Monday 8 February, Day 25

I did not had anything to report this past week, mostly open water cruising over the Protector Shoal, a submarine volcano that our geologists studied in details, and heavy fog when we were close to Zavodovski Island, the northernmost island of the South Sandwich island chain. By the way, these islands were named by Captain James Cook, when he discovered them in 1775, after the 4th Earl of Sandwich, 1st Lord of the Admiralty. The word "South" was later added to distinguish them from the Sandwich Islands, now known as Hawaii, which were also "discovered", more than a thousand years after Polynesians discovered them, by James Cook in 1778, who also named them Sandwich Islands (lack of imagination?).

So, during this eventless part of the cruise, I worked hard on my paper reporting last year cruise's SASSI observations, which I have just finished yesterday! Now I deserve a bit of rest, and I can take some time to put some pictures here.

Back to the dredging operations, here is the dredge being deployed.



Then, after having let it rake the ocean floor for some time, it is brought back on deck, and Simon and Phil (the chief scientist) sort their treasure!



In the meantime, chinstrap penguins are playing in the water all around the ship. Actually, the waters around the South Sandwich Islands are full of chinstrap penguins everywhere, it is amazing!



At last, yesterday, the clouds disappeared to let the sun shine. Penguins are enjoying a sun bath on top of a large iceberg (can you spot the tiny black dots on top of the iceberg?).



And I am enjoying the sun on top of the ship (on the Monkey Island!).



The sun finally set as we were approaching Montagu Island.



Montagu Island houses an active volcano, Mount Belinda, which was last seen erupting 2 years ago. Ashes are still visible on the low level slopes of the glaciers that cover it.



Why have they not been covered up by snow, as on the higher slopes? Maybe because the glacier is so crevassed as it approaches the sea, that snowfall cannot stay on the crevasses crests...



To finish today's post, a few specimens of the nice icebergs that surround us:

Sunday 31 January, Day 17

I forgot to show the first iceberg of this cruise, when we were near South Georgia Island (in the background), before coming back to Stanley:



And while in Stanley, during the refueling, I wanted to take a shot of a sign post which I had noticed when running at the beginning of this trip. It reminds me of the sign post Marion and I had made for our wedding to symbolize our project to travel around the world for our honeymoon (which is still in its project form...):



Then we headed back past South Georgia, towards the South Sandwich Islands.
When we arrived in their vicinity, the geology team started to dredge the sea floor with the "instrument" shown below, to take some rocks and analyze the composition of the sea floor they are mapping:



Probably thinking that we were catching fish with big nets, a flock of chinstrap penguins gathered behind the stern...



... and were flying above the water to catch up with us!



Taking advantage that the ship had finally stopped for dredging, we tested the CTD (Conductivity-Temperature-Depth) system and two LADCPs (Lowered Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers), which I compared to the measurements from the shipboard ADCP (SADCP). The results were quite encouraging:



After this test and the first three dredging locations, the winds increased and the sea became quite rough again during the night and all day today. Here is how it looked like towards the bow (as seen through the lounge windows, which were covered with water droplets)...



... and towards the stern:



As Renaud would say:
"C'est pas l'homme qui prend la mer, c'est la mer qui prend l'homme, ta, ta, ta!"

Tuesday 26 January, Day 12

Retour case départ!
Back to where we started from!

During our survey of the sea floor around South Georgia, one of the crew members got ill, abdominal pain I heard, maybe appendicitis, so we headed back to Stanley to transfer him ashore. We encountered strong winds and heavy seas on the way, with a nasty swell coming from sideways which awoke me at 5 am. I couldn't close my eyes again for the rest of the night as I was sliding up and down my bunk! Good thing I don't get sea sick, though: I was still able to work on my papers for the rest of the day. Arriving in Stanley was a relief, and we spent the night in the bay, waiting for a space along the dock to refuel, which we obtained this morning. We could get ashore for two hours, and I took the opportunity to walk and stretch my legs!

Below are a few pictures about life onboard, taken by Mike Gloistein.


Lunch in the Officers/Scientists saloon (I am sitting in front on the far right).


Lunch in the Officers/Scientists bar on Sunday (I am wearing the green polo).

Friday 22 January, Day 8

One week already I have started this trip!
I have worked hard on my papers and made good progress, so tonight I am taking a bit of time off to upload some pictures on this blog.


This is my cabin, with a perfect view of the sea (although you can't see it because it is too bright)!


This is the ship, the RRS (Royal Research Ship) James Clark Ross.


On Saturday, prior to the ship's departure, four of us made a hike to see some penguins. Here is a magellanic penguin, at the doorstep of his house.


On Sunday, I made a visit to Stanley's town center, to find presents for Margot and Anael. I miss them so much already!


On Monday, we sailed away, direction...


... South Georgia Island! Unfortunately, we are mapping the sea floor on the edge of the shelf and slope, so this is the closest we'll get from this island.


The sea has been relatively calm so far. But things may change!...

Oh, I almost forgot: yesterday I saw a whale (a fin whale, according to the second mate).

The picture is not sharp, sorry, but the whale was very far, I took the shot with my big 400 mm lense, but with the ship motion and the air humidity, it is already not too bad.

Monday 18 January 2010 - Day 4

C'est parti!
The JCR left the dock at 11 am. We had our safety drill just after lunch.
We are now heading South, but the sea is rather calm for now. However, contrary to last year, we are going to spend most of the cruise in the latitudes of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, so it is bound to become rough at some point!

Friday 15 January 2010 - Day 1

Back to Antarctica, to retrieve the instruments I had deployed last year and get the data and water samples back. This year the ship is the RRS James Clark Ross, or JCR, a 100-m long research vessel, bigger than the Ernest Shackleton I was on last year, and better equiped for scientific work. The main purpose of the cruise is to map the sea floor near South Georgia Island and the South Sandwich Islands with very high resolution horizontally (10-100 m), which has nothing to do with my project. But the team of geologists have allocated us a few days toward the end of the cruise to retrieve our instruments in the South-eastern Weddell Sea.

I left Marion, Margot and Anael on Wednesday 13, to meet the scientific team at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, from where we took a shuttle to the Royal Air Force base Brize Norton. Our plane, which was supposed to take off at 11 pm, was delayed by 12 hours, so we spent the night in some military housing on the base. We flew on Thursday to Stanley, Falkland Islands, with Air Tahiti! The captain was giving instructions to his crew in french, the movie was in french, with english subtitles, and there was some pleasant Tahitian music playing after landing on Ascension Island to refuel. When getting off the plane, the warm and humid air with a gentle breeze reminded me of Hawaii. I dreamt for a moment that we were not heading to Stanley but to Papeete...

We arrived in Stanley this morning, and rested for a few hours in a bed-and-breakfast, waiting for the ship to be ready for us. We took our lunch on the ship, and I started to look around for our equipment. Then I had a phone interview arranged on the ship for a researcher position opening at AOML in Miami! I should know about the outcome in a few days... The ship is not leaving Stanley before Monday, so we'll have more time to check that our equipment is OK and some time for shopping and hiking around.

Days 42-45

After two days of mildly rough seas (but not as rough as I had hoped to witness) across the Drake Passage, we arrived in Stanley, Falklands, on the morning of March 7, 43 days after we had set sails. To stretch our sea legs, four of us decided to walk to Cape Pembroke lighthouse, which took us 6 hours back and forth.
The next day, we visited a remote penguins colony, accessible only by 4-wheel-drive vehicles. It was another amazing experience ! The penguins were not at all afraid of us, and we could approach them almost to arm-reach length :

A singular view : a Magellanic penguin in company of a sheep !

But the most beautiful ones were the King penguins :

An entire colony of them, with the adults feeding their chicks :

"Do you fancy a swim, darling ?"

"Brrr, no, the water is too cold !"

A Magellanic penguin was posing for a picture :

And some Gentoo penguins were gossiping...

Finally, a curious penguin came toward us. He chased after Kjersti, then bumped into Rich's legs and stayed there for a while, as if he was looking for some cuddling. I was shooting the scene with my camcorder, and kneeled down in case he would come toward me, which he finally did. I extended slowly my finger toward his head, and he approached his beak, and grabbed gently my finger ! He was not trying to hurt me, but was rather playing, like a cat gently biting your finger. It was a magic moment !

The next and last day, I did some shopping in Stanley and visited the local museum, but two cruise ships had arrived during the night and the town was flooded with tourists.
We left for the airport on the morning of March 10, and arrived in England this morning, after 16 hours of flight, thus ending the most amazing and enjoying cruise of my life, so far !
I was sad to say goodbye to my new friends, but I am glad to see again Marion and Margot very soon now !