Two months in Antarctic seas: 17.02.2013 - Chopping frozen fishes with an ax

17.02.2013 Sunday. Yes, one more day in ice under a cloudy sky. Open seawater (large polynya at 15:28). Huge tabular iceberg far away. Tomorrow morning we are supposed to have finally one more benthic station, East of the Antarctic pensinsula, but not in the Larsen area, which proves to be definitely inaccessible. 16:30, I am in the fitness room; by the speaker, Julian Gutt asks me to phone him, which I do. I go to his cabin, and he tells me that tomorrow we are supposed to reach an area with little ice and, if so, it should be possible to deploy the amphipod traps. I am very surprised because I believed that there was thick pack ice everywhere in the whole area. Appartently, there is however a neighbouring zone almost free of ice. So I say him that it is OK (but I remain skeptical). I immediately pick up some necessary things in a box stored in the container (the telecommand, the curved screws for fixing the radio beacon on the superior frame of the lander etc). 18:25, thick pack ice with very large hummocks: bad omen for tomorrow. I go to the cold room for taking fishes to be used as bait (they first have to be defrost). I have the desagreable surprise to discover that the fishes have not been packed in four separated bags as requested (one for each potential trap operation) but were simply put together in the box. This means they are frozen in a compact block of ice. I see only (drastic) solution for removing three fishes from this block; to chop them off with an ax! And believe me, this works very well... Since the lander has been moved to the middle of the deck, we can also fix the flag on it (the lander was previously put in a corner where it was not possible to fix the flagpole due to its height. The temperature is cooling down and it has been snowing a little bit. So salt has been spread on the deck to prevent the formation of ice. In the evening I see a beautiful tabular iceberg rising from the pack ice. 22:54, the sun is back (for a short period of time). With the low sun the hummocks cast fantastic shadows on the pack ice. I look at the latest sample of pelagic amphipods provided by the planktonologists. One more strange species: Epimeriella macronyx