Back in the swing of things

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Palmer Station as seen from a nearby glacier. Flags mark a trail from the Station to the top of the glacier so hikers can avoid dangerous crevasses.

I’ve been back in the northern hemisphere for almost a month now and my trip to Antarctica is beginning to seem like a distant memory among the holiday bustle. It’s good to be back in Rockland and settling into our off-island season – applying for grants, analyzing data collected during the 2015 field season, and prepping for implementing monitoring projects on Hurricane next year. Before it became too distant of a memory, I wanted to take time to reflect on the month-long expedition to the southern hemisphere with the Waller Lab.

Overall, the trip was an incredible experience. I traveled to a part of the world I never thought I’d have the opportunity to see, learned new field techniques, worked at a much larger scale than I normally do (i.e., I typically dive off of 40’ lobster boats compared to using trawling equipment off of a 230’ research vessel!), and met some amazing people.

I came away with a much deeper respect for those who do fieldwork in the hard to reach places on our planet. Successfully carrying out fieldwork in the Southern Ocean requires careful planning and a large, competent team for logistical support. I am still amazed at the sheer volume of supplies and equipment that Jay and Maggie had to make sure were shipped down south in time for our cruise. The logistics don’t stop there because once they wrap up collecting the samples from the experiment, those samples will need to be packaged, kept at a specific temperature and shipped back to Maine.

The trip reinforced a mantra I live by – fieldwork is unpredictable and you need to be ready to roll with the punches and develop contingency plans! Fortunately, we collected all of our adult samples in a single trawl which is atypical, but we ran into issues with how to keep the adult coral alive and well until we reached Palmer Station.  This meant we couldn’t use all of the collected individuals and had to adjust how we stored the adults while in transit from the collection site to the station. I’m sure Jay and Maggie have had to make additional adjustments as the experiment continues…  

Finally, I renewed my awe for the diversity of habitat types and ecological communities the planet supports. The Southern Ocean and Antarctica often seem like vast, desolate environments; however, a wide variety of life exists from the smallest phytoplankton to the large marine mammals and everything in between if you have the equipment and training to find all of it.

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A gorgeous sunset from Palmer Station.  The Gould is seen in the background just over the Station roof.

Travel Log: Caitlin Cleaver, "Life at Palmer Station"

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Approach to Palmer Station

Palmer Station was established in 1965 and is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year! It’s located on Anvers Island (latitude: 64.7 S, longitude: 64.0 W) halfway down the Antarctic Peninsula and is one of three U.S. Antarctic research stations. The campus is relatively small with three main buildings and a series of shipping containers used for storage of waste, science equipment and other supplies. The main building houses the Bio Lab on the first floor equipped with a flowing seawater lab, two environmental rooms where the temperature can be manipulated and maintained for different experiments, and dry lab space. The galley and administrative offices are on the second floor while the third floor serves as a dorm. The GWR building provides a first-floor garage, shop, and doctor’s office while the second floor has dorm-style rooms, a lounge, small bar and gym. The Terra Lab is another lab space where terrestrial and atmospheric work takes place. The overnight capacity is approximately 45 staff and researchers. The majority of activity takes place in the summer months – November through April; however, 15 or so staff typically winter over and some research is done during that time.

From my time here, it seems as though it’s a tight-knit community where everyone is in good spirits, gets along well and are passionate about their work here. They host different activities throughout the week including drawing classes, yoga, and evening science talks. It definitely reminds me of our community on Hurricane.

This week, we were fortunate to have three science talks, each highlighting a researcher who traveled with us from Punta Arenas on the Gould. The first was the Terra Lab Open House on Tuesday evening. We were given a tour of the facility and shown instruments that are used for the different long-term monitoring efforts underway. These include monitoring air quality, seismic activity, weather, and the Palmer Deep water mass. The latter is being done in an attempt to better understand the potential connection between upwelling and the location of penguin colonies. It’s thought that the penguin colonies thrive in areas where upwelling is occurring, which increases the productivity and, in turn, increases the amount of food available in that particular area – pretty cool! We also heard from two Boston College research scientists who are setting up a new system of antennae in Palmer’s “backyard” to monitor interactions between the ionosphere and other layers of the atmosphere. Apparently, when the earthquake hit Japan and caused the Fukushima disaster, they were able to measure the impact in the ionosphere – basically, the earthquake creates a ripple effect that manifests as a tidal wave in the ocean and also creates a similar result in layers of the atmosphere.

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Source: http://avilaearth.weebly.com/

On Friday night, Dr. Waller and Jay gave a shared talk about Cold Corals in Hot Water. Dr. Waller talked about the importance of studying deep sea corals and how little we actually know about the deep oceans. Jay continued with an explanation of the experiment and the analysis methods that will be used. After the coral discussion, an associate scientist (Dr. Colleen Hansel) from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute talked about her research with reactive oxygen species (ROS) and in particular, an instrument they will be using to measure ROS during phytoplankton blooms as part of the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) effort. Very little is known about the positive and negative effects of ROS. It’s thought that they may contribute to coral bleaching, harmful algal blooms, and other negative events; however, some preliminary work in the marine realm is showing that there may be a bit more to all of this. Colleen is working to figure out who is producing the ROS’s and when. 

The LTER project here at Palmer is one station within a network of 26 LTER sites in the United States, Tahiti, and Puerto Rico.  The research focus on each site corresponds to the particular ecosystem in which the station is located. Here, the focus is on the polar marine biome, “including sea ice habitats, regional oceanography, and terrestrial nesting sites of seabird predators.”

Travel Log: Caitlin Cleaver, "Fieldwork on the Gould at Station AA"

Last Tuesday (October 24th), we spent the day doing CTD (conductivity-temperature-depth) casts to collect bottom water at 600 m depth. We did a total of 8 casts – 6 solely dedicated to collecting water to fill 5L, 20L and 50L carboys and twenty-five 5-gallon buckets that we would be using to store the adult coral samples of Flabellum impensum we would be collecting later in the week. We did two additional casts for Maggie’s capstone project where she was collecting water samples from 10 different depths to determine the nutrient profile for phosphate, nitrate and nitrite as well as preserving the phytoplankton community from water collected at the surface and at the chlorophyll max. On the last cast, Jay preserved some water to do a carbonate chemistry analysis, which would tell us something about ocean acidification at Station AA (the location where we would be collecting the corals).

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Waiting on deck for the trawl net to be hoisted on board.

The CTD has 24 Niskin bottles and each one holds 12L of water. You prep the CTD by cocking the niskin bottles so that they are open before the CTD goes overboard. Once the CTD is overboard, it slowly descends to the deepest depth that needs to be sampled and then as it is brought back up, the Niskin bottles are fired at certain depths where water needs to be collected.

Wednesday arrived with absolutely perfect conditions for trawling – calm seas, little to no wind, some ice but not enough to prevent us from putting the net overboard, and sun! We even caught a glimpse of the mountains on Smith Island (the second highest mountains in the South Shetland Islands). The Marine Technicians helped get the net ready – making sure that the net wasn’t tangled, that the floats were at the top and the chain at the bottom.

The anticipation amongst the team was tangible – everyone was anxious for a good tow. In the past, Dr. Waller has had some tows where they’ve only gotten a single coral polyp and others where they’ve gotten more than 50. We were all hopeful that it would be on the higher end of the range.

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Far exceeding our own expectations in terms of total number of coral polyps collected!

From the net leaving the deck until it’s return was about three hours. We hit bottom around 600 m. When the net was coming back up, we all got on our sorting gear (bibs, steel-toe boots, etc.) and headed out to the deck to meet the net. Once the net was on board, the sorting frenzy began. Everyone pitched in – the marine techs and other scientists on board. The end result was over 100 corals and very little bycatch - just a few skates, an octopus, some sea stars, brittle stars, sea urchins, sea cucumber, anemones, a fish, and isopods.

On Thursday, we woke up early to see the Neumayer Straight, an extremely narrow passage and absolutely beautiful with sheer mountains on either side of the ship. Shortly thereafter, we arrived at Palmer Station and the unloading process began. Everyone was working to get the cargo off so fresh foods could be unpacked and we could have access to our aquarium tanks and other equipment. The crew worked late into the night and as soon as the tanks were unloaded, we got to work. Jay set out to put together the four aquaria for the experimental treatments while Dr. Waller, Maggie and I setup to start dissecting the adult corals we had collected the day before. We dissected into the wee hours of the morning (3:30 am) and got 832 larvae from 20 female adults – enough for the experiment! It was a rewarding and exhausting experience.

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Working far into the night processing all the animal and water samples

Travel Log: Caitlin Cleaver, "Contingency Planning 101"

There are quite a few mottos that you hear relatively regularly in field science – “we’ll do what we can”; “c’est la vie”; “let’s just give it a whirl” – to name a few. The Waller Lab has been using quite a few of these over the past week as the reality of doing deep sea field science in the Antarctic came into focus. We’ve honed our problem-solving skills, channeled our creative side, and are ready for whatever the ocean has to throw at us!

When we first arrived in Punta Arenas, we spent the first three and a half days wandering the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) dock where multiple warehouses and containers store science equipment for the ongoing and upcoming research projects happening in the Antarctic, many at Palmer Station.

Sooooo happy all the supplies arrived!

First, we were most concerned with whether or not the glassware (vials and 20-gallon aquarium tanks) for housing the coral larvae (a.k.a., coral babies) during the experiment had made it from Maine to California to Santiago, Chile to Punta Arenas in one piece. We also had to make sure that the supplies and equipment we needed for the trawl surveys and CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) casts were accessible during the cruise rather than stored down in the hold of the Gould and not accessible until we reached Palmer Station.

Next, we began to focus on sample collection scenarios and experimental design, which would be implemented as soon as we reached Palmer Station, Antarctica. This entailed multiple meetings and a lot of coffee and chocolate consumed in Dr. Waller’s cabin, where we were equipped with a white board and couch.

We took several factors into consideration when developing our Plan A – the “optimal”, Plan B – the “OK”, and Plan C – the “things didn’t go as planned, but we can still save the experiment!” We worked backwards from the total number of coral larvae needed to carry out each of the three plans. Basically, it was an exercise in elementary arithmetic with adjusting the number of treatments (or the different water temperatures of the aquarium tanks that we’ll eventually put the coral larvae into at Palmer Station), the number of replicates (or the number of individual coral larvae per tank) and the number of sample points (or when samples are taken throughout the period of the experiment – in this case, samples would be taken every 3 or 5 days over a 30 day period). We rearranged these factors in certain combinations that would still preserve the integrity of the experiment in terms of having enough replicates to make any experimental results statistically significant. Once we determined the number of coral larvae needed to successfully implement each plan, we calculated the number of adult coral we would need to collect and, viola, we arrived at the magic number of adult coral we needed to collect! I have to admit, we all were pretty brain dead after working through these different scenarios, but the hard work paid off and we are super prepared for the actual fieldwork, which is exciting!

Our planing efforts laid out in black and white.

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Loads of gear aboard the Gould (with a furry tribute to the University of Maine - Go Black Bears!)

A day or so after our contingency planning meeting, a few bumps in the road appeared… we found out the aquarium tanks that we need as soon as we set foot at Palmer Station to set up the experiment were going to take longer than initially anticipated to be off-loaded from the Gould. This information changed our strategy and helped us zero in on which plan we would go with. Due to the increase of time between collecting the adult coral and being able to start the experiment, we’ve decided to collect fewer adult coral and keep them happier by giving them more space in their buckets, which is what we’re transporting them from collection site to Palmer Station in. We also created bucket dividers out of vial racks so that the individuals would be less likely to interact – apparently they can be aggressive and sting each other if kept too close. Given the fewer adult coral, we have opted for Plan C - 3 treatments or aquarium tanks with different water temperatures. All in all, we feel ready to tackle the CTD casts and trawl surveys which are getting underway today! Onward!

Travel Log: Caitlin Cleaver, "The Cape Shirreff Schlep!"

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The Lawrence M Gould waiting "in the ice" off of Cape Sherriff

On Sunday night, we completed our crossing of the Drake Passage and were “into ice” (a.k.a., closing in on Antarctica!). Many of the people who have crossed the Drake before said we had an extremely smooth crossing with relatively mild waves. The Drake is notorious for large waves moving in different directions since there are few landmasses in the Southern Ocean to slow winds or water movement, which results in washing machine-like waves. I was quite grateful for the calm seas to say the least! 

When I woke up this morning (Monday, October 26), we were definitely in ice… icebergs were in the distance and floating chunks of ice were right up against the Gould. We were slowly making our way through the ice, and the fog, to Cape Shirreff, Livingston Island, to drop off five pinniped (or seal) researchers for their five-month field season. We had to wait a bit for the fog to lift, but the seas and weather were favorable for the off-loading to begin or what I now call the Cape Shirreff Schlep!

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Cape Shirreff, Livingston Island, Antarctica: the black star marks the location of Cape Shirreff on Livingston Island.

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Unloading the Zodiacs on Livingston Island, Antarctica

If you’ve ever been to Hurricane and helped unload a grocery run, this effort was about 10 times as intense… there were approximately 30 of us working for about 3 – 4 hours. It was an epic production that involved all hands on deck. First, the Zodiacs (or small inflatable boats that can carry gear and 10 passengers to shore and back to the Gould) were craned over the side of the boat and one crew headed towards the field base to start clearing the beach where we land the gear. On deck, the rest of us started moving boxes of food – both fresh and preserved, propane tanks (40!), drinking water and gear to prep for being loaded onto the Zodiacs.

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Caitlin Cleaver performing the "Cape Shirreff Schlep"

On the second trip, we climbed down the side of the Gould and onto one of the Zodiac so we could be onshore to meet incoming boats, off load their gear, and then schlep the gear about 400 meters to the buildings on Cape Shirreff. We used toboggans with harnesses to drag multiple boxes or pieces of gear at one time. Maggie and I did about 10 round trips each while others helped shovel snow away from the buildings. 

Penguins beginning their own trek across Livingston Island, Antarctica

Some major highlights included seeing a group of penguins hike behind the buildings, across the island towards the known penguin colony on Livingston island – we definitely took the time to admire the passing wildlife. One of the researchers said that hiking, rather than swimming around the island to the penguin colony, has become their strategy for avoiding leopard seals that frequent the waters around the Cape. We also successfully got an ATV from the Zodiacs onto the Cape with many hands working together to pull the ATV up the snow berm from the boat.

The Cape Shirreff team has been monitoring the seal populations on the island and over the last few years, have noticed a marked increase in the number of female leopard seals inhabiting the Cape. They aren’t sure why this increase is happening, but they are studying the seals’ habits in terms of their diet, how they’re hunting, and individual behavior and health. They sedate seals, place a tag on some of them, and then take measurements of the length, weight, and girth. In addition, they’ve teamed up with National Geographic Critter Cam to put high definition video cameras on a leopard seal’s back when they’re sedated to film the seal’s activities once they recover – it provides a perspective the researchers have never before been privy to. With this video footage, they have a better understanding of the seal’s hunting and foraging behavior, which has implications for the populations of penguins and other seal species on Livingston Island. 

All in all, it was a tiring, but rewarding day. I greatly appreciated the opportunity to stretch my legs and hike after being cooped up over the last few days on the boat. Also, now that this job is done, it’s time for us to start collecting samples for our experiment at Palmer Station!