guidance. On the other hand, we have a 30 kt wind blowing, so maybe I will just watch from the ship! I am pretty sure now that it is just a sprained thumb and nothing more serious than that.

We are off the shelf at the moment and all the midwater trawls and acoustics are coming up empty. Not surprisingly, there are no seals to be found. We even sent a helo up about an hour ago to look for some around here somewhere that we could get to, but no luck. So, the sealers may come up empty handed today. The helos will fly their standard surveys most of the day and then we will leave station again this PM. The divers are out trying to find krill, the penguin team is out on a large flow at the moment working with 3 Emperors, and the boat has been visited all morning long by a group of Aedelie penguins that just keep wandering around the ship. The ice core team is out and about and the oceanographers are done with this station. We have about 1.5 days left on this south transect before we turn and head north on one of the long 5 day 500 mile cuts across the ice pack. We have no idea what this is going to be like from the seal side, but with daily satellite feeds, we can see what is ahead, ice-wise.

END

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