Thin Sea Ice research, penguins, seals

Hello-hello,

I’m sitting here in the coffeehouse, my bike outside leaned up against the wall, and my double chocolate chip cookies by my side along with a mug of tea. This decadence has become my Sunday tradition. Among other things from the other world, I check the weather in the mountains at home… ever hoping for snow, the kind you step in, not on.

Tomorrow Larry gets back from almost 3 weeks putting in a major camp out on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. I must say we’ve both been so busy and so tired that we’ve had little time to do much together before he left anyway; this isn’t the first time we’ve experienced this down here. I think it’s funny that we met down here, but back then the newness of it all helped overcome the tired factor and we were both a lot more social. I remember how much fun we have off-ice, the laughter and energy, and know that this flatness is simply situational. I suspect many couples have the same experience day after day, year after year, dealing with dual careers, kids, and taking care of a house, so I know not to feel sorry for myself!

I’ve been working a lot with a project studying how sea ice fractures. The work site is close to the ice edge on two feet of ice and we go out for 16+ hour days (I get to sleep in the next morning and go into work for the afternoon, but it throw’s me off to get to bed 4 hours before my normal wake-up time).

Using chainsaws, they isolate a 7m x 4m plate of ice and then use ice hooks from the 18th century to pull out the chunks of ice from along the sides so the plate is free floating with a strip of open water surrounding it. Then they install instruments, cut a slot in the side to put a special jack into. They pump nitrogen into the jack, basically a balloon, until the plate cracks. It takes most of the day to get to this stage and I must say the final effect was anti-climatic. I was hoping for a big CRACK and such, but sea ice, esp younger ice, doesn’t do that. It creaks and groans, making small popping noises as it slowly rips in half. But still pretty cool.

The resulting plates are just small enough to get rocking by stepping on and off of it till it’s going pretty well. It’s fun to stand with one foot on each of the post-fracture plates and step back and forth, getting the floes rocking hard, to actually feel the ice moving. In my experience down here, the aliveness of ice has been theoretical, so this is all rather exciting. Interesting, at least. As the ice warms and thins in the coming weeks, we’ll have to tune in to whether the ice is moving with the swells: a sign that we should probably leave soon esp if the day is warm and the winds from the south. So by standing on the bobbing floes I am training myself to feel the undulations… all important scientific research in the name of Field Safety.

Locating the site was a challenge. It took several helo flights to find ice thin enough for the researchers adjacent to ice thick enough for Science Support departments for a tent, snowmobiles, and helo landing. Then when we came out the 3rd time, a huge crack 40m across had opened up just a couple meters from the work site. That was an eye-opener. I’d like to say we chose that site sensing it would stay put, but the reality is even the researcher was surprised that our site happened to end up on the fast-ice side of the lead. The fracture didn’t follow any predictable path such as old fractures or plate margins. Hmmm. Was fun to write about this in the Sea Ice Report.

After much programmatic hand wringing we decided to stay with the site. Storms have since blown all the ice on the far side of that crack out, but recently a foot or so of new ice has formed. I’ve been watching that carefully out of curiosity as much as anything, measuring it further out each time I go out there, seeing how it’s forming up (.25m is as thin as I’ve been on). As warm as its getting these days, we’re not accumulating much more ice thickness on the existing ice anymore so this will likely stay soft and spooky.

Funny that I am the Sea Ice point of contact, when last year I spent a whopping 2 days on the sea ice. There is so much variety in this job that 5 years into it, I am still new to numerous components. I like that in a job. This is the first time I’ve seen thin ice or been at the ice edge. That was that one day when there was actual water next to the site. I kept an eye out and saw a penguin porpoising through the water. When he saw us, he turned and launched, landing on his belly and rapidly gliding, nonchalant, toward the powercord to the generator. After checking out our scene thoroughly, he laid down for a nap, bill in the snow.

What a treat to see a penguin swimming. Our standard sighting is them either vertical walking or tobogganing on their belly, kicking along with their feet. They are so graceful in the water; delightful.

Sea ice forms quite differently than freshwater ice, and now I’ve been able to actually see some of the differences. Quite interesting. I’ve been learning a lot, figuring things out, combining theory with reality. We hear that the marine USAP station, Palmer, allows foot travel on a foot of sea ice, but we’re not sure what ice temperatures that includes. Here we normally have a 2-5m of ice, so thin ice is something new to me. We still have lots and lots of thick ice and travel is closed long before it gets thin. The hazard is that it gets warm (while thick) and then falls apart and blows out, not that it would get thin enough that you’d fall through like on freshwater ice. The whole thing is interesting and I’m grateful to get to know this complex and dynamic medium a bit more.

Also seeing penguins and seals regularly. As always, the penguins usually visit us to make sure we’re doing things right. They are as charming as ever, and the two different species as different in movement, in effect, as I described my first season. I remind myself that these are the real things, wild creatures, free as can be, doing their own thing. When else in my life will I get to watch real penguins in their world, going about their business, which is frequently investigating us?

For that matter, when else will I commute by helicopter? How fun is that? I quite like working around them and feel pretty comfortable with it, dealing with the protocols, radio comms, all things that I’ve learned down here. Enjoy working with the pilots, all seasoned local veterans. They know this place and their job here really well. And they seem less crusty than when I met them 4 years ago as a helo-passenger novice. (I hope that doesn’t suggest I’m getting crusty).

The seals are done pupping and are training their little ones to swim now (so I hear from the researchers). Near our work site I saw a distant skua (big brown gull) feeding. There isn’t much to feed on, so I investigated, predicting what I’d find: dead pup. The skuas peck out the eyes but, like ravens, cannot open a carcass. Ravens wait for coyotes (et al) to open the bonanza, but here with no terrestrial animals, carcasses just freeze into the ice, basically mummifying until the ice goes out and they feed marine scavengers. Some of the multi-year ice includes carcasses years old, mummified with the fur worn off by winter snow-blasting.

The part of the dead pup that wasn’t drifted in was soft pliable, probably due to the sun’s heat. I didn’t realize their hind flippers are really like hands: five furry fingers, each with a claw, separated by skin like a duck’s foot but with fur. The outer fingers are biggest by far, followed by the middle finger. The coat was super thick (same number of hairs as adult, so ultra dense), but not as soft as one might expect given that baby seals were killed for their fur no so long ago (or at least not in the papers anymore). They have beautiful little faces, not unlike a Labrador but rounder.

The other day we heard a seal breathing nearby, and found the hole. Every ten or so minutes the seal returned, taking big bold breaths before going down for another fishing dive.

I know I have made a new record this year for poor personal correspondence, as exemplified by the scarcity of these updates. Despite that, know that I really appreciate hearing from you, from those in my other life, knowing what’s going on back there, how you are. It’s a treat to get photos too: you, your family, adventures, house, kids, pets, and especially landscapes with plants and animals… the Land of the Living.

This place is amazing no doubt. I am still enchanted with this powerful landscape; there is much to it. I suspect that for the rest of my life when I’m done coming down here, I’ll cry every time I hear the voice of a penguin, among other reminders. My comments above simply reflect the fact that I remain quite attached to other kinds of landscapes as well, and playing within them.

I hope you enjoyed Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday: family, friends, food, but without the hype and commercialization of Christmas (that’s one thing I really don’t miss). I hope you were able to get out and walk that day too, soak in the cooling temperatures (or so I hope they are), the dead leaves, the longer nights.

Nights! Yeah, that’s something else miss under the ever-present sun. This is such an intense place, a lot different than the feel here in August and September when there were a third as many people here and dark nights.

Larry is back and today we biked out to the informal skating rink, yea. Quite a lot of fun, and something different. I’ll send some photos from that as well as seal snout shots and maybe some penguinos.

Love and wild winds, Susan