04.03.2013 (Monday).

My clock rings at 05:00. Fortunately, I hear it this time. As previous days, not cold outside at the end of the night. The dredge is put in the water at 06:06. Not much sediment in it (black sand) when it comes back. Moderate number of amphipods. The Agassiz trawl follows immediately and the sorting of the dredge is not yet finished when it comes up. Marie goes on deck and I finish the sorting. I missed something interesting: the trawl caught more than 40 huge Paraceradocus gibber, which were crawling in the mud. Still early in the morning (09:10), the trap system are released from the sea floor. It comes up without problems. Since it is still fairly dark, the flash system did work. I made a short video of that. The new flagpole survived its mission in the abysses but this time we lost the flag itself! The yellow flag, with the little iguanodon (the logo of our museum) sketched with a pen... One of the six traps is broken. Technically, the trap model conceived by Henri Robert is wonderful and extremely practical but since they are in rigid plastic, they are also fragile. I don't know if we will use the traps a third time during this cruise; it will depends on our tough time schedule and on the weather conditions in the Drake Passage. Once back in the lab, we first look at the samples of the trawl, and especially the Paraceradocus gibber. Their colour pattern is all clearly different from that of the deep Paraceradocus of the previous days, with almost no variation. This confirms our feeling of yesterday that two species are currently confused under the name Paraceradocus gibber: a shallow-water brown and white one  and a deep-water all livid brown one. It appears that the issue of the transport of the biological material back to Belgium is not yet solved as I believed.  Just after lunch, we sort the material of the trap. Not so many specimens but again a good diversity. One species not found the first time (Pseudorchomene coatsi) and two no longer found (Parschisturella carinata and Orchomenella pinguides). In the afternoon, the waves increase in strength. We have the luck to see twice humpback whales fairly close to the ship. Marie is so happy to see them...

(Cédric)

 

Paraceradocus gibber sensu stricto, lateral view. Total body length about 90 mm.

Paraceradocus gibber sensu stricto, dorsal view. Total body length about 90 mm.

Trap system coming up.

Trap system on surface.

 

 

Trap system back on board.

 

 

The traps.

 

The traps has come up (videos).
 

 

Pseudorchomene coatsi, total length about 12 mm.

 

 

Humpback whale.

03.03.2013 (Sunday).

I get up at 05:00. As very often, the operations are a bit behind schedule.  So I am starring at the night ocean, half sleeping. Like during the previous days it is not cold. To my big surprise I see lights at sea. Apparently it is a fishing boat. Then the dredge is put at sea. Depth: about 700 m. The cable goes down at 0.6m/s. The ship moves at 0.2 m/s for 7 minutes (i.e. a short time) during the dredging operation. The dredge is hauled up at 0.7 m/s (length of cable: 1300 m). When the dredge is at sea, we prepare the traps for the next operation (cutting the fishes into pieces and putting them in the bait boxes). This time, they do not stink. The dredge comes up with a muddy sample. Catch of medium importance.

We have now enough daylight to see that this will be again a gray foggy day. The Agassiz trawl is deployed in the same zone as the dredge, even a little deeper. It also comes up full of mud. Not many amphipods but big ones: large Eusirus complex giganteus form gray back / crimson legs and a huge Paraceradocus (about 100 mm). Its morphology corresponds to P. gibber but (as the specimens from the previous deep station), it has not the two white longitudial dorsal stripes of the P. gibber collected at depths of less than 500 m. Phenotypical variations related to depth? Or are there two very similar species confused under the name Paraceradocus gibber? We don't know for sure but both of us are enclined to favour the second hypothesis.

At 12:44, the lander with the amphipod traps is put at sea. We should recover it tomorrow at about the same hour. In the afternoon I am updating the blog, which was not done for two weeks. It takes an incredible amount of time to upload very light pictures and even text from here at the end of the world, with a poor satellite connection. And there are always little problems of layout to fix again and again...

(Cédric)

 

 

Eusirus complex giganteus form with gray back and crimson legs. Size: about 80 mm.

 

Paraceradocus aff. gibber "all brown", lateral view. Size: about 100 mm.

 

 

Paraceradocus aff. gibber "all brown", dorsal view. Size: about 100 mm.

Trap system ready to be released.

 

Releasing the trap system (video).

 

02.03.2013 (Saturday).

Fog and sea rather rough. Agassiz trawl late in the morning, on a rich sponge bottom at 460-480 m. We get a good catch of amphipods, amongst which the gorgeous Bathypanoploea schellenbergi. We also get a ten-legged species of ophiurids (something I had never seen before). I intended to photograph it but the specimens, which I kept for that purpose have been discarded before I could do it. So, sorry no pictures of them. Since the Agassiz trawl was very successful, I order to leave the dredge for 20 minutes on the sea floor (which is a long time for it). It comes up full of black muddy sand and gravel. We get beautiful gorgonians (for Pablo López-Gonzalez) and urchins in perfect condition, which make the delight of the 'urchin team' (Bruno David, Chantal De Ridder and Philippe Dubois), a lot of small stones with colonies of bryozoans, which are supposed to be studied by Hans De Blauwe (external scientific collaborator to our Institute in Brussels). As concerns amphipods, we get one undescribed Melitidae, which is known for years by amphipodologists but which has not been described so far. It is usually referred under the informal name "Antamelita". Not a common species; this is the first time I see a living specimen of it. Tomorrow morning we are supposed to have a dredge at 05:30 and to deploy the traps for the second time. A lot of things to finish in a hurry, as I want to sleep enough to be functional tomorrow. Finishing the sorting of the specimens from the dredge, putting order in our lab, fixing a new flagpole on lander, de-freezing the fishes (the bait); fixing the nuts on the bolts of the ballast system. Job finished at 22:22.

Bathypanoploea schellenbergi. Body length about 30 mm.

"Antamelita". Body length about 20 mm.

(Cédric)

01.03.2013 (Friday). 

The waves decrease a bit but the sea is still strong. During the night, people from the crew closed the window of our lab with a lid. They will never be opened again during this cruise. Our lab looks now like a kind of cellar, without sight on the open sky. Marie carries out DNA extraction as we have one day without benthic sampling. A lot of small things to fix during this "calm" day, as finishing some pages of this blog.

(Cédric)

For reasons, that will not been discussed here, this blog has been discontinued during 4 years. However, a logbook has been written until the end of the expedition. It will now finally be released ...in April 2017.

(Cédric)

Please be patient for the end of the narrative of the expedition

We have been extremely busy in March on board of the Polarstern and we did not had the time to update the blog. However a detailed logbook has been written during that period (at least by me) and a lot of photographs have been made by us. Our narrative of the expedition will be completed but this will take more time than expected. I am already back in Belgium, but Marie is still in Patagonia and will only arrive in early April. We have a lot of other things to do, and the content of the blog (at least the part concerning the expedition itself) also has to be checked and approved by the scientific leader of the expedition (for justified reasons). So, please be patient and expect a long update at an undetermined date in April 2013.

(Cédric)

28.02.2013 - colourful giant amphipods

28.02.2013 (Thursday). The trawl of today was quite unusual. The station was the deepest so far : 770m, so we were expecting (and hoping) to find some different kinds of animals than the usual. When the trawl was brought back above the working deck, everyone was surprised to see an enormous amount of mud in the net. The deck has never been so dirty. At first we cannot see anything, so it´s always a surprise to wash some of this mud and see if there´s something in it. There was a lot of organism hidden in there: seestars, a lot of ophiurids, sponges … and amphipods. Not so much (or most probably we couldn´t find them so easily in the mud) but really interesting ones. We found some Eusirus giganteus of an unusual coloration. I did my master thesis on the pseudocryptic diversity inside this genus, so this interested me a lot. We found out during my thesis that the species of Eusirus can most probably be distinguished with the coloration, along with other less visible morphological characters.  There was a species in the complex giganteus of a bright red coloration that we called the “red dragon”. At first, I thought the specimens we found today belonged to this species, but the coloration is still different, the body is grayish with blood red appendices. It´s another piece of the Eusirus problem, and raises even more the interest in continuing the study of the genus.

In the evening, I dissect the first serie of specimens of interest for my Phd thesis, in order to begin the DNA extractions. I withdraw one or two pleopods and put them in absolute alcohol. At the end, the work with the stereomicroscope begins to get very hard, as the sea is getting rougher and rougher. We make sure that everything is fixed and attached with ropes, because the night will be quite agitated, with a wind of force 9. Indeed, we are woken up around 4 am by a violent bump that makes everything fall on the ground in the cabin. I sleep real bad, I´m probably not used anymore to such movements but I fortunately don´t feel any seasickness. 

(Marie)

28.02.2013 (Thursday). Oh, its already the last day of February. Time is running like a meteor on the planet Antarctica... In the morning, same weather than yestrerday evening: foggy. The wave are moderate but are supposed to increase seriously later today. We are at our second sampling area in the Bransfield Strait. We will again do three or four stations here at various depths and at bottom topologies for estimating the influence of these parameters on the structure of the benthic communities. Today we will have our deepest station so far: about 770 m depth. The net comes full with a huge load of brown pasty mud. It does not smell. We find a lot of Eusirus of the complex giganteus. Most of them belong to the chromotype 'gray back/crimson legs', not yet found during this cruise. Truly giant amphipods reaching 100 mm with a vibrant colouration.

In the coming days we will probably have a second trap operation. So we need more ballast (piece of rail of 50 kg). They have rermained in a container in the hold. The second officer Felix Lauber told me that there is a problem. The main door of that container has been soldered. The other door can only be slightly open and only a narrow-chested man can go inside. This will be difficult but normally it will be possible.

In the evening, the strength of the waves increases considerably. We have to fix everything in our lab (and the dredge outside). Waves hit the window of our lab. During the night, I hear in my sleep that the telephone and the bin of our cabin fel down and are rolling from one corner to the other. Marc, who sleep below me, put them in security in a safe corner.

(Cédric)

 Eusirus complex giganteus, chromotype gray back / crimson legs.

This is the tip of the spine of a cidaroid sea urchin. There are tiny bivalve molluscs and holothurians (the pink sausage) living specifically on them.

Detail of the same.

27.02.2013 - Traps coming up (updated)

27.02.2013 (Wednesday). My clock was supposed to ring at 07:00. Apparently it did but I did not hear it. At 07:25 I emerge from the sleep as Marc Eléaume puts the light on in our cabin. I get up with difficulties. We have the time to take our breakfast and we go out. Weather ouside: open sky, not cold, some waves but not high. The Agassiz trawl is up around 08:25. Content dominated by sponges. Also small stones, hydrocorals and crinoids. The sea-urchins people are happy because they get enough of their spiny friends/victims for their physiological studies. We do not get so many amphipods, but some interesting like Echiniphimedia gabrielae and the 'slender spines' form of Echiniphimedia hodgsoni. We suspect that the form with slender projections and that with robust projections are two different species but we never had the opportunity to test if they are indeed genetically different. If so, one should be one more on the list of our undescribed species to describe.

Echiniphimedia complex hodgsoni, species/form with slender projections/spines.

Our traps put at sea yesterday are supposed to be relased from the bottom at 12:45. However we are in advance on schedule. I am asked by the crew to release them from the sea floor around 12:15. I rush outside with the telecommand. I deploy the cable of the hydrophone, connect it to the telecommand. I send the message of release to the acoustic larger. No reply message! Oh ghosh, what's happen? The reason is simple: the hydrophone has not been put in the water and in my excitation, I did not realized that! We put it in the water. I load again the telecommand. A few second later I send the release message. Two VERY long seconds and the telecommand makes a bip. The bip means that the lander has been released. Good! It comes up at a speed of about 1m/s. The depth is 180 m. The conditions of visibility are excellent. About 6 minutes later the lander is seen at the surface, on starboard, ahead of the the ship. Some ropes of the system are grasped by a hook and fixed to a side crane of thye ship. The lander is hauled up and put on board. One strange thing: the flag pole has collapsed and is now twisted as a huge spaghetti. How is this possible? Careful examination reveals that the flagpole was not a metal stick with a light plastic sheath as I thought but was entirely in plastic... Marie, who did not realize that the releasing operation happened in advance of the time schedule, does arrive. Once again, she will see the operation on video. We remove the traps from their fixation system. we release their content in plastic buckets full of cold sea water: hundreds of amphipods and isopods. The bait was not fresh and we left the traps in water for 24h instead of 48h (optimal duration according to empirical observations). I was expecting thousands. Anyway, the main point is not the quantity but the quality. We will see. I first have to get rid of the bait from the bait boxes: plastic boxes of 8 cm with small holes allowing the smell to spread out but limiting the possibility of consumption, ...at least for large and mid-sized specimens. Some small hungry crustaceans managed to get inside the bait boxes anyway. There is even a small isopod passing its head through one of these  tiny hole and looking at us with a comic expression. I will not look for those guys, who entered the boxes: I throw away all the stinky half rotten fishes and the gourmets feeding on them. We will have enough work with the rest.

In the wet lab, we put all the scavenging crustaceans from the trap in a white tray with cold seawater. They will mostly concern Charlotte Havermans from our museum (amphipods) and Christoph Held of the AWI (isopods). We carry out the pre-sorting. First we take out the isopods (Natatolana spp.), then we look for amphipods (all from the superfamily Lysianassoidea except a single Oradarea sp.) and separate them in five categories distinguishable by the naked eye. The representatives of these categories are in fairly similar proportions: a large species with white eyes (Parschisturella carinata), a large species with elongated red eyes (Tryphosella murrayi), a medium-sized specieswith non-elongated red eyes (Hippomedon sp.), a small compact species (Orchomenella pinguides), a large dark-eyed  form (provisionnally identified as Pseudorchomene plebs). 

We go to our dry lab with the specimens. I realize that, when I made pictures and videos of the recuperation of the traps, I kept the setting of my camera for the macrophotography of specimens: all my pictures are strongly overexposed and could be uploaded on this blog only after a delicate Photoshop therapy. I will try to not repeat this mistake the next time. 

We look at the specimens, make photographs and put them in properly labelled vials with absolute alcohol (best fixation for DNA studies. Under magnifying lenses, I detect a few specimen of an additional species with red and white L-shaped eyes referred as Tryphosella group macropareia. Then a big surprise. I was already starting to fix what I believed to be a pure sample of Pseudorchomene plebs, i.e. by far the most abundantly amphipod collected in baited traps in Antarctica. Then my eyes are catched by the unusual tinge of the eye of one specimen. I look at it under the dissecting microscope. Its eye is silver-coloured instead of being dark brownish red as in P. plebs. Furthermore the dorsal process of its first urosomite is slightly more angular than in P. plebs (something that only a trained or very careful eye can perceive). I take a good series of specimens and look at them one by one under the dissecting microscope. The specimens can clearly be separated into two categories by the eye colour and to a lesser extent by the shape of the first urosomite. There are actually a lot of specimen of that sliver-eyed species. Due to lack of time, I cannot identify them immediately, but on March 7th, I looked again to them and I identify them as Abyssorchomene charcoti.

At 22:15, the fog has fallen on the sea.

(Cédric)

27.02.2013 (Wednesday). We wake up at 7 am for the Agassiz trawl. Outside, the sky is completely clear of clouds and the moon is full. It’s still a bit dark but the sun will soon go up. I find it very unusual to see the moon so clearly with so much daylight already. In the far, the Antarctic Peninsula appears progressively as the light increases. It’s like an irregularly shaped shadow in the horizon. We can even see the shadow of a ship in front of it, apparently a fishery boat. The sky turns pink above this piece of land, which makes the whole scenery very surrealistic. It was worth getting up so early, also for the catch. The trawl brought up a lot of organisms of all sorts, very clean, and everyone got some interesting material. Less amphipods than expected, but with the material we already gathered this week, we can´t complain. We don´t have time in the schedule for a dredge, but today we have to recover the traps. I am quite exited about that, it´s something new for me and always a surprise to see if it worked well. The cage wasn´t hard to find back and was brought on board without any problems. We can soon see a lot of tiny animals moving in a remaining layer of water at the bottom of each trap. The catch was successful, the quantity of animals can apparently be higher, even though it seemed already a lot to me, but the diversity of species was quite good. It entirely consists of necrophagous amphipods and isopods, as we put pieces of dead fish in the traps. The amphipods all belong to the super-family Lysianassoidea, although it can happen that other kinds of amphis get trapped “by mistake”. The ZDF team was there to take pictures and film the recovery of the traps and the processing of the catch, as it´s a gear that we don´t deploy so often. We´ll maybe deploy it 3 or 4 times tops on the whole trip. Afterwards, we separate the different species in the wet lab. It takes a lot of time because there are so many animals and we have to pick them up one by one. Then, we fix them in ethanol for molecular studies. 

(Marie)

 

The lander has come back to the surface.

Sorting samples from the traps.

Tray with hundreds of amphipods coming from the six traps put on the lander. You can se the reflection of the light that we use for a better preliminary sorting of species and categories. During the preliminary sorting, we pay a special attention to the shape and the colour of the eyes of the amphipods. This requires sharp eyes. After that an examination under the dissecting microscope is usually necessary.

Pseudorchomene plebs usually comes in crowds into the traps.

This time, Abyssorchomene charcoti was also found in large number in the traps. Its silver/gray eyes allow easy recognition under the microscope, but not with the naked eyes.

26.02.2013 - Finally the traps are put for the first time at water

2013-02-26 (Tuesday). After a night of hard work, I was hoping to sleep until 10:00. However at 09:30, Julian Gutt wakes up me by a phone call, because there are different things to fix before dealing with the technical aspect of the traps. I take a shower, put my clothes, quickly eat a pancake, drink a cup of coffee (I cannot sart without a cup of coffee) and runs to the office of the meteorologist. He tells me that the weather for the coming days will be windy (for short periods up to 8 Beaufort) and with waves (for short periods of time up to 4 m high). Not optimal conditions, but this is still OK. I got to the bridge and discuss with the pilot (Carola Rackete). We fix an approximate position for putting the traps (at 180 m depth) and decide of a time for getting them up (in a time interval of 24-48h). She told me that due to the bad weather conditions, the system should be improved for removing the lander more easily out of the water. I say that in such coçnditions, we should  add a rope with a buoy  to the upper  frame. She says this would be OK. I see the boatman (René Schröter) to see if he has such a gear. he confirms me that he has it. We untie the lander and its ropes. We fix the acoustic releaser to the ballast of 100 kg. We have to put the gait (fishes) in the traps. I have defrost them yesterday (for the second time). They stink horribly. Marie put rubber gloves and cut them into pieces with very shears and put pieces of fishes in boxes with small holes, which are fixed in the traps. I am a bit ashamed to leave this unpleasant task to Marie but there are several things to do quickly at the same time and other urgent duties called me. I test the radio beacon with Carola. It works very properly. When I am back I see that Marie has received the kind help of Annicka Elsheimer for cutting these horrible fishes into pieces. Their stench is so intense that it has escaped the wet lab and is now spreading int the corridor... I was fearing the justified irritation of colleagues but nothing like that does happen. We bring the trap outside and fix them on the frame of the lander.  Then we screw the radio beacon to the upper frame of the lander. Everything is almost ready. I hurry up for eating (it is 11:40). I go as soon as possible back into our lab. I prepare my camera (I have to change the battery and the objective). I put the radio beacon and the flash on. I note and photograph the frequency of the radio beacon. I fix the antenna of the radio beacon. Everything happens now very fast. The system is put at water very quickly, in advance of the time schedule. It should have started at 12:30 and the operation finished at 12:25. Marie did not realized that. So she can see the immersion of the traps ... only on my videos. just the time to write these lines and the Agassiz trawl is up. It is 13:25. Bottom consisting in fluid mud with gew small stones. Mud not smelly. Sample not very diverse. Very big Paraceradocus gibber. Some Liljeborgia georgiana. I keep the fishes, which I freeze almost immediately, when I return inside (just the time to photograph the colourless gills of an ice fish species without hemoglobine). Next trap operation, I want to have fresh fishes, not the horribly stinking fishes of this morning. the trawl for tomorrow was supposed to be in the afternoon. So we hoped to be able to sleep longer than usual after our previous short night. But at 20:21, Bruno David inform us that it will be put in the water at 08:00. So not a too long night for us, poor exhausted amphipodologists. I need to seat and to have one drink to relax a little bit. Philippe Dubois erupts in the room and tell me with a big sardonic smile that the trawl will start not at 08:00 but at 07:00... 

Note to the layman, who reads those lines: such difficult time schedules are absolutely normal in oceanographic cruises.

(Cédric)

The fishes of the family Chanichytidae belong to the notothenoids (or ice fishes); they are only found in the Southern Ocean and are characterized by their absence of hemoglobin. Their blood is colourless.

Mouth of the same fish. Neither the gills nor anything else is red as its blood is colourless. 

Lander ready for its first immersion. The traps are the white plastic boxes at its lower part.

Labidaster annulatus is a common giant multi-legged starfish of Antarctic seas. It is sometimes over 50 cm leg span. 

We would have liked to present more non-amphipod Antarctic marine organisms but unfortunately we rarely have time to take pictures of them.We also regret that the updating of this blog is very irregular but it cannot be done otherwise as we have a lot of work and it takes a lot of time to upload texts and (small) photographes from Antarctica (by a poor satellite connection).

25.02.2013 - Improving the efficiency of the dredge

25.02.2013 (Monday). I wake up at 10:00. Pallid sun shining on an open sea with scarce icebergs. Waves moderate. The door of our lab must remain open and it is more or less fixed open. I say more or less: it is grating on its hinges as the shipe rolls on the sea. This repetitive and irritating sound makes me nervy.  Yesterday I tried to fixed it with small plastic collars. This morning I found them broken. I put a stronger collar; I manage to reduce the noise but do notsucceed  to suppress it completely. 

The pictures of the OFOS underwater video camera seem promising.

 

The OFOS underwater camera.

The OFOS video camera directly transmits videos and pictures from the Antarctic sea floor at hundred meter depth.

When the Agassiz trawl comes up (station 197-4, Bransfield Strait East, upper slope), it appears that the net has once again twisted around the frame of the trawl. I do not dare to think what would have happened if the dredge would had been fixed with a cable to the frame... There is extremely little in the net and nothing relevant for us. Due to the failure of the operation, it is repeated (station 197-5). This time, the trawl properly works. It comes up with a huge amount of material, but a large part of it consists in stones of varius sizes. However there is also a lot of organisms. We get amphipods but less than we would have expected. Then we use the dredge on the same bottom. It comes with a huge amount of sediment and large organisms: the trick suggested by Henri robert for widening the opening of the dredge did work. We spend quite a lot of time on deck (with the much appreciated help of Ryan Driscoll) for sieving the sediment (black gravel mixed with sand and a little bit of mud. Already a lot of amphipods (and other organisms for various colleagues) are separated and we expect to find much more when we will look at the content of the gravel in the wet lab. We put all this material in a cooled container. At 17:40, we go to diner, as the work made us hungry.  The sorting of the trawl and especially dredge material take a lot of time because it is an exceptionnally good catch, both quantitavively and qualitively (especially for the dredge). We get several species not found until now during this cruise and some, which I have never seen or never seen alive. The cutest species found in the catch is a tiny (7 mm) and spiny species with a name almost impossible to pronounce: Acanthonotozomoides oatsesi. We works until 02:45 and go to bed at 03:00. The last specimens are not sorted out and put together  in a vial of alcohol.

(Cédric)

Take a breath before trying to pronounce the name of this tiny (7 mm) but cute amphipod: Acanthonotozomoides oatesi.

Monday 25.02.13

The Agassiz is deployed a bit after lunch-time. The first trial was unsuccessful because the net turned upside down and got caught in the metal frame, but when we deploy it again, the catch is the biggest we´ve ever had. The dredge is very successful too. The net is full of gravel and countless small amphipods, among which some small epimerids-iphimedids that we didn’t catch before, such as Iphimediella dominici and Epimeria grandirostris. Also 3 specimens of the very rare and very strange-looking Acanthonotozomopsis pushkini. 

(Marie)

 Iphimediella dominici (7 mm)

Again a tiny species with a very long name: Acanthonotozomopsis pushkini (5 mm)

24.02.2013 - Local sterility

Sunday 24.02.13

Agassiz trawl planned at 6 am. A bit before 7, we´re all set on the deck. It´s still dark outside. The fog is thick, so we can´t see anything further than a few meters. The temperature rose again and is now around 1°C, so it´s not so cold anymore for the work outside. When the trawl is lifted above the ocean, I soon see a lot of mud getting out of it : a big hole of a few meters-long is visible at the back of the net. A sharp rock probably damaged the gear at the bottom. Everything´s not lost though, a fair amount of mud and rocks is released on the deck floor. When we begin to sieve, we soon realize than this sediment is completely sterile of life, no animals at all can be found. After all the sieving and cleaning, we gather in the mess for breakfast, as the catch was zero for everybody. Later during the day, it´s decided to deploy the Agassiz again in the evening at the next station.  

The evening catch is more successful. A lot of rocks make the sorting quite difficult, but some animals can be found in the mud. We find for the first time some really big Epimeria robustoides, completely white with bright red eyes.  Some more spiny Epimeria from the similis complex, Eusirus perdentatus and for the first time also, some Eusirus of the complex  giganteus possibly belonging to different species. We try to keep some of the fine sediment, to look for smaller amphipods, but we find later that it´s quite poor and that the few animals we can find have been badly damaged from the rocks in the trawl.  However, the total catch keeps us working until almost 3 am. 

(Marie)

Epimeria robustoides, which can reach 45 mm is one of the largest and fattest Epimeria species.

24.02.2013. (Sunday). The clock of Marc rings at 06:00, mine at 06:10. Difficult to get out of my bed. Outside it is still pitch black. Indeed, we use the time zone of Europe, which is not the same as the astronomical one for the area. By the way this completely perturbs our biological clock. The trawl is put in the water at 06:18 (same area than yesterday but on shallower and flatter bottom, about 175 m depth).  I go to the mess room two. I am obviously in the way, but I really need a cup of coffee to start to work. I go down. The winch is already going up at 06:40. Around 07:00, we are on deck. We see the very first light of dawn, but it is still very dark. The trawl goes up. It proves to be badly torn (it will need reparation) but apparently we did not loose so much of its content, as a large compact mass of mud mixed with shingles and gravel, looking (in my imagination) like the faeces of a huge dinosaur. To our surprise, this mass of sediment is completely sterile. We get absolutely NOTHING in sieving it. I order to cancel the planned dredging operation (it would me wasting our time and that of our colleagues). This samples is of course disappointing for our point of view of taxonomists, but it is also quite enigmatic from an ecological point of view. Why such a sterility? Sometimes, we had poor catches, but never such a sterility. As a consolation, I eat a solid breafast: fried eggs with onions, bacon, mushrooms and ketchup (no tomatoes - they are all long gone) and bread with eggs of forel. The sea is calm; the sky is gray; it is foggy, not cold. As we are short  of time, we will make a second Agassiz trawl early in the evening (next station/environment of Bransfield East). Julian Gutt asks me to use the Rauschert dredge fixed on the side of the trawl and not separately. I do not like at all this idea because previous experiences prove that this method increases the risk to loose the dredge if it is stuck between rocks or if the net of the trawl twists as yesterday. After further thought, I decide to skip the dredge operation because I want to take no risk. The Agassiz trawl comes up with huge stones and a lot of life. The first thing I spot is an Epimeria robustoides. This is one of the biggest species of the genus (about 45 mm) and a very fat one, snow white with the oral fields and anterior legs purple. A really cute species. Later on, we find other specimens of the same species but smaller ones. We also get Eusirus perdentatus 'spotted chromotype' and Eusirus giganteus 'spotted chromotype'. No E. perdentatus 'marbled chromotrype'. Too deep? Since we did not use the dredge we sieve the sediment of the trawl. Not many animals in that fraction, but Marie spots a very strange one (for specialists), which I can only identify the day after, as Prolaphystius isopodops. I go to bed on 25.02.2013 at 02:45.

(Cédric)

23.02.2013 - First sampling in the Bransfield Strait

23.02.2013 (Saturday). Bad night, possibly because the ship is rolling quite a lot in the true open sea, and certainly because I had bad dreams. When I wake up, I see that the sky is cloudy again. Mid-sized waves cross the sea.  No more land, no more icebergs (at least for the time being), only the sea. Our stations north and west of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula are now a closed chapter. From today onwards we will be sampling in the Bransfield Strait and at the end of the cruise we are supposed to work in the Drake passage, north of the South Shetland Islands. So, today first station in the Bransfield Strait: Bransfield East, slope, station 192. We should have started the trawling operations in the morning but due to technical problems with other gears used before, it was postponed early in the afternoon. I go on deck with the GOPRO camera. It is not cold for Antarctica (a few degrees above 0°C). When the Agassiz trawl comes on board, it appears that the bag of the net has turned over and is now stuck into the frame. Yet during the short time, when it worked, it has collected interesting organisms for us: Eusirus perdentatus sensu lato ('marbled form' and the larger 'spotted form') and three species of Epimeria: E. macrodonta sensu stricto, Epimeria similis and Epimeria aff. similis (again a probably undescribed species already found during previous cruises). Despite I am still disappointed by the GOPRO, I get acceptable video footages of the work on deck. Since the first trawling operation did not work properly due to the net twisting, it is replicated. The second trawling yields more or less the same crustaceans than during the first one. After that we use the dredge. An immature chinstrap pinguin is swimming aroung the wire of the dredge when it is hauled up. We get a sample of black muddy sand. Only small-sized amphipods and not so many, but yet species not found so far during the cruise like Lepedipecreoides xenopus and Tiron antarcticus. It appears that for an unknown but miraculous reason, the piece of my macro objective, which had become disfunctional for days (something in the image stabilizer, I think),  unlocked and the objective works again properly. I am more than happy because for days this camera problem had badly affected my mood. Tomorrow, the trawl will be put in the water at 06:00. So the night will be rather short for me.

(Cédric)

Epimeria similis (35 mm).

Epimeria aff similis (35 mm): one more undescribed species? 

Lepedepecreoides xenopus (6 mm).

 Tiron antarcticus (6 mm), seen from above.

22.02.2013 - Steaming towards the Bransfield Strait

22.02.2013 (Friday). When I go up, and outside, I am surprised how little we have progressed. Rosamel Island, which we could distinctly see yesterday evening  is still behind us, and not so far. Soon after its epic fight against the last icefloe described in the previous post of this blog, the Polarstern entered again into the ice  and we had a shaky night. The open water was just a huge polynya. It is only at dawn that the Polarstern definitely left the ice. Now the sun is shining bright in a blue sky on the open sea and the surrounding land masses covered by snow and glaciers. Not as beautiful as yesterday evening but still truly majestic. Apparently I have missed a wonderful sunrise - too early for me. 

Early in the afternoon we return on the upper deck. We cross a Brazilian oceanographic ship heading south, as we are steaming northwards. This is the first and only ship we have seen since our departure from Punta Arenas. Really nice view of icebergs drifting on open water. Wonderful glaciers too. And the sun is shining generously. We were really sun-starved during the first part of the cruise and this has affected my mood and that of colleagues. Now I am feeling happy. Enrique Isla points out to me that the glaciers reaching the sea are actually frozen rivers, slowly flowing into the ocean as icebergs depart from them. We reach the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. All at once, we get a violent gust of wind in the face.The wind blow with fastly increasing strength and trails of foam lacerate the sea. It is no longer possible too stay long outside and I go back inside around 14:30. 

Tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. 

 At 17:15, I see by the window, that we are in full open sea, far from land. We get waves sideway.

In the evening, we order the samples from the last stations. I remark that I made a mistake in the labelling and we have to change a lot of labels. At 22:00 I go to the fitness room, then I go relax a bit in the red saloon and I go to bed around 24:00. 
(Cédric)

Friday 22.02.13

Another beautiful day. The Agassiz trawl was planned for 14 pm, but I soon understand that it will again be delayed to the next day. We apparently had to face other areas of thick ice during the night and arrived at our station with about 6h delay. We have to deal with the randomness of the conditions, which makes planning quite difficult. 

Outside, the sun still shines over the islands of the Bransfield Strait. The landscape is different than yesterday. On the right side, a long stretch of iced land, on the left, and elongated mountainous island, all made of steep rock and ice. In between, icebergs of all shapes and heights. We’re in open-water now, steaming to our next station.  Suddenly, someone spots a red dot in the horizon. In all this white and blue, this unnatural red color is quite surprising. It’s the brasilian ice-breaker!  It really gave a weird impression to see other human beings in such a remote place. We were alone with the seals and penguins for weeks now.

We can see the tip of the peninsula from here. It´s kind of a nostalgic moment to realize that we got out of the ice for good, we´re now heading to the north, in open-water for the rest of the trip. Soon, we can´t see any islands anymore, just water, endlessly, and some remaining icebergs. The ship moves a little more under the waves, we were not used to that anymore. In the ice, it was always very stable.

(Marie)