“BEEP beep, Beep beep, Beep beep,”

I am woken from the brink of sleep by an alien noise. Confusion. Is it a fire drill?

The Captain is on the phone. He is calling because I requested a wake-up call for filmic opportunities.

“You might wanna get up here. There’s something interesting. You have about one minute until we enter some ice.”

Confusion melts into panic. I throw on layers over my pyjamas, grab my camera and tri-pod and hurry on up.

A small group of ice-spectators gathers on the Bridge. Our ship is entering an eerily calm, ice-blanketed ocean. As the waves swell, the thin filmy-looking ice curves around them, softening their outlines.

The ship glides slowly over the never-ending ocean towards a heavy grey horizon. Our maximum speed in sea ice is six knots. It is strangely quiet.

I set up my camera and tri-pod on deck. I am up high, looking down on the water. I zoom in on the surface with my camera.

The ice-softened waves are in fact crystalline and spiky. The frosty white surface glows like phosphorescence as it catches the dim afternoon light.

The Captain tells us that in his five years sailing the Drake, he’s never seen ice quite like this.

Scientists try to classify the different types of sea ice. This was a combination of slush, grease ice and pancake ice.

A magical late-winter afternoon in the Drake Passage.

WE have passed 60 degrees latitude South and have taken more than half of our 20 Drake Survey samples.

The sample stations are selected by Chief Scientist, Colm Sweeney. They are near to the locations he tested in his 2006 Drake Survey.

At each station, the Captain stops the ship so that the Electronic Technician (ET) can lower the Conductivity Temperature Depth (CTD) profiler to do a hydro-cast.

The ET lowers the CTD approximately 4,000 meters at 50 meters per minute. Sensors on the CTD provide a profile of various ocean parameters and a computer onboard the ship generates a graph showing the seawater temperature, salinity and oxygen level.

Using this data, Sweeney selects the sample depths. As the ET brings the CTD back up to the surface, he fires Niskin bottles at the selected depths. Each fired bottle collects 10 liters of seawater. A single cast takes about four hours.

Once the CTD is back onboard ship, there is lots of action. As a Lab Technician, my primary role is to take seawater samples from the Niskin bottles. It’s cold and wet work. Over my thermal layers, I put on Wellington boots, fisherman’s overalls and gloves.

Depending how many samples have been taken, what time of day it is and how many people are sampling, it can take up to two hours. I work the night shift, 12 am to 12 pm. The ET’s usually bring the CTD in around midnight, 6 am and noon. This coincides with meal times – we eat fast.

A “bottle cop” keeps track of all the samples, bottles and scientists to make sure everything is labelled correctly. He assigns me a set of bottles. The size and shape of the bottle differs depending on what will be analyzed from the sample: Carbon Dioxide, Oxygen, salinity or nutrients.

If I am assigned a bottle which will be tested for CO2, I open the Niskin bottle and attach a tube to feed seawater into my glass bottle. This helps to prevent air bubbles. I rinse three times, then fill the bottle with seawater, letting it overflow for one final rinse. I was shocked to discover how much precious seawater drawn from the depths of the ocean gets thrown right back in!

I then fill the bottle with seawater and add a drop of Mercuric Chloride Solution (poison). We call this “pickle juice.” It kills all living matter, so no gaseous exchange can occur once we have taken the samples.

After a flurry of activity, sampling is finished. We deliver some specimens to the wet lab to be analyzed onboard the ship and others to a freezer to be analyzed later in the United States.

At full speed, crossing the Drake Passage takes three or four days. Stopping 20 times as we sail South, we hope to make the crossing in less than ten days.

We crept into a much colder region over night. It’s decidedly chilly on the ship and there’s snow falling outside. I am down to the final few hours of a night shift, awaiting one more CTD. I am wearing almost all my clothes and still can’t get the chill out of my bones. Luckily, there is a sauna onboard, so that’s where I’m headed at 12pm CLT.

© The Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu

THE ice-strengthened Research Vessel Laurence M. Gould provides science support to the Antarctic region and onboard facilities for fieldwork in oceanography, marine biology and geophysics.

This multi-disciplinary research platform enables scientists to conduct cutting-edge research in subjects ranging from astronomy to oceanography at remote sites on the Antarctic continent and surrounding oceans.

It is equipped with a Baltic Room, a diverse sonar suite, an aquarium room, moon pool, and an uncontaminated seawater system delivering water to labs.

The ship has an available horsepower of 4,576 in open water and 3,900 horsepower in ice. An ABS-A1 rating classifies the LMG as being capable of breaking one foot of first-year ice while maintaining forward motion. The LMG is known for its heave-pitch motion, so we expect a rough ride.

It’s designed for year-round polar operations and at 70 meters in length, can accommodate 28 scientists and staff for up to 75 days. Scientists sleep in two-person cabins with private toilets and showers. There are laundry facilities, exercise rooms and a TV lounge plus canteen-style meals. When a storm hits, everything is locked down.

Boot washing stations are set up in the gangway for crews to clean their boots before getting on and off the ship. Rinsing boots minimizes the risk of transferring soil, plant material or other non-native organic matter to sites.

The ship is owned and operated by Louisiana-based Edison Chousest Offshore. It was named in honor of Laurence McKinley Gould. Gould was second-in-command to Admiral Richard E. Byrd on his first Antarctic expedition in 1929 and helped establish the Little America base camp on the Ross Ice Shelf. From this base, his team explored the Antarctic continent. Gould died in 1995, shortly before the National Science Foundation launched the R/V Laurence M. Gould.

Ken Mankoff, McMurdo Station

WE will be issued ECW gear in Punta Arenas. The kit list includes all clothing required to keep warm and dry on our trip.

Red hooded down parka
Field pants
Thermal underwear
Gloves/mittens and liners
Woolen socks
Thermal boots
Balaclava
Snow goggles
Cap / Knit hat
Wind jacket and trousers