October 28, 2010 The World under the Ice - Pictures, information, and expedition update

No, we are not just watching balloons launch over Antarctica, inspecting huts left by historic explorers, and sorting and learning about trash. We are still here, doing our work!

Tina and the PolarTREC WATER DROP in the Tucker driving the divers to their hole

Our divers have finished surveying 12 of Stacy’s 14 monitoring sites. They only have two to go – one at a place called New Harbor and one at Turtle Rock.

Looking down the hole at the divers. Can you see all three of them?

The cores of mud they’ve collected are already packed in ethanol and will be shipped back to one of Stacy’s collaborators, Kathy Conlan, at the Canadian Museum of Natural History. There, Kathy and her interns will analyze them further as they have since 1997.

The PolarTREC WATER DROP on floaters that will be sunk in the ocean. The cooler holds cores and samples that the divers bring back. What will Kathy learn from this mud?

Photos and videos of all the sites have been uploaded and backed up on several computers and, when we have down time, we’re counting the colorful critters in their spectacular habitats.

Soft coral and the sea star odantaster validus

The divers have also retrieved and redeployed 4 of Paul’s floaters and they have photographed 19 of his cages as well as many of his transects. Every time they come back with a photograph or a part of his experiments, Paul gets more and more excited. He’s been go through everything but so far has not yet discovered a new species.

Paul’s floater in its natural environment. How long have these tunicates and sponges been here?

Stacy is most excited that Paul is with us this year showing us photos of what the seafloor looked like in the 1970s. She thinks it’s neat to look at the changes – of seeing some of the same sponges and how some are bigger and some have disappeared – and she’s amazed that they’re actually able to find his experiments and his transect line as “in no other habit would it still be there”!

One of Paul’s old cages. Pipe sponges reach towards us as soft corals hang onto the cage's edges

Now the divers are packing their stuff, for this weekend, weather permitting, they leave for two weeks of diving and researching at a field camp called New Harbor.

What kind of a dry suit would a WATER DROP need to survive the icy waters? (The Sacred Heart Kindergarten WATER DROP from last Monday is still a little moist even in dry Antarctica)

New Harbor is on the other side of McMurdo Sound – about 70 miles from our little research station. The divers and the SCINI team will be kept busy as Paul spent quite a bit of time here as well. In fact, there are three times as many experiments from Paul down there as there are here and they’ll only have 2 weeks to photograph and examine them. Can they do it?

Stacy recovering one of Paul’s experiments. How many can she recover in New Harbor?

This area is interesting also as it’s quite different from the dive sites in front of McMurdo. Here at McMurdo the area is considered “well-fed”.
Well-fed is a relative term in Antarctica as the base of the oceanic food web only eats for 2 or 3 months of the year. Because the ice prevents light from reaching into the water for up to 9 or 10 months a year, microscopic plants called phytoplankton are absent most of the year. This is actually why the visibility is so great for our divers. When the ice finally melts or breaks up on December 10, the visibility diminishes to only a few inches, as a thick bloom of phytoplankton takes over. This bloom feeds the communities for two months until the darkness of the ice takes over once again.

Kevin’s favorite picture. Looking up at bottom of the ice. What a view!

Back in McMurdo Sound, the current brings this food, this plankton from the Ross Sea to this area that we’ve been studying in front of the station. Sea stars and sea urchins thrive here and our divers have been enjoying their company. From here the current pushes the water under the permanent ice shelf. When it comes back out, it’s at New Harbor and it’s considered oligotrophic which means there is no food or larvae in the water. With no food or larvae, what animals will the divers find?

A blanket of seastars, soft coral, and a nematode atop one of Paul’s plates here at McMurdo

The area is actually similar to the deep, deep sea which is also a food-poor ecosystem. Brittle stars are one group of animals that survives in this area as they just don’t eat much.

What creature is Jennifer impersonating?

Scallops are a second set of animals that the divers will encounters and that have a fascinating food source here in Antarctica. Their story starts near shore, where tidal cracks form as the water rises and recedes with the tide. The ice melts and then the water warms up in these cracks. Eventually algae grows in it but it is separated from the ocean by a wall of barrier ice. Periodically this algae soup, known as a moat, breaks through in a few places and a river of green, rich nutrient water rushes out. The scallops, which have been sitting on the ice wall, waiting for this food, swim after it, and feast.

An Anemone called Isotealia Antarctica sharing a cnemedia capa tunicate with bryozoans. What does that purple nematode in the background want to eat?

This environment at New Harbor is also different as in front of the station we have volcanic cinders and there the critters live in a softer sediment of glacial till. What will we find there?

Where is the hole? How do I get back? Jen is done diving and ready to come back up but she has to stop at this safety stop for about 4 minutes before she can enter the hole and rejoin us on the other side of the ice.

The view of the hole from a diver’s perspective. Some divers climb up; others swim up.

Stay tuned as our journey continues.

Julie and a WATER DROP from Paul Cuffee school in Rhode Island

Where is this WATER DROP? What are those tubes for? (Those are the regulators that are divers will be packing for New Harbor)