It's an unusually cloudy day here at Lake Joyce and the weather is making it feel cold. We have a morning of drilling ahead of us, and an afternoon of diving – a busy schedule! However, I have a few…
It’s summertime here in Antarctica, and that means 24 hours of daylight. The sun makes a great circle around the sky every 24 hours, and at "night" it dips behind a mountain and we are in shadow, but…
We're out here studying the microbes that live on the bottom of the lake, which is covered with a layer of ice that is between 4-5 meters thick. We spend so much of our time drilling that I thought…
Today seems to mark a bit of a transition for us. Until now, every day has been devoted to drilling holes in the ice and looking for the range of the webbed, pinnacled mats using drop cameras. We…
In general, my options for communicating from Lake Joyce are rather limited. However, tomorrow we have a helicopter stopping by, so I’m going to give them a flash drive with this short movie on it. (…
Our big question
How do sediments influence the morphology, or shape, of the webbed microbial mats? Ancient fossil mats are similar to these modern examples in Lake Joyce, and our observations will…
We've completed a circuit all the way around the lake, drilling 18 holes in a rough ring around the lake. Among other tasks, at each drill site we drop two cameras into the drill hole so we can see…
How to Drill a Hole Through 4+ Meters of Ice
I know exactly what you're thinking: “Ms. Coleman, when am I ever going to need to know this?”. But you know, that's what I used to think and look what I…
A Tour of Lake Joyce
We spend most of our days down on Lake Joyce, and its truly amazing. Its a round lake, a little less than a kilometer in diameter. It sits in a big bowl, with mountains…
Everyday is sunny, and G-063 is getting into the science of things down on the lake and that's been really rewarding! We've been drilling an average of about two holes a day. Once a hole is open, we…
We've been here at Lake Joyce for a week now! Time sure flies. I'd love to share some photos and a bit about our living conditions here in camp.
Our Endurance tent – for cooking and hanging out.…
Our Science Goals
A fair amount of our time together as a team has been spent making sure we all know what the research goals are for this field season. Tyler has spent months planning for our…
