11.02.2013 - Rosamel Island and its hood of clouds

11.02.2013 (Monday). I wake up at 02:10 in the morning. I quickly eat a sandwich and go down. There, Freija Haucquier told me that there were problems with the Multicorer (the gear for sampling carots of sediment), which has to be replicated. So I woke up much too early. I knock to the door of the room of Marie and told her that she may sleep a little bit more. When the dredge comes up it is full of mud; only one amphipod. The Agassiz trawl has a distinctive fragrance of H₂S and is full of black fluid mud. Yet, there are a lot of irregular sea urchins, gastropods, Notocrangons, and some fishes. Afterwards I go sleeping until 17:00. At 18:00, we have an extraordinary view on Andersson Island aka Rosamel Island. An unbelievable hood of clouds anchors at the top of this small volcanic island with huge cliffs all around. Then new Agassiz trawl and dredge. The OFOS video camera views indicate that we could expect a great catch. There is indeed a lot of organisms in the net. Almost no mud this time! A lot of ascidians (especially Molgula sp.) and huge red ophiurids. More than twenty giant Glyptonotus, including a male grasping its female. Several species of amphipods. We sort the sample of the trawl until middnight or a little later.

(Cédric)

The dredge was delayed and took place around 4 am. That gave me a little more time to recover. It wasn’t for much, finally, we just catched one common amphipod in the dredge and that’s it. This wasn’t a good sign for the Agassiz trawl, we were not very optimistic about the richness of this sampling site and what we could catch. Indeed, at first sight it looks quite lifeless. When we wash the mud, we can however find a good amount of sea urchins, decapods, but no amphipods. Disappointing sampling this morning, but it’ll give us the occasion to sleep before the last one. I sleep all the afternoon and wake up around 17h30. The Agassiz takes place in the evening, followed by a dredge. The catch is great this time. Almost no mud and a whole bunch of all kinds of organisms. Among the most impressive ones were those giant isopods that look like huge cockroaches, the Glyptonotus. We found tens of them, some about 15 cm long. Again 2 huge starfishes, one even bigger than the last one. And a lot of amphipods, however many belonging to the same species : Waldeckia obesa, Epimeria georgiana and Iphimediella rigida.  This catch keeps us working late again, around 4 am, but we’re happy we had a last good catch because the next days will be quiet again. There will be one last small week of krill survey before we start again with benthos sampling.

(Marie)
 

Andersson Island aka Rosamel Island.

Catch of the Agassiz trawl. 

Marie looking for amphipods.

Cleaning the scientists after work with muddy samples.

Male Glyptonotus grasping his female.

Glyptonotus are giant isopods.

Arcturid isopod (50 mm without the antennae).

Giant red ophiurids (leg span about 350 mm).

(Pictures by Cédric)

10.02.2013 - Giant isopod and hedgehog-like amphipod

10.02.2013 (Sunday). Still at Erebus and Terror Bay. I go late out of my bed in order to recover from the previous night and to prepare for the forthcoming one. In the morning no more dream view to a distant horizon: we are again into the fog. However this fog is not very thick and the day looks very bright. We do an Agassiz trawl and a Rauschert dredge in the afternoon. Catch of medium importance. We catch a huge Glyptonotus group antarcticus, a real monster of isopod. We caught two specimens of Echiniphimedia hodgsoni. These amphipods, which looks like hedgehogs, live and feed on sponges. 

 Glyptonotus sp. (120 mm) is a giant amongst isopods.

Echiniphimedia hodgsoni (30 mm) is an amphipod looking like an hedgehog.

We are informed that we will have to do another Rauschert dredge on 11.02.2013 ...at 02:30 in the morning. And it will be followed by an Agassiz trawl. So an awful night to come. We finish the sorting of the samples of today as soon as possible, so we can sleep a little bit. I am in my bed around 21:40.

(Cédric)

There will be 3 sampling sites at Erebus and Terror Bay. The first one is today in the afternoon, the other ones will follow quite quickly. Today’s catch wasn’t so big, so we can sleep early tonight, in order to be ready for the next dredge which is planned at 2:30 am! An Agassiz will follow at 6 am, so it’s a long night in perspective. 

(Marie)

A giant ten-legged Antarctic pycnogonid (sea spider). Picture by
Cédric

09.02.2013 - Mesmerizing icescape

09.02.2013  (Saturday). Saturday night fever: we are sorting and photographying the crustaceans of the Agassiz trawl until 04:00 in the morning. We go to bed completely exhausted. A number of amphipods not yet found during this cruise are discovered in the samples. Along with different amphipods, two Nebaliacea are found in the dredge. Several Serolis bouvieri in the trawl. I get a better mastership of my camera. Still the balance of the white is imperfect. 

Epimeria georgiana (up to 35 mm). This epimeriid amphipod is common near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula and around the Antarctic islands, which prolongates it farther north, up to South Georgia.

Waldeckia obesa is another common and very characteristic amphipod of Antarctic seas.

I sleep until 11:30, just in time for lunch. The sea is open; no more ice except a tabular iceberg afar. There is a light haze, so the sky is white but luminous, we are steaming towards the Antarctic Sound, i.e. the straight between Joinville island and the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. I am identifying the material collected yesterday. At 13:00 the sun shines through the haze. However  at 13:35 we dive in the mist and it becomes very dark. We see nothing when we enter the Antarctic sound; we just guess the occurence of an island, of which we can scarcely discern the basis through the fog. At 16:44, we suddently enter again into the ice. 17:30 alternance of ice and patches of open waters. During the evening the ship has to modify its course in order to avoid a huge (many kilometers long) tabular iceberg. As the fog has disappeared at that time, we could make nice pictures of it. Late in the evening, the sun is shining brightly on the southern part of the Antarctic Sound. Iceflows and icebergs are standing everywhere on a peaceful sea, with the mainland in background. The play of light and shadow looks as out of this world: we are in the realm of the ice fairy. This scenery is truly mesmerizing, never to forget.

(Cédric)

09.02.2013 (Saturday). I wake up around noon, hoping to enjoy the beautiful view of the Bransfield Sound, but the weather’s incredibly foggy and you can’t see anything further than maybe 20 meters. We’re in open water again. We’re steaming all day long to the next station and should arrive late in the evening. Later on, the fog dissolves a bit : it’s an ocean of snow now and we can see bits of mountains profiling in the horizon. We see the continent at last! It’s the end of the Sound, we’re going out. Later on, the fog is completely gone, everyone gathers on the deck to look at a huge tabular iceberg which forms a high wall in front of the ship, forcing us to change our trajectory in order to outline it. It’s really impressive, you can’t see the end of it. It looks like the continental ice-shelf and is probably a big piece of it which broke and drifted away.  The scenery begins to get even more beautiful as time goes by, we arrive in Erebus and Terror Bay and are surrounded by its islands. It’s the first time in this cruise we really could look at the land in a clear sky. With the sunny weather, the big icebergs and smaller drifting ice-plates, some high and rocky islands, some very elongated, rounder and white from the snow: an amazing view and feeling, once again. 

(Marie)

Ice and black sky.

This iceberg is many kilometers long and it forced the Polartsern to modify her course.

Southern tip of the same iceberg.

Realm of the ice fairy.

(Pictures by Cédric)

08.02.2013 - Leopard seal and giant starfish.

08.02.2013 (Friday). When I wake up, it is really gloomy outside. Ice interspaced with wide polynias under a thick dark hazy sky. Later on, the ice coverage increases to become nearly complete and the sun appears; it is shining brightly on the icescape. There are leopard seals around. One is to starboard, to the bow of the ship. We succeeded to make good pictures of it. After many days, we do our next Agassiz trawl (East of Joinville), at about 470 m depth. It comes back full of blackish soft mud, with an evident smell of hydrogen sulfide. Very little life in our catch. Strange holoturians. Two phoxocephalid (Pseudharpinia antarctica) and one eusiroid (Oradarea sp.) amphipods, one Ceratoserolis, 6 Antarctomysis and some Notocrangon, and that's all for crustaceans. Just after the trawl, we deploy the dredge. Same kind of bottom, so same kind of poor catch: only two amphipods. In the evening we deploy again the trawl and the dredge in the same area, this time at shallower depths (around 250 m). The bottom consists of mud mixed with stones and gravel. The catches are much better but yet not extraordinary. The sorting in the lab starts around 24:00... 

 Icescape.

Leopard seal. 

Agassiz trawl on deck.

Notocrangon antarcticus is one of the very few species of Antarctic shrimps. It is a common species which likes muddy bottoms.It reaches about 100 mm.

The amphipod Pseudharpinia antarctica (about 20 mm) also seems to be a mud lover.

Dredge coming up from the deep blue.

Untying the bag of the dredge.

Emptying the content of the dredge in a bucket.

Removing everything from the dredge. 

Upper sieve and its content, after cleaning with sea water.

We and our dredge.

Our faces after working on deck with mud.

(Cédric)

08.02.2013 (Friday)

The first Agassiz trawl is deployed in the station Joinville East deep (about 435 m) around 10 am. When I was waiting for the trawl to go back up, somebody tells me that a leopard seal is in on an ice-plate just in front of the boat… I inform the people I meet on the way and run for my camera and then on the front deck. At first, I have to lean a bit over the barrier to see it, the animal is much bigger than a crabbeater and the head is huge: no doubt it’s a leopard. The seal is moving and the boat too, so I get the chance to see the animal entirely.  The head is disproportionally big compared to the rest of the body, with an enlarged mouth drawn in an everlasting nasty smile, undoubtedly hiding a set of large and sharp teeth.  He looks at you with this vicious expression fixed on his face, as if to say “I would really like to eat you right now”. I felt happy at the moment to be safe on the boat and not on the ice-plate close to this imposing predator, with its monster-like appearance. 

Leopard seal.

I have to leave the impressive creature to gather on the working deck with the rest of the benthos people.  The trawl is slowly put out of the water. We instantly notice a bad smell of hydrogen sulfide, meaning that this mud is probably quite anoxic. At first glance, it indeed seems that there’s not much life in this sticky (and stinky) brownish cream.  When we look up more closely, sieving the mud and digging into it, some animal groups are quite abundant, like polychaetes in consolidated mud tubes and holothurids. But others are rare or completely absent, and we only found 4 amphipods  in this catch. So, not much to work on in the afternoon, but we have another trawl planned for later in the evening. We deployed the dredge also at the same spot, but the catch wasn’t much better, only a few amphipods to add to the list. 

In the evening, the catch is delayed, it takes place quite late, around 10 pm. I like to work outside around this time anyway because the sky shows very beautiful colours when the sun begins to settle down around 11 pm-midnight. And you really don’t feel tired with the excitement of sampling and the light as if it was middle afternoon. The catch was really nice this time. A lot of beautiful fishes, among which ice-fishes. They have colourless blood due to the lack of hemoglobin, not needed in the oxygen-rich waters of the Southern Ocean. I always wanted to see that and it’s true that when you look at the gills, they are white, not the usual red. A huge starfish, I didn’t know starfishes of this size even existed! The first ray also, cartilaginous fishes aren’t abundant in the Southern Ocean. The amphipod catch was honorable and kept us working in the labs until 4 am. 

 Giant starfish! 

(Marie)

07.02.2013 - Sun shining on ice and emperor pinguins

07.02.2013 (Thursday). Alternance of blue sky and thin clouds of high altitude. So, a very bright day. The ice is much thicker and more irregular than during the past few days. I photograph three emperor pinguins from afar. In the afternoon, we fix the last buoy on the lander. Then we put batteries in the flash and in the radio beacon and successfully test them. The flash is fixed on the lander with plastic collars and tape. We do the job on deck, with a complete ice coverage and a sun is shining (the temperature is sweet). This results in an immaculate combination. Some tabular icebergs rise from this sea of ice. 

 Emperor pinguins: the most iconic inhabitants of Antarctica. They are much less common than the smaller chinstrap pinguins, which are seen everywhere.

Cédric on deck.

Marie on deck.

The flash is fixed by plastic collars and tape on the lander.

 Tabular iceberg rising from the ice.

 (Cédric)

07.02.2013 (Thursday). Last quiet day, tomorrow we’re sampling! I am impatient, but for today, we can enjoy the first sunny weather in a long time. It really changes everything. Everyone was outside, taking pictures, chatting or relaxing in the sun. The sunglasses are necessary with the reflexion of the ice. I didn’t put them straightaway and my vision was a bit blurry for a while afterwards. The view was amazing, I don’t think I’ll ever forget that feeling. I would have stayed there until it gets dark if I hadn’t other obligations. Plates of ice floating on water and everywhere around us, monuments of ice : huge flat and elevated icebergs. Carried away by the currents, they are gathering together in some places, sometimes you see none, sometimes a lot at the same time. It really felt like a once-in-a-lifetime chance, to see all these amazing things together at the same place, at the same time: the sun shining so much, we could go outside without jackets and not feel cold, the bright sea, the boat zigzagging through those imposing ice-giants and the always adorable and entertaining seals and penguins everywhere around us on the ice-plates, probably enjoying this great weather as much as we did. 

In the evening, I leave those incredible sights to go to the scientific meeting, we are presenting our work tonight. Cédric first presents an introduction of our goals, what we intend to do with the material collected on board and about the amphipods in general and in Antarctica. And I continue with a summary of my PhD thesis project. 

(Marie)

06.02.2013 - Ice and fog

06.02.2013 (Wednesday). Cloudy sky. Ice interspaced with  large polynias. A few more amphipods from the planktonologists. I also still have a look at a few remaining specimens from the dredge. Still interesting species. Before going to bed, I see three emperor pinguins from my cabin. Too dark to take pictures of them.

 Eusirus laticarpus from the plankton nets (20 mm long).

06.02.2013 (Wednesday) The beginning of the week went quietly, we’re still waiting for the next sampling, while the krill survey people are working. The weather’s still foggy. Not many people are going outside, or not for long. The ice-plates are replaced by an endless layer of ice, it doesn’t seem that we’re on water anymore, but sliding gently on the continent. Like I said before, it’s always the same, ice and water, but still always different. 

(Marie)

05.02.2013 - Snow petrels

05.02.2013 (Tuesday). Still into the ice. Foggy weather with very light snow falls in the morning. I have recovered from the virus; I am still coughing, but less than two days ago. We got more pelagic amphipods, as Vibilia antarctica, from the planktonologists. I also take a picture of a truly beautiful planktonic worm (Tomopteris carpenteri) taken in their plankton net. In the evening, the weather is cloudy but dry.  I go out for the first time in four days. It is bitterly cold. The ice coverage is very important, the ice mostly consisting of very wide flat and not especially thick ice sheets. When the Polarstern goes through these icesheets, extensively long cracks radiate from the point of penetration of the ship. Snow petrels are flying above the ice behind the ship. I go astern to take pictures of them. These beautiful birds are not easy to photograph as they fly fast and usually remain at some distance of the ship. Moreover, as they are entirely snow white, their mimetism with the ice is remarkable.

Cracks in the ice radiating from the ship. 

 Snow petrel.

Photographying small specimens.

The pelagic polychaete worm Tomopteris carpenteri (100 mm long).

The hyperiid amphipod Vibilia antarctica (10 mm long). The genus Vibilia can be easily recognizes by its short and very thick first antennae.

(Cédric)

04.02.2013 - Another cloudy day in the ice

04.02.2013 (Monday). Another cloudy day . Today I feel better. I am still coughing but I am much less weakened as yesterday.  I should be able to work more or less properly today. Nice jellyfish (Atolla carpenteri) and pelagic polychaete worms (Vanadis antarctica and Tomopteris carpenteri) in plankton nets. Also a second Eusirus propeperdentatus, bigger than yesterday, and a Cyphocaris aff richardi : orange-coloured and with a beautiful horn of unicorn. In the afternoon we got another plankton sample with amphipods, such as Cyllopus lucasi.

 The jellyfish Atolla carpenteri (diameter = 80 mm).

 The pelagic polychaete worm Vanadis antarctica (length = 100 mm).

The pelagic lysianassoid amphipod Cyphocaris aff richardi (length = 25 mm).

The heperiid amphipod Cyllopus lucasi.

 The antarctic krill Euphausia superba

A general remark. during this cruise, we have seen so far extremely few large icebergs and no huge ones. Most of the ice we have seen pack ice, a lot of pack ice.

(Cedric)