the antarctic sun, february 6, 2005 · february 6, 2005 the antarctic sun • 3 by emily stone sun...

Photo by Jeff Blair / Special to The Antarctic SunDivers Dug Coons and Karen Sterling prepare to put an underwater camera, calledROMEO, in place at New Harbor. The camera will stay on the sea floor for the wintertaking pictures of single-celled creatures called foraminifera. See story on page 3.

Where ar t thou, ROMEO?

February 6, 2005Published during the austral summer at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, for the United States Antarctic Program

www.polar.org/antsun

“Whoever created sleep didn’tgive enough to Antarctica.”

Big bergs in McMurdo burbsPage 7

Balloons check the weather4

Quote of the Week

— A dining attendant on a camping trip, facingfour hours of sleep before his next work shift

INSIDE

By Kristan HutchisonSun staff

The team marking a safe haul route to theSouth Pole pulled onto the polar plateau onJan. 4.

They left four green flags and a bundle ofbamboo poles at their farthest south point,480km from the South Pole and 1,187kmfrom McMurdo. It was farther than theyexpected to get this season.

“We exceeded even our ‘far exceedsexpectations.’ We not only got onto theLeverett (Glacier), we went up the d—n thingand camped and left tracks on the polarplateau for the first time in the traverse history,” said project manager John Wright.“That’s a major achievement.”

The goal of the South Pole Proof-of-Concept Traverse project is to test the feasi-bility of hauling cargo from McMurdo toAmundsen-Scott South Pole Station, in orderto take some of the burden off the limitedflights. The planned route crosses the RossIce Shelf, climbs the Leverett Glacier throughthe Transantarctic Mountains, then continuesacross the plateau to the pole. It’s a total of1,600km with 3,000m elevation gain. Thisseason the traverse team made it three-quar-ters of the way.

The traverse team and planners hadn’texpected to make it so far this year. Last sea-son they faced problems with sleds wallow-ing in deep, soft snow on the Ross Ice Shelfand made it 684km along the route beforeturning back. This year the traverse teamexpected to make it at least that far, and con-tinue beyond as far as half the fuel and time

By Emily StoneSun staff

The way Donal Manahan and hisresearchers see it, millions of tiny sportscars are floating around McMurdo Sound.

They’re talking about sea urchin lar-vae, but they use the analogy to explainhow fast the little creatures are when itcomes to creating protein. And the larvaearen’t simply speedy. They’re alsoincredibly fuel-efficient. They use a frac-tion of the food that their larval cousinsin temperate waters need to make thesame amount of protein.

“How can you be a Ferrari and get

better gas mileage than any car outthere?” asked David Ginsburg, a gradu-ate student with the group.

The scientists from the University ofSouthern California spent Augustthrough February at McMurdo Stationstudying this phenomenon in hopes ofunderstanding how organisms are able tolive in the chilly and nutrient-poorAntarctic waters.

“What is the special biology thatallows organisms to grow up cold andhungry?” said Manahan, explaining thebasic question at the root of his Antarctic

See Traverse on page 16See Larvae on page 12

Urchin larvae make most of a meal

Final summer issueThis is the last issue of TheAntarctic Sun this season.Past issues are available atthe Web site and watch for aspecial mid-winter edition.The Sun will resume weeklypublication in October.

Trailblazers’long haul tothe plateau

2 • The Antarctic Sun February 6, 2005

It’s a Harsh Cartoon Matt Davidson

Helicopter operationsAverage number of trips per season: 1,800Average amount of cargo moved per season:725,000kgAverage number of passengers flown perseason: 6,500Number of helo pilots: 8Total years of pilot experience: 175Number of helo techs: 6Types of helos: 3 Huey 212s, 2 A-Stars, 2 DolphinsHelos with most range: A-Star/212 at 555kmFastest Helo: A-Star w/o basket, 225kphAverage flight time per trip: 35 min Average distance flown: 90kmFarthest point flown in 2005 season: Cape Kerr at 278 km from McMurdoMost exotic flight in 2005 season: Battleship Promontory in the Dry Valleys,which features sandstone spires

Note: Numbers include Antarctica New Zealandand USCG helicopters when applicable.

Source: Monika Gablowski, helicopter operations

Cold, hard facts

Ross Island Chronicles By ChicoFriends, the summer season is over.When your name shows up on themanifest, you’re on the next waveoutta here.

My name is on the manifest. Ican’t leave! I still have too muchto do!!!

You don’t understand I’m the onlyone who can do my job.

Am I justimagining it,or does italreadyseem lesshectic sincehe left 5 minutesago.

The Antarctic Sun is funded by the NationalScience Foundation as part of the United StatesAntarctic Program (OPP-000373). Its primary

audience is U.S. AntarcticProgram participants, their fami-lies, and their friends. NSFreviews and approves materialbefore publication, but opinions

and conclusions expressed in The Sun are notnecessarily those of the Foundation.

Use: Reproduction and distribution areencouraged with acknowledgment ofsource and author.

Senior Editor: Kristan HutchisonEditors: Brien Barnett, Emily StoneCopy Editors: Karl Horeis, Amanda Barnett,

Kai LindemulderPublisher: Valerie Carroll,

Communications manager, RPSCContributions are welcome. Contact The

Sun at [email protected]. In McMurdo,visit our office in Building 155 or dial 2407.

Web address: www.polar.org/antsun

I know this must be hard tobelieve, but there’s a possibilitythis place won’t fall apartwithout you.

February 6, 2005 The Antarctic Sun • 3


When Sam Bowser’s science groupreturned home last week, they left onemember of their team behind – an under-water camera named ROMEO that will beclicking away on the McMurdo Soundseafloor all winter.

Bowser has studied a group of single-celled organisms called foraminifera, orforams for short, since 1984. This is thefirst time he’ll get to glimpse what they’reup to while he’s gone. Even when he’s athis field camp at New Harbor, there’s onlyso much he and his divers can see, he said.The camera solves that problem.

“We’ll get a time-lapse movie of thingsyou won’t see in a 30-minute dive,” saidBowser, a cell biologist with the New YorkState Department of Health’s WadsworthCenter in Albany. He’s particularly inter-ested in the forams’ place in the underwa-ter food web.

Antarctic forams are enormous andvoracious by single-celled standards.Certain species are larger than one mil-limeter and visible to the naked eye, andfeed on animals much larger than them,such as shrimp-like creatures calledamphipods and juvenile starfish. Bowserestimates that 200 different species offorams live in New Harbor.

Bowser hopes the camera capturesforams feeding on a scallop that the groupplaced in the camera’s view. The scallop istied down so it can’t wander away. Thetiny creatures will drill through the scal-

lop’s shell and slowly suck the nutrientsfrom the animal. The camera will letBowser see how exactly they feed on themuch larger species.

“The idea is to be able to do tele-science,” said Jeff Blair, an engineer withMagee Scientific of Berkeley, Calif.,which designed the camera. ROMEOstands for Remotely Operable Micro-Environmental Observatory.

This is the second year of the three-yearproject. Last year, the group used a proto-type camera to learn what they could seeunderwater and what the light was like,Blair explained.

Blair made some adjustments to thecamera, which came back this year formore testing and preparations for its win-ter home, 24m below the surface ofMcMurdo Sound. The group also laiddown 150m of fiber optic cable through a2.5cm steel pipe under the water and iceand up the shore to a large rock.

Their goal next year is to have an anten-na on that rock transmitting pictures toBowser in Albany at regular intervals. Theinformation would travel by radio toMcMurdo, where it would be transmittedvia satellite to Albany.

Bowser hopes the cable will also allowhim to move the camera lens remotelyfrom his office.

“Let’s say a whole herd of starfish wan-ders into our point of view,” Bowser said.“That’s kind of boring for us. We’ll wantto turn it and look at forams.”

The starfish can cause more than just adistraction. This year a starfish, which

Bowser thinks was attracted to the light,got quite friendly with the camera, livingon top of it for some time and ruining pic-tures. It then proceeded to eat the scallopthe camera was watching. To avoid thisover the winter, the group’s divers placed afence around the camera, and, “put abunch of sacrificial scallops around it,” todistract the starfish, Blair said.

Blair will work back home on a micro-scope that will be integrated into the cam-era next year. Bowser is hoping to use it tocatch a second type of foram feeding onmicroscopic organisms.

ROMEO is programmed this winter towake up every eight hours and take sevenpictures, Blair said. It has a range of shotsit takes of the scallop using differentangles and levels of zoom. The picturesare stored on a 1-gigabyte memory cardthat the group will retrieve in October.Next year they plan to use a 4-gigabytecard. The camera will conserve batteriesby going to sleep, so to speak, in betweenits photography duties.

The group needs to work out securityand bandwidth issues before knowing ifBowser will be able to talk to ROMEOnext year and move its lens aroundremotely via the Internet. Bowser said he’shopeful it will work and figures if we cantalk to rovers on Mars, then it should beeasy to talk to a camera in Antarctica.

“It ought to be possible,” he said.

NSF-funded science in this story: Sam Bowser,New York Department of Health, www.bowserlab.org

Photo by Emily Stone / The Antarctic SunEngineer Jeff Blair puts the final touches onan underwater camera in the Jamesway atthe New Harbor field camp. The camerawill sit on the seafloor over the winter.

Photo by Emily Stone / The Antarctic SunDug Coons lowers a laundry basket into a dive hole at New Harbor so he can later pull upspecimens collected for Sam Bowser, who is studying a single-celled organism calledforaminifera. The group put a camera in this dive hole, where it will stay for the winter.

Camera keeps winter watch on voracious “forams”

Whales put on show for researchers

By Robert L. PitmanSpecial to The Antarctic Sun

McMurdo has its own version ofPamplona’s Running of the Bulls - theStampeding of the Orcas. Each year thewhales make their way up the ice channelthat’s opened in McMurdo Sound.

From our helicopter, we spot the puffyblows of at least 30 killer whales, workingalong the edge of a long crack in the ice.The McMurdo killer whales have distinctcolor patterns and habitat preferences.My colleagues, Wayne Perryman andDon LeRoi, and I think they may bea separate species. To make ourcase, we hope to collect biopsysamples for genetic analysis,take aerial photographs toprecisely measure bodylength and proportions,perhaps make some feedingobservations, and just get toknow them a little better in theirnatural environment.

The helicopter lands and our pilot,Wendy, signals us to get out while therotor is still whop-whopping. We grab ourcameras and crossbow, and head acrossthe frozen ocean toward the open lead.Before we see water, a giant, black letteropener slices across our view, 200mahead. The dorsal fin of this adult malekiller whale is probably 1.5m tall and sin-ister looking.

We see a small cloud form over itshead. A full second later the explosivesound arrives: the unmistakable gasp of anair-breathing mammal. Despite beingsupremely adapted to a life in the ocean,killer whales retain one of the most uselessfeatures an aquatic animal could own - apair of lungs. It’s an indication their ances-

tors were land animals. If you don’tbelieve in evolution, you are not payingattention.

When we get to the lead, the water isglassy calm. Brother whale has disap-peared. The overcast sky blends seamless-ly with the frozen sea. The only soundnow is our breathing and the occasionalsqueak of rubber bunny boots in dry snow.

Suddenly we are startled by a quickseries of explosive breaths from the farend of the lead. A pack of killer whales

has surfaced from under the ice and ischarging in our direction. They are

advancing along the edge of thefast ice where it is about a

meter thick, so we can walkright up to the edge oftheir world. The water is

clear and their large whiteeye patches are easy to fol-

low as they glide under thewater. An adult male, maybe 6m long,

surfaces a meter away. His breathforms a steam cloud in the air and he is so

close that tiny droplets coat my glasses asI instinctively jump back from the iceedge. Then a cow with her new calf blastthrough like another car on the bullet train.The calf is young enough that it stillswims with jerky motions, like a child thatonly recently learned to walk. It lifts itshead clear of the water and appears to betrying to get a better look at the novel crea-tures on the ice edge. The adults seem tohave urgent business elsewhere and theypass swiftly through.

On the previous day, we observed agroup of whales in less of a hurry. One ofthe whales, probably a female, was lollingin front of us, a meter away. She circled

around a couple times and then startednosing a piece of ice that was about half ameter across. At one point she lifted it upand it broke in two.

She disappeared for about a minute,and then a piece of ice about the size of abasketball started moving toward us.When our girl surfaced behind it, shearched her head forward, then snapped itback flipping the ice chunk out of thewater and ahead of her. For the next fiveminutes she continued to make free throwsas she motored around the small pond infront of us. Then she lost interest and wenton her way. Maybe she thought we weretalent scouts from SeaWorld.

Today, though, the whales are not dallying. Wayne hops onto an ice floe tophotograph the passage head-on. The adultmales look like they are about to slice hisplatform with their immense dorsal fins.Instead, they arch adroitly at the last sec-ond, dive under the floe and pop up on theother side. The floe rocks in the water astons of black and white flesh go hurtlingby, and the air is filled with the spray androar of killer whales huffing and puffing.

The thundering herd takes about fiveminutes to blow by us. I frantically alter-nate between camera and crossbow aswhales surface within a meter of me. Thecrossbow bolts bounce off the whales andland on the ice, practically at my feet. Thebolts take a tiny bit of skin and blubber,and the donors continue on, as if nothinghappened. We get our samples and photos.

And then silence, once again, dropsaround us like a curtain.

Robert Pitman is a whale researcher withNOAA Fisheries, Southwest Fisheries ScienceCenter


Photo above by Don LeRoi, at left by Wayne Perryman / Special to The Antarctic Sun

Left, a killer whale plays with a piece of icein McMurdo Sound. Above, a pack of whalesswim by researchers photographing them.

speaking

of science...

IceCube’s first holeCompiled from reports by Katie Hessand other sources

This week begins the final crunch stageat the South Pole before the summer windsdown. Amundsen-Scott South Pole Stationplans to begin its winter season after thelast flight on Feb. 15.

The most exciting event last week wasat IceCube, a new neutrino detector pro-ject. A string of 60 digital optical moduleswas extended to a depth of 2,450m belowthe surface of the polar plateau. IceCubeused hot water drilling to create a holereaching a maximum depth of 2,517m onJan. 27. Positioning the cable with the 60DOMs began Friday morning as anxioushands tied the DOMs one by one onto thecable and lowered it down the hole. Thehole was full of melted water up to a depthof 50m below the surface. It takes aboutfive days to refreeze the water and solidifythe modules into position. This was thefirst of 80 such strings that eventually willbe in a grid within a cubic kilometer of ice.South Pole NSF Representative JerryMarty activated the first DOM at 8:40 p.m.on Jan. 29 from a computer at the surface.

Conditional occupancy permits weregranted for two wings of the new station.Wings B1, emergency power and dorms,and B2, which houses science, were for-mally approved Jan. 30. Another mile-stone completed.

A new cryogenics facility used to cooltelescopes will be finished in the next sev-eral weeks and one last large container ofliquid helium will be flown to Pole on oraround Feb. 11. The new facility will housethe station’s transport dewars, hoses andvalves to protect it from the South Pole’sambient -60C to -80C winter temperatures,which congeal lubricant and jeopardize theo-rings that seal the vacuum space of thedewar. Starting this winter, a helium lique-fier also will be used to capture the heliumgas that is continuously boiling off at justover -269C. Redundant computerizedtracking systems will monitor any unex-pected loss of helium more closely. The

cryogenics facility should retain more heli-um through the winter than ever before.This will be “the largest cryo year in thehistory of the program with almost doublethe usage of previous years,” said cryogen-ics technician Christina Hammock.

On Sunday, much of the stationenjoyed a couple special premieres of TomPiwowarski’s “South Pole Summer 2004-2005” documentary film.

— Jerry Marty, Albrect Karle, Chris-tina Hammock and Al Baker contributedto this story.

Tracking global warmingBy Kerry KellsPalmer correspondent

Open water and good weather haveoffered long days the past week forresearch and sampling at Palmer Station.Bird researchers report south polar skuachicks hatched on Shortcut Island. TheOcean Search and Rescue Team got out fortraining exercises. Humpback and minkewhales visited frequently. Both the privateyacht Sarah W. Vorwerk and the Endeavourcruise ship returned to station. TheAkademik Ioffe, a Russian icebreaker turnedcruise ship also visited. The CrystalSymphony, a new cruise ship with 716 pas-sengers and 500 crew, arrived for an off-shore lecture by station personnel. The U.S.Antarctic Program’s Laurence M. Gould

arrives this week, signifying the end of theLong Term Ecological Research cruise.Some grantees and staff will depart andsome will return to station after the cruise.

Palmer has a longer summer season thanMcMurdo and South Pole, so summer activ-ities and science will continue into Marchwhen the winter crew begins to arrive.

Tad Day, principal investigator fromArizona State University, presented “GlobalWarming and Antarctic Plants” as ourWednesday night science lecture. Hisresearch team this year includes ChrisRuhland, David Bryant, Sarah Strauss andMichell Thomey. Day began with an intro-duction to the greenhouse effect: green-house gasses absorb the outgoing long waveradiation and warm the lower atmosphere ofthe Earth. Evidence for changes in tempera-ture included weather station measure-ments, historical records and tree rings.Evidence linking carbon dioxide to globalwarming is found in ice cores and revealedby general circulation models, which arecomputer models built to mimic the cli-mates of the Earth. The predicted warmingover the 21st Century will be 1.4C to 4.5C.

More warming has been seen here on thewestern coast of the Antarctic Peninsulathan globally. Temperature records fromneighboring stations show air temperatureincreases. Sea ice durations, ice core dataand sediment cores show more evidence ofglobal warming.

the week in weather


around the continentSOUTH POLE

McMurdo StationHigh: 18F / 1C Low: 34F / -8CMax. sustained wind: 25mph / 40kphWindchill: 15F / -26C

South Pole StationHigh: -14F / -25C Low: -35F / -37CPeak wind: 20mph / 32kphMax. Physio-altitude: 3243m

See Continent on page 6

Palmer StationHigh: 42F / 5C Low: 28F / -2CMax. sustained wind: 37mph / 59kphPrecipitation: 21mm

The first string ofdigital optical mod-ules descends intothe 2,450m hole atthe South Pole. TheIceCube project willhave about 80 suchholes. The detectorsare used to trackneutrinos, or sub-atomic particles,from deep space.

Photo courtesy IceCube /Special to The Antarctic Sun

PALMER

Day is interested in what effect this hason Antarctic tundra. Day’s group studiesthe two higher order vascular (water trans-porting) plants native to Antarctica:Antarctic pearlwort or Colobanthusquitensis and Antarctic hairgrass,Deschampsia antarctica. Both plants areperennial and flowering and are recentintroductions to the area, having arrivedfrom Tierra del Fuego in the last 10,000years.

Some of their field research on the localislands was begun in 1999 when Dayplaced small greenhouses over the plantson Stepping Stone Island to check for per-formance in warmer conditions. The twotemperature treatments included smallgreenhouses — some that were open at thebottom and some that were entirelyclosed. On the open greenhouses, the day-time temperature increase from the year1999 was 0.2C. On the closed greenhous-es, the daily increase was 2.2C.Production increased for both plants andthey experienced accelerated reproductivedevelopment and greater seed production.

Part of the population studies includenew research begun on Point 8, an area offBonaparte Point where the glacier has melt-ed recently. In 1999 the area had 94Deschampsia plants and 23 Colobanthusplants. The survey in 2004 showed anincrease: 5,129 Deschampsia and 294Colobanthus plants. Separate research at adifferent site, Biscoe Point, where perma-nent snowbanks melted and Colobanthushad come in and colonized, showed that theplants died out in 2004. This reduced sur-vival is due to more winter precipitationand later snowmelt.

Behind our station is the Sun DevilEstates (named for the Arizona State mas-cot) which is an area of 20 plots, each with12 patches of ground they transplantedthere. Part of this project was to improvethe realism in simulating climate-changescenarios. The plots are warmed day andnight, which more closely follows thegreenhouse effect. Infrared heaters as wellas dummy heaters are used. They are heat-ed according to the temperature and carbondioxide-increase trends. Air and soil tem-peratures increased about 1 to 2 degreesCelsius under the heated plots. Another setof plots receives increased precipitation;one plot has higher precipitation withactive warming and one plot has higherprecipitation without warming. Theresearchers then measure the carbon diox-ide gas flux (respiration and photosynthe-sis) for both day and night. Growth andproduction is clearly affected, as the plantsin the warming process are two weeksahead of the unheated plants. At the end ofthe season, they will harvest some of the

cores. Tad’s group will return to PalmerStation, Sundevil Estates and the localislands next year.

Those of us who return next summerwill have another season to witness thesnow melt, glacier calving, Antarctic plantproduction, seabird chicks and whales thatare all part of our local area. For now, wewish McMurdo and South Pole stations,our local neighboring stations of Rotheraand Vernadsky, and all Antarctic researchstations a wonderful winter season!

Nathaniel B. PalmerJan. 28 to Feb. 1Compiled from reports by Herb Baker

After a brief portcall, the research vesselNathaniel B. Palmer left McMurdo StationJan. 28 and began drawing samples andrecovering moored instruments for WalkerSmith’s group from the Virginia Institute ofMarine Sciences. The InterannualVariability of the Antarctic-Ross Sea, orIVARS, is attempting to quantify thechanges in the nutrients and concentrationof phytoplankton in the Ross Sea from yearto year.

“We had some deck freezing problems,but overall the recovery went smoothly,”wrote Herb Baker, the marine projects coor-dinator.

All the moored instruments were collect-ed by Feb. 1. The NBP is scheduled to arrivein Lyttelton, New Zealand Feb. 16.

Laurence M. GouldJan. 24-30Compiled from reports by Andrew Nunn

In search of krill, the Laurence M.Gould followed the transmitters on feed-ing penguins to a site near Avian Islandsouth of Palmer Station on Jan. 25. Theresearchers found no krill there, and hadto conclude that the penguins were feed-ing poorly on small fish. Reports from thebird researchers on Avian Island seemedto confirm this from the bird’s stomachsamples. Farther offshore the Gould crewfound a new site where there was krill andcompleted the sampling there.

The Gould returned to Avian Islandovernight to retrieve the field team it hadleft there. The weather was poor, but it wassheltered enough in the lee of the island forthe Zodiac to bring the field team andequipment to the Gould.

By Jan. 30 the Long Term EcologicalResearch cruise scientists aboard theGould had completed most of the samplingexcept at sites blocked by heavy ice. Afteranother stop at Palmer Station, the Gouldheaded north for Punta Arenas, where itwas scheduled to arrive Feb. 6.

Polar StarJan. 27 to Feb. 1Compiled by Lt. Cmdr. Don PeltonenShip Operations

The tanker Paul Buck finishedoffloading fuel to McMurdo Station Jan. 28 and then proceeded to ballast withsea water to bring the ship down to its icedraft.

The U.S. Coast Guard icebreakerPolar Star transfered oily waste to PaulBuck Jan. 29 and departed the morning ofJan. 30. Then the Russian icebreakerKrasin moored alongside Paul BuckSunday morning to take on water provid-ed by McMurdo Station and the PaulBuck. The Krasin’s crew enjoyed its firstvisit to McMurdo Station.

On Jan. 31 the Krasin departed andpassed a tow line to Paul Buck to assisther off the pier. Paul Buck departed theice pier and proceeded out the inner chan-nel escorted by Krasin and Polar Star.After parking in the ice 27km fromMcMurdo to perform maintenance, thePaul Buck was escorted to the fast iceedge on Wednesday by the Krasin.

Then, the Krasin and Polar Starescorted the American Tern down theinner channel to the ice pier earlyThursday morning and cargo offloadbegan. Current plans have Krasin andPolar Star departing McMurdo withAmerican Tern. Ship operations for theseason should be wrapped up within thenext several days.

Photo by Brien Barnett / The Antarctic SunA container is unloaded Feb. 3 from theannual resupply ship the American Tern,which is docked at McMurdo Station.

Continent6 • The Antarctic Sun February 6, 2005

From page 5

SHIPS


By Kristan HutchisonSun staff

Like an 800-pound gorilla, giant ice-bergs in the Ross Sea seem to bedoing whatever they want.

After sitting with one end bumpingagainst Ross Island for several years, thelargest remaining remnant of what wasonce the largest iceberg on record hasdrifted northwest. B15a’s ponderous pacemade world headlines: “Get Ready for theLargest Demolition Derby on thePlanet”...“Monster iceberg wreaks havoc.”

In mid-December B15a seemed to be ona collision course with the tip of theDrygalski Ice Tongue. It came within 4.5kmof the Drygalski on Jan. 10 and icebergwatchers were poised on the edges of theirseats. Then it stopped. Jiggled around.Backed up a bit.

“It’s scary to try to predict what will hap-pen next. It’s just as risky as predicting thestock market,” said Kelly Brunt, who hasbeen following the iceberg’s movementssince the original B15 broke off the Ross IceShelf in 2000. She started as the geographicinformation specialist at McMurdo Stationand is now a graduate student working withiceberg researcher Doug MacAyeal at theUniversity of Chicago. In that time the ice-berg B15 has broken into a family of small-er bergs, alphabetically named.

Where iceberg B15a goes now dependson a number of factors, including tides, cur-rents, winds, how far the ice extends belowthe surface and where the seafloor rises tomeet it. For the moment, the last of thosefactors is the most important, as B15aseems to have one side lodged on a sub-merged volcano in the Ross Sea, Brunt said.The volcano’s pinnacle hits the long icebergabout halfway down the western edge.Satellite images and GPS instruments on theiceberg show it pivoting around that point,lining up with the northbound current like aweathervane.

“One little part of it dragged on thisseamount and stopped the whole iceberg,just as it was on the doorstep of the icetongue,” said NASA glaciologist RobertBindschadler.

In one image, Bindschadler could seethat the grounded portion of the iceberg ishigher than the rest of the iceberg, indicat-ing that the iceberg is bending on that pointas the tides raise and lower the ends. Thisfluxing could cause the iceberg to break intopieces, he said. Chunks of ice are calving offin the area where B15a is grounded. Ifenough break off, the iceberg could befreed.

“Our attention is riveted to what it’s

going to do next,” Bindschadler said. “I’mhoping whatever it does, it does before thesun sets.”

He has two reasons for that wish. One isto be able to watch the icebergs better,because after the sun sets for the winter theicebergs will be visible only with infrared.

The other reason is that if the bergs don’tmove soon, they will likely freeze in place.

“If it is still grounded by the time thesummer is over, then the water starts tocool down and melting starts to decrease,it’s less likely to become ungrounded,”Bindschadler said.

If it is freed to float again, B15a wouldprobably continue drifting north with thecurrent, Bindschadler said. It could bumpthe end of the Drygalski Ice Tongue, or itcould squeak by. The question is what willhappen if it does hit.

“We don’t really know. These are really,in a relative sense, very thin wafers of ice,”Bindschadler said. The 100km long icebergis only about 300m thick, a ratio similar to asheet of linoleum 10m long. “But it’s still ahuge piece of ice and it has a lot of mass andeven a minor collision involves enormousforces.”

B15a is still the big berg, but B15-K, amore slender sliver of the original berg, hasalmost as much effect on the sea ice. B15aand B15-K used to be side by side, but sinceB15a slid northward they are lined up likesliding doors closed most of the way acrossthe entrance to McMurdo Sound.

“The only hole is at the northern end, the5.5km or 6.5km gap between theDrygalski,” Brunt said.

B15-K is pinned in place by the clock-wise current which presses it againstBeaufort Island and a seamount. The cur-rent’s constant pressure on B15-K’sexposed center could cause cracks andeventually a break, which would allow thepieces of the berg to move, Brunt said.

The icebergs have corralled the sea ice inMcMurdo Sound. The ice in the soundwould normally blow away at this time ofyear. Because it’s stuck in place, the salt willdrain out of the ice, then snow will fall, meltinto the ice and refreeze, creating a strongersecond- year ice more like freshwater ice,said John Dempsey, a professor of civil andenvironmental engineering at Clarkson

See Bergs on page 8

Big iceberg B15a chills out

Photo by Viola Toniolo / Special to The Antarctic Sun

Adélie penguins access open water at Cape Crozier. Icebergs have blocked some of theirfeeding grounds.

The iceberg positions as of January 30.

Drygalski Ice Tongue

B15j

C16

Ross Island

McMurdo Station

B15k

Beaufort Island

Satellite image courtesy of NASA MODIS

B15a

Across1. Largest ice sheet in theworld; the _____ AntarcticIce Sheet.2. A Russian word for wind-blown formations on thesnow surface.3. Occurs when a seismo-graph registers an icebergrubbing against the seafloor.4. A thick, broad ice sheetthat forms on land andflows out to float on the sea.5. A condition when blow-ing snow restricts visiblity.6. The first stage in thetransformation of snowcrystals by compaction andcompression into glacial ice.7. The loss of glacial mater-ial by melting, evaporation,calving or sublimation.8. Ice comprised of loose,drifting chunks; habitat ofleopard seals.9. A river or sheet of com-pressed snow and ice thatforms when snow accumu-lates over a long period.10. Ice attached to land;preferred home of Weddellseals.11. The action of a new ice-berg breaking off.12. Deep cracks forming inice sheets and glaciers.


University, who is studying theMcMurdo sea ice. The sea ice willthicken as water freezes to the bot-tom.

More sea ice could be a problemfor the penguins at Cape Royds andCape Bird, where the extensive seaice has forced the penguins to walkfarther and farther in search ofaccess to the water and their feedinggrounds. The number of chicks atboth colonies has decreased. Unlikelast year, when open water drewmany penguins from other coloniesto Cape Royds, this year there wereno immigrants. Instead, a quarter ofthe usual Cape Royds birds went toother colonies, particularly CapeBird.

“If these conditions continue,Royds would eventually empty outto Cape Bird,” said Dave Ainley, apenguin biologist studying thecolonies around McMurdo Sound.The penguins are following thefood. “They need to work, so theygo to where the work is.”

On the other hand, the number ofchicks at Cape Crozier is higherthan ever, Ainley said. That’s notnecessarily good news. ThoughB15a moved, B15j has continuedto occupy the ocean adjacent to theRoss Sea Polyna, an area of openwater that used to be a plentifulsource of food for the penguins.The areas the penguins can stillreach are much less productive,with few krill or small fish, Ainleysaid.

With icebergs still in the wayand more mouths to feed, the chicksare small and many will likely die.The movement of B15a gives somehope because it was the outer blockin a wall of bergs beside the colony.Now that B15a has moved, the oth-ers have more chance to move awayas well. B15j rotated counter-clockwise and moved eastward,along the Ross Ice Shelf.

Despite worries about the ice-bergs and the sea ice this year, theicebreakers and supply ships wereable to approach McMurdo Stationbetween Cape Bird and BeaufortIsland. As long as the icebergs stayin place, the breakers will be able tofollow the same channel next year,said Lt. Cmdr. Don Peltonen, shipoperations officer for McMurdoStation.

“We’d like B15a to just sort ofdrift off and go away, but it’s notcooperating,” Peltonen said.

Bergs From page 7

Down1. A long, narrow flow of glacial ice that extends into the sea.2. Ice that forms and gathers on the underside of the sea ice.3. Ice that forms on the sea floor.4. Thick, slushy sea ice formed by ice crystals that are disturbedby ocean turbulence.5. Dynamic, fast moving parts of a glacier ice sheet.6. An opening in the icepack.7. Circular, flat plates of sea ice.8. Where the Polar Star is.9. Ice that forms in open water and has a glossy sheen.10. The reflective quality of the snow.

Snow and ice (answer on page 17) By John Deaton

Photo by Kristan Hutchison / The Antarctic Sun

The Russian icebreaker Krasin leads the resupply vessel American Tern through the channel toMcMurdo Station on Feb. 3. The Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Star cut the channel in the sea ice,which extended farther than ever at about 150km. Icebergs at the entrance to the sound have corralledthe sea ice inside.



Pamela Conrad wants to find signs oflife in outer space.

“I guess it comes from watching a lot ofStar Trek as a kid,” said Conrad ofNASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.

Before getting to space, she’s using theMcMurdo Dry Valleys as a stand-in forMars to test machines that look for signsof life inside rocks. She and seven otherscientists spent three weeks testing themachines. She hopes the machines will goto Mars.

“We’re interested in how you find evi-dence of the clues of life on other planets,”she said. “I would like to be able to do thatwithout even touching the potential tar-gets.”

Conrad tested four machines. Anotherscientist from NASA, Robert Carlson, isthe principal investigator on a similar pro-ject that was folded into Conrad’s. Hisgroup tested a fifth machine. Together, theinstruments look at many components ofthe rocks —how they absorb light, whatmolecules they hold, whether they areemitting volatile organic molecules, andwhat types of minerals they’re made of.These factors indicate tiny organisms liv-ing inside.

Conrad’s group took a small number ofrocks home to study in the lab, where theywill state conclusively whether the rocks

are home to living things. They will thencompare their results from the machines inthe field with their lab tests to see howaccurate the instruments were. Their goalis to say that if all the machines show sub-stantial signs of life within a rock, thenthere will be life within that rock.

Despite the popular notion, NASA isn’ttruly looking for life on Mars, Conradexplained. Instead, scientists are lookingfor signs that the planet was ever or cur-rently is habitable. This can be done bylooking for evidence of substances, likewater, which we believe are necessary tosustain life. Or it can be done by lookingfor clues that life existed or still exists,which is what the machines do.

Conrad’s four machines, which nevertouch the rocks, are run remotely from lap-tops.

The first measures how much light isabsorbed or reflected off a rock. The groupwants to understand this because theybelieve there are subtle visual clues thatthe rocks have which suggest life inside.Conrad said scientists who study rocks cantell if a certain rock is likely to be inhabit-ed, and are often right, but they can’t artic-ulate what it is they’re looking for. Thisinstrument might be able to help hone inon that by picking up on visual markersthat humans notice but can’t specify.

The second machine sends out a laserthat causes the rock to become fluores-cent. The color of the rock’s fluorescenceindicates what type of molecules the laser

is hitting.The third machine uses a laser as well.

The laser subtly changes color dependingon what minerals it hits.

The fourth machine “is basically a snif-fer,” Conrad said. It has a needle that mea-sures volatile organic molecules in the airaround the rock. These are molecules thatmight be given off by organisms in therock as they go through their normal lifecycle.

Carlson tested a fifth machine. It usesan infrared spectrometer to identify themolecules in the rock. He and his team areinterested in particular in how iron is dis-tributed through the different layers in therock.

Desert rocks have iron spread acrosstheir surface, he said. His team’s theory isthat organisms in the rock, like lichen, dis-solve a small amount of the iron on thesurface. They do this to get enough sun-light to photosynthesize, but not too muchso that they are vulnerable to ultravioletrays. The dissolved iron accumulateslower down in the rock. His machine willlook specifically at the factors involved inthis process, like organic acids used to dis-solve iron.

It is hard to imagine how rocks end uplike this — with the heavier layers of ironsitting on top of the lighter ones — with-out help from life inside the rocks,explained Henry Sun of the Desert

Photo by Cindy Dean / Special to The Antarctic SunPamela Conrad of NASA's Jet PropulsionLab inspects the rocks at BattleshipPromontory, where she will test severalinstruments meant to detect signs of lifewithin the rocks.

Photo by Heather Smith / Special to The Antarctic SunScientists at the Battleship Promontory field camp look at the rocks they will use to test theirmachines. The machines look for clues of life inside rocks, and the scientists hope the instru-ments eventually get sent to Mars.

See Hands-off on page 10

A hands-off effort to find life


By Brien BarnettSun staff

An international network of radar sta-tions that keeps tabs on what’s happening inthe magnetosphere above Earth is coming toSouth Pole.

SuperDARN, or the Super Dual AuroralRadars Network, was started nearly 20years ago when the first transmitter wasplaced at Goose Bay, Labrador. Today, sta-tions cover both the northern and southernhemispheres at points where charged parti-cles, or plasma, re-enter the Earth’s atmos-phere as a result of the interaction betweenthe solar wind and the Earth’s magneticfield extended into space.

“When the plasma in the ionosphere ismoving … plasma instabilities happen,”said Bill Bristow, of the University ofAlaska. “It’s a lumpy fluid and when youtransmit a radio signal into that some isreflected back.”

In rough terms it’s like tracking a groupof airplanes. The lumpy fluids show up inthe radar data and reveal characteristicssuch as velocity and location. The dataSuperDARN collects are important,Bristow said, because solar storms and otherspace weather effects can severely affecthuman activity in space and on the groundat such places as communication satellitesor power lines and plants.

“As man becomes more dependent ontechnology — GPS satellites, global com-munication, et cetera — they all are sittingin space.” Bristow said. “We want to under-stand that environment.”

Besides practical reasons, the scientistsare personally curious.

“We want to understand the process ofenergy transfer from the Sun into upper

atmosphere.” Bristow said.Many experiments look at the Earth’s

magnetic field structure, but SuperDARNhas mapped the field on a global scale.

To accomplish this, the radars must bespread strategically around both the northand south poles. The installations are fairlylarge because they operate using the HF, orhigh frequency, band. That’s similar to whatAntarctic field parties use to communicatewith the stations.

The arrays, which cost about $300,000 to$400,000 each, consist of 16 T-shaped tow-ers in one line, set 15m apart. About 100maway and parallel to that line of towers areanother four towers, again set about 15mapart from one another.

In January, Bristow’s team tested the sig-

nal at South Pole to make sure it didn’tinterfere with other projects at the station.Many of the astrophysical instruments areradio telescopes or rely on sensitive elec-tronics. SuperDARN must operate at itsdesignated band, between 8-20 Mhz, with-out interfering with any other instrument orstation communications. Once the tests arecomplete, radar towers and transmitters canbe brought to the station and set up, proba-bly in the next year or two.

The station is at the geographic SouthPole, but not at the magnetic South Pole,which slowly moves and is presently overDome C. Bristow said that’s because theexperiment needs to cover the auroral oval,the place where incoming particles are thegreatest. South Pole Station is at the pole-ward boundary of the southern auroral zone.The particles precipitating into the ionos-phere create fantastic visual auroras thathang over Antarctica’s winter residents.

“We can observe over a range of about2,500km … and possibly farther.” Bristowsaid. “In the northern hemisphere we cansee out to 3,000km.”

The South Pole Radar will fill an existinggap not covered by Southern SuperDARNradars located at the British Station HalleyBay and a new radar, which is under con-struction at the southern tip of New Zealand.

The project is an international collabora-tion with scientists from nearly a dozencountries. By agreement each countrybuilds its own facility but uses a commondata format and software so researchers canhave immediate access to the data.

NSF-funded research in this story: Bill Bristow,University of Alaska-Fairbanks, http://super-darn.jhuapl.edu/

Covering the ionosphere from Pole

Research Institute in Las Vegas, who isworking with Carlson.

The eight scientists spent three weeksin the field so they could test the instru-ments under different environmental con-ditions to see if temperature or sunlightaffect the results.

They chose their location at BattleshipPromontory because a large amount oforganisms live in the rocks there. Conradsaid that if the machines don’t work in aplace where they have a high chance offinding something, then they certainlywon’t work somewhere where the oddsare slimmer.

The trip to the Dry Valleys is the cul-mination of Conrad’s three-year project.Her group has tested its machines already

with good results in Death Valley and inthe Arctic.

Carlson, who is in the first year of histwo-year project, joked about the extent ofhis field testing.

“We’ve gone as far as the JPL parkinglot,” he said, and has pictures to prove thatthe group tested the machine on a largerock in the driveway of the Jet PropulsionLab.

Both groups applied to get their instru-ments on a 2009 expedition to Mars, butthey weren’t accepted. The scientists planto keep trying to get them to Mars. In themeantime, the group will continue testingand perfecting the machines.

Battleship Promontory was included inthe new Dry Valleys Antarctic Specially

Managed Area plan, adopted last year.This means increased restrictions in termsof the work that can be done there in hopesof limiting the human impact on the area.

Conrad said this makes it an even moreappropriate place to test machines thataren’t invasive and won’t disturb therocks.

“If you could point to a rock and saythere’s life in that rock, that would be awe-some because you wouldn’t have to breakopen that rock,” she said. “The longer youcan sustain it without doing something toit, the longer it will be there for someoneelse to study.”The project is funded by NASA with sup-port from the NSF: Pamela Conrad, NASAJet Propulsion Lab.

Hands-off From page 9

A SuperDARN installation in Tasmania. Thisone covers the southern ocean and the northern part of Wilkes Land in Antarctica.

Photo by Danny Ratcliffe / Courtesy of SuperDARN


A new telescope at South Pole Station isjust weeks away from probing the universe.

DASI made headlines when it becamethe first to detect temperature differencesand later polarization in the cosmicmicrowave background, radiation left overfrom the Big Bang. The Big Bang theorystates that the universe began with a periodof rapid expansion called inflation, and thatthe universe still is expanding today some-what like a balloon with galaxies and matteron the surface of the balloon. DASI detect-ed remnant fluctuations in the CosmicMicrowave Background radiation from thatevent.

DASI answered a fundamental questionabout whether there was evidence for theinflationary theory, said Sarah Church,assistant professor of physics at StanfordUniversity and member of the KavliInstitute for Particle Astrophysics andCosmology. QUaD was built to follow upon DASI’s work, Church said.

“A lot of things seemed to turn out asexpected but there are some questions,” she

said.Among the question

are differences in theoreti-cal models that can only beanswered with more data. QUaD willlook at a small piece of the sky and ana-lyze the data in detail to learn moreabout the polarization of the cosmicmicrowave background signal.

“There’s a smaller signal wewant to take a look at,” Churchsaid.

QUaD will be pointed at a small patch ofsky for the Antarctic winter. QUaD has 62detectors that must be super-cooled to tem-peratures a fraction of a degree aboveabsolute zero. That sensitivity will allow itto “see” patterns in the polarization of thepatch of sky.

Church said it’s hoped that QUaD mayalso help shed light on the existence of themysterious dark energy that fills most of theuniverse.

“It’s possible that if we can understandhow inflation happened we can learn moreabout dark energy,” she said.

Like DASI, the new telescope wasplaced at South Pole because it offers opti-mal observing conditions: long periods ofobserving in dark, cold conditions. It paidoff that the DASI mount works well for theQUEST telescope.

The DASI experiment was wrapping upand had achieved all its science goals.Meanwhile, the QUEST team was planning

to design a mount, or struc-ture, to hold the new receiv-er. In a conversation with

the DASI team at theUniversity of Chicago, they dis-

covered the telescopes were using simi-lar mounts and so began collaborating.

“That enabled us to get on the air ayear earlier than planned,” she said.

The project is funded by theUnited States and the UnitedKingdom. Church said both nations

are interested in the same science goals. Noother experiment covers the same goals andthe data are of value to theorists whosemodels can be tested by cosmologicalobservations, she said.NSF-funded research in this story: Dr. Sarah E.Church, Cavli Institute for Particle Astrophysicsand Cosmology at Stanford University,http://www.stanford.edu/group/quest_telescope/

February 6, 2005 The Antarctic Sun •11


An experiment at South Pole is offeringa different view of neutrinos, the mysteriousspace particles that may hold informationabout the physical universe.

Dave Besson, professor of physics at theUniversity of Kansas, is developing the$400,000 Radio Ice Cherenkov Experimentat South Pole Station. RICE is a set of detec-tors designed to pick up radio waves givenoff by the collision of high-energy subatom-ic particles called neutrinos with the dense,clear ice below the station.

“In principle a neutrino telescope is giv-ing us a new way of looking at the universe.It’s a new map,” Besson said.

The kind of neutrinos sought by RICEand the $270 million IceCube project, alsoat South Pole, come from far outside oursolar system and may help space physicistslearn more about the formation of the uni-verse. As complementary projects, IceCubeuses optical detectors to gather visible lightin the ice while RICE seeks radio waves.

The collision of a neutrino with an ice mol-ecule creates both visible light and radiowaves.

The first RICE array was installed in the1997-1998 season and monitored through2000. It consisted of radio receivers and wasintended to demonstrate the feasibility ofthe technique. However, without a knownsource of neutrinos, the project hasn’t foundany of the specific neutrinos his team isseeking, Besson said. Co-deploying withIceCube will extend the array and makedetecting one more likely, he said.

“We realized that the first generationexperiment was going to be a prototypeexperiment,” Besson said. “The second gen-eration experiment should actually see neu-trinos from active galactic nuclei, but if afterthis we didn’t see anything then that wouldpresent a problem with our model.”

Besson said the RICE team has been a“nominal” participant in IceCube to thispoint, but is becoming more involved as thebenefits of incorporating multiple technolo-gies, including radio and acoustic detectors,

seems to make more sense.RICE and other experiments would

serve two purposes in helping IceCube,Besson said. The first is to gather its owndata, but then secondly to confirm any neu-trinos detected in the system. If the visiblelight detectors see something, then the radioand acoustic detectors may as well.

RICE isn’t the only project searching forneutrino-based radio waves, but Besson saidit’s the first to incorporate the ice.

“There was a group based at Berkeleythat went to Antarctica and took (radio)measurements, but we were first to takedata,” Besson said.

A long-duration balloon test project thatwas flown last season, Anita-lite, used thesame concept as RICE. The key differencebetween the two was Anita-lite used theentire Antarctic ice sheet as its filter. No datahas yet been released from the balloon pro-ject.

NSF-funded research in this story: DavidBesson, University of Kansas

Courtesy of QuaD / Special to The Antarctic SunThe QUEST telescope will be placed insidethe shield to the left in the Dark Sector.

New telescope looks at early universe

RICE works with IceCube to find neutrino source

Rendition ofQUEST telescope.

Courtesy of QUaD

QUaD is an acronym of an acronym. The pre-vious telescope where QUaD will be located wascalled DASI, or the Degree Angular ScaleInterferometer. QUaD stands for QUEST atDASI. In turn, QUEST stands for “Q and U Extra-Galactic Sub-mm Telescope.”


research since 1983.The scientists know the larvae use

about 25 times less energy to create rough-ly the same amount of protein as temper-ate species. And Antarctic larvae eat withan efficiency that is nearly off the charts.About 95 percent of the protein the larvaeconsume turns into body mass. Mostorganisms, including warm-water seaurchins and humans, hover around 40 per-cent.

“I liken them to little body builders,”said Allison Green, a graduate studentfocusing on the larvae’s eating patterns.

The Antarctic larvae need to be suchefficient eaters because they don’t alwaysget a lot of food. So when they do eat, theywant to use the food as best they can. Theyare so efficient, Green said, that the larvaecan live a full year off the nutrients givento them in their mother’s eggs withoutanything new to eat.

“They can say, ‘You know it’s not look-ing good this year, I think I’ll hang aroundand see if more food comes along nextyear,’” she said. Temperate species wouldlast about a month without new food.

Green can tell how efficiently the lar-vae are using protein by measuring howmuch protein they amass while eatingalgae in the lab. This year she’s startedlooking at how the larvae use fat, whichshe thinks they are burning as energy.

Ginsburg’s research this year looked atother echinoderms to see if the biological

patterns of the sea urchin hold true withsimilar animals. He focused primarily onsea stars, and dove for samples aroundMcMurdo Sound. So far, the researchshows that the sea stars and sea urchinshave similar protein synthesis rates, mean-ing they make protein at roughly the samespeed, Ginsburg said.

The scientists focus on these Antarcticanimals for several reasons.

About 80 percent of the habitable spaceon Earth is cold ocean water with temper-

atures similar to your refrigerator,Manahan said. Yet little is known aboutthe organisms that live there. It is impor-tant to understand these species in order tomake any generalizations about life onEarth, he said.

The larvae are also easy to get. Scubadiving in Antarctica is simple compared totaking a submarine to the bottom of theocean. And the animals release hugeamounts of eggs at once, so researcherscan easily collect eggs to bring to the labto monitor as they grow.

“It’s not that we’re deeply in love withsea urchins or sea stars,” Manahan said.“These are model organisms because theygive us hundreds of thousands of babies.”

The research focuses on proteins becausethey are crucial building blocks for anyorganism. All organisms must constantlymake new protein as older protein degrades.

“Even if we just sit here and do nothingall day, 30 to 50 percent of our energywould go to resynthesizing protein,” saidDouglas Pace, a post-doctoral researcherwith the group.

Pace is focusing on the larvae’s protein-making machines. The machines, as Pacedubs them, are ribosomes inside cells. Hetakes the cells apart to study the number ofribosomes per cell and the rate at which theymake protein. The Antarctic larvae have farmore ribosomes per cell than temperatespecies do, Pace said.

Larvae From page 1

David Ginsburg, a graduate student at the University of Southern California, carries a cooler across the ice at New Harbor toward his divehole to collect sea star larvae he found during a dive. Below, Ginsburg chips ice away from the dive hole. He’s part of a group of scientistsstudying sea star and sea urchin larvae.

Photos by Emily Stone / The Antarctic Sun

See Larvae on page 13


One theory for whythe Antarctic larvaemake so much proteinhas to do with the wayproteins fold in order tobecome useful, Pacesaid. Proteins are likesticky strings, and ifthey fold wrong theybecome, “a hopelessmess,” he said.

Temperate specieshave little proteinchaperones that guidethe proteins into theright formation. Thisexpends a lot of energy.Pace said the Antarcticsea urchins might sim-ply make a lot of pro-tein and assume theodds are that eventuallysome proteins will foldcorrectly.

The group’s research could have practical uses inhelping doctors understand human ailments, such asweight gain and obesity, which are often related tometabolism. Manahan said understanding highly effi-cient metabolisms could also help in agriculturebecause it’s beneficial for livestock to use their foodefficiently so they can grow quickly and produce a lotof meat.

The scientists are also hoping to expand biologists’understanding of Earth’s organisms. Most of what scien-tists know about metabolism or other basic biologicalfunctions is based on the study of warm weather animals,particularly mammals. With so many of the planet’screatures living in the cold, perhaps heat-loving animalsare the exception and species like those in Antarctica arethe rule. Maybe life in Antarctica isn’t so harsh after all.

“It’s only extreme because we’re cold when we’redown here,” Pace said.

NSF-funded science in this story: Donal Manahan, theUniversity of Southern California.


The Marshians returned to CraryLab this year seeking clues to howsea urchins and starfish have adaptedto the cold environment of McMurdoSound.

Principal investigator AdamMarsh of the University of Delawareand his team of graduate studentsdove at various places nearMcMurdo Station to gather speci-mens. The sperm and eggs from thespecimens were used to createembryos that were analyzed to deter-mine the growth rates of theembryos. This will give theresearchers much-needed cluesabout the development of the seacreatures and the genetic switchesthat control their growth.

Last year’s work resulted in twopapers. One has been published andone is in review. Marsh and post-doctoral candidate Kevin Fielmanco-authored a paper titled,“Molecular Development andEvolution,” which will appear in theJournal of Experimental Zoology.Their paper examines some basicconclusions about the geneticswitches that lead to development inthe creatures. Former graduate stu-dent Tracy Szela and Marsh havewritten a paper that is beingreviewed by the journal MarineEcology Progress Series. That paperdiscusses a new technique developedas a result of the work in theAntarctic. The technique, involving aplate with 384 individual wells, is a

test for respiration, or how fast oxy-gen is being consumed by eachembryo. Other respiration tech-niques are more precise, but requiremuch more time to process.The newtechnique lets the scientists knowwhere they should focus theirresearch, said Paul Ulrich, a graduatestudent at the University ofDelaware who was working withMarsh’s group to develop otheranalysis methods.

The lead graduate student thisyear, Lindsay Kendall, was back forher second season. Kendall has beentrying to find the specific points atwhich the genes in the embryosswitch on and off. Those points arerelated to temperature, which relatesto the question of how the organismslive where they do.

The team returns next year forone more season. After that, thegroup hopes to test samples fromwarmer climates and compare themwith the Antarctic research.NSF-funded research in this story:Adam Marsh, University of Delaware,http://marsh.cms.udel.edu/~amarsh

From page 12 Marshians back againLarvae

David Ginsburg collects seastars from McMurdo Sound.

Photo by Rob Robbins / Special to The Antarctic Sun

Besides packing, what do you plan to do on yourlast day in Antarctica?

“I’m going to takeone last hike upOb Hill, look inevery direction,then eat all the

chocolate I’ve beenhoarding.”

Bill Jirsa, McMurdo IT trainer

from Denver,Colo., first season

“Try to stop seeinginsect larvae every

time I close myeyes.”

Luke Sandro,Palmer Station

research assistantfrom Dayton, Ohio,

first season

“There is no lastday in Antarctica.I’m always comingback.”

Robert Schwarz, South Pole

QUaD scientistfrom Germany,

fifth season

Courtesy of Lindsay Kendall / Special to The Antarctic Sun

A larvae under the microscope.

After first year, study of cold invertebrates leads to several papers

In the winter, it’s just done in the morn-ing. All launch times are coordinated sodata from around the world are ready atthe same time. Many of the bases inAntarctica, including McMurdoStation, also have weather balloonlaunches.

Researchers across the world haveaccess to the data gathered by theinstruments, called radiosondes, at-tached to the balloons. The sondestrack temperature, pressure, altitude,wind direction and speed, and relativehumidity. Sometimes special sondesare sent up to search for such things asozone, which is a key part of Earth’sprotective atmosphere. The data areused to form models for both thatweek’s weather and climate history.

Launching the balloon is a processthat starts with organizing and prepar-ing various pieces of equipment andends with confirmation that the data isbeing captured as the balloon rises.

On this day, Gallagher, who is in hisfourth season at Pole, removed thesonde from its packaging and preppedthe battery by activating it in water.Once the battery was working, heplaced the sonde outside to adapt to thetemperature so it would take accuratereadings. While the sonde was outside,Gallagher turned on a receiver. He tooka strip of punched paper that came withthe sonde and ran it through the receiv-er. This calibrated the receiver to that

14• The Antarctic Sun February 6, 2005

John Gallagher is on a schedule. Twice a day, he or one of several

other meteorologists at South Pole Stationreport to the Balloon Inflation Facility to launch the day’s weather balloons.

Up, up & away

Story and photos by Brien Barnett / The Antarctic Sun staff

Balloons keep tabs on weather

Above left, a radiosonde is prepared for flight. The small packge weighs less than 500 grams.Above right, John Gallagher ties off the weather balloon as it lifts a weight off the table. Atright, Gallagher rolls up the computer calibration tape that came with the radiosonde.

See Balloons on page 15


specific sonde. Once it was running, hechecked to see that it was recordingincoming data from the sonde sitting out-side. If the sonde wasn’t working hecould get a new one from the supply of600 sent down each season.

The mylar balloon is about a meter indiameter. It is filled with helium inside alarge room in the building until the bal-loon lifts a 500g weight that is tied to it.The weight is approximately the same asthe sonde. Once the balloon was filled,the sonde was attached and Gallagher

called Comms to make sure no air trafficwas planned for the next 15 minutes. Heopened the large double doors andwalked outside. There, he took a momentto check the wind, then released the bal-loon. As the balloon rose it pulled thesonde with it. It went up quickly at first,then it hit a small pocket of quiet air androse slowly, only to catch a little windand rise quickly again, nearly out ofsight.

Gallagher returned to the facility,closed the doors and went to check the

incoming data. After a few moments, datastarted rolling in every few seconds.

The flight terminated at about35,000m when the balloon burst becausethe pressure of the expanding heliumbecame too great. The sonde starteddescending until it was lost. The U.S.Antarctic Program has a permit thatallows it to launch the balloons and son-des, which are nearly impossible torecover. But the data the sonde capturedthat day will go into the permanent recordof Antarctic weather for future research.

Balloons From page 14

Above, JohnGallagher leaves

the BalloonInflation Facility.

At right,Gallagher, a

meteorologistchecks the data

stream as itcomes in after

the launch. Farright, the balloon

rises aboveSouth Pole

Station.


Above, the South Pole Traverse camps on the Antarctic plateau, after having climbed theLeverret Glacier. This photo was taken using a remote-controlled airplane John Penneybrought along. The map at left shows the route followed by the traverse, which covered ter-rain nobody has crossed before and had to adjust the planned route to avoid crevasse fields.

allowed before returning to McMurdo.Before this season, the sleds were mod-

ified based on the collective ideas of thetraverse crew. The crew consisted of ateam of Raytheon Polar Service Co.equipment operators, mechanics andmountaineers, along with engineers fromthe U.S. Cold Regions Research andEngineering Laboratory (CRREL). Thecurve of the ski tips was changed andsome of the skis were widened and length-ened. On some sleds the skis were alsomoved farther apart, to run to the outsideof the tractor tracks.

“The improvements all worked as wellas we hoped, except one set of improve-ments that worked much better than wehoped,” said Jim Lever, a mechanicalengineer from CRREL, who has beeninvolved with the traverse for three years.

The improvements that worked betterthan expected were the wider and longerskis with elliptical-shaped noses under thetank sleds. These were initially configuredfor two sleds to ride side-by-side, so theskis ran outside the tractor tracks. But theskis glided so well the sleds were able torun in line with the tractor ruts withoutplowing into them.

“That was unexpected,” Lever said.“Those new skis worked so well theyseemed to not have this problem of run-ning into chewed up snow and in the ruts.They just happily pulled along.”

With the improved skis and a fifth trac-tor helping to pull the 13 sleds of fuel,cargo and living modules, the traverseteam reached its farthest-south point fromlast year in 17 days and kept going acrossthe Ross Ice Shelf.

“Driving across the Ross Ice Shelf — thesize of Texas — at 5 MPH is one long, slow,grind,” said Richard “Stretch” Vaitonis, oneof the heavy equipment operators. “Bookson tape kept me awake.”

Three days up the planned route,approaching the base of the TransantarcticMountains, the traverse team foundcrevasses. The crevasses were invisible atthe surface, which was a flat plain ofsnow, broken by white waves of sastrugi.But ground penetrating radar suspendedout in front of the lead vehicle revealedpatterns below the surface, warning ofcrevasses. This was used to search system-atically for a safe way through thecrevasse maze, but at every turn it showedmore crevasses.

“We would see 10 in a mile at times,”said Susan Detweiler, a Field SafetyTraining Program mountaineer, who readthe radar screen.

Crevasses were expected in that area,but not in the quantity that were found —hundreds ranging in size from 10cmcracks to 40m caverns.

“At some point we made the determi-nation this is no place for the traverse togo,” Wright said.

As the traverse team scouted for safeways around the crevassed barrier,National Science Foundation operationsmanager George Blaisdell contacted twoNASA glaciologists, Robert Bindschadlerand Patricia Vornberger, for assistance.They were able to request more detailedimages from a new satellite instrumentthat hadn’t been available during the pre-planning, called ASTER (AdvancedSpaceborne Thermal Emission and

Reflection Radiometer). The satellite cov-erage only extends to 84 degrees south lat-itude, but that was just far enough to showthe area the traverse was trying to cross.Bindschadler and Vornberger used theimagery to trace what they thought wouldbe a safe route across the crevasse field.Blaisdell and GIS specialist JessicaWalker refined the route. With the help ofthose “eyes in the sky,” the traverse teamtried the new “ASTER route” and theground penetrating radar confirmed it wasindeed crevasse-free.

“They gave selflessly of their time inthe holiday season and in between travel-ing to conferences in their schedule, andhelped us solve our problem,” Wright saidof the work done by Bindschadler,Vornberger, Blaisdell and Walker. “Weprobably would have found this eventual-ly, but we would have wasted a lot of timein doing it.”

By Christmas Day the traverse hadcrossed the crevasse fields and was within30km of the base of the Leverett Glacier.From there they continued up, three timesfinding their way around smaller crevassefields. The last was a heart-shaped sectionof crevasses at the headwall of the glacier.They arrived at 1 p.m. Jan. 4 and parkedfor lunch, sending a four-person prospect-ing team ahead up the steep grade. At 6 p.m. the scouting party returned to therest of the traverse team and Wright said“Break camp...we’re going to the top.”

By 8:30 p.m. all the tractors hadclimbed the last rise and were on the polarplateau, in time for mechanic RussellMagsig to celebrate his Jan. 5 birthday.

Traverse From page 1

See Traverse on page 17

Photo by John Penney / Special to The Antarctic Sun

Map by Jessica Walker / The Antarctic Sun

SouthPole

LegendActual 2004-05 routeProposed route

Southernmost pointof 2004-05 traverse

Southernmost pointof 2003-04 traverse

The team celebrated both the ascent andthe birthday with balloons, ice cream andchocolate cake topped with bulldozer-shaped candles.

“It would have been nice to go farther,”said Magsig.

Parked on the flat plateau, Magsig wasn’t the only one to feel the pull of thePole. Though the traverse team alreadymade it much farther than expected forthis season, the overall purpose of the tra-verse is to determine whether it is feasibleto drive the route on a regular basis as away to deliver supplies to the South Pole.While they had enough fuel left to reachthe Pole, the traverse would need an addi-tional 11,300 liters to complete a round-trip back to McMurdo.

“We and everybody else associatedwith the traverse were surprised with thissuccess, but we stood on the polar plateau,and we were ready to spring the question,”Wright said. “We called in and said, ‘Weare here on the polar plateau. We have thewill, we have the time, we need addition-al support, but we believe we can go allthe way to South Pole this year and returnto McMurdo if support is available.’”

When the request came through,McMurdo Station was caught in a spate of

bad weather that was halting flights at avery busy time of year. The weather putthe U.S. Antarctic Program 40 flightsbehind to the South Pole, and it wasn’tprudent to add two more fuel flights to thebackup, Blaisdell said. Every plane wouldbe needed when the weather cleared tocatch up with the critical supplies forPole’s eight-month winter isolation. Thetraverse team was instructed to turnaround and return to McMurdo.

The situation underscored the purposeof the traverse. During the 10 days thatplanes couldn’t fly, the traverse tractorsstill were able to drive. They made the tripback in 12 days.

“What we have established fromMcMurdo to a point 738 miles (1,187km)away from McMurdo is a crevasse hazard-free route that is marked by green flagsevery quarter of a mile,” Wright said.

Next year the traverse team will followthe route again and continue on to thePole, Blaisdell said. They will likely carrycargo, possibly including a trailer neededto move snow at the South Pole. Based onthe success so far, a 10-tractor traversecould run two round-trips to the Pole eachseason, replacing 30 to 60 LC-130 cargoflights, Blaisdell said.

South Pole Traverse team 2004-2005“This year, among the field crew,

there’s not one person to single out,” saidteam leader John Wright. “Rather, the com-bination of all people, the team itself, wasthe hero, better than ever before.”Cold Regions Research and EngineeringLab: Jim Lever, Jason Weale and RussAlgerHeavy equipment operators: RichardVaitonis, Judy Goldsberry and BradJohnsonVehicle maintenance mechanics:Russell Magsig, John Penney and ProjectManager John WrightField Safety Training Program moun-taineers: Mike Roberts, Susan Detweiler,Allen O’Bannon


Traverse From page 16

Photo courtesy of John Wright / Special to The Antarctic SunThe South Pole Traverse team poses at their farthest-south point. They left four green flagsand the bundle of bamboo poles behind, awaiting their return next year. Kneeling from leftto right: Judy Goldsberry, John Penney, Jim Lever, and Russell Magsig. Standing from leftto right: Brad Johnson, John Wright, Richard “Stretch” Vaitonis and Allen O’Bannon.

Got photos? www.photolibrary.usap.gov

Answer to puzzleon page 8

By Bill JirsaSpecial to The Antarctic Sun

Dani DiPietro didn’t find herfirst stay in Antarctica lastsummer season toughenough.

“The whole reason I went to Polewas because I wanted a bigger chal-lenge. I thought (McMurdo) was waytoo cush. It really bugged me.”

DiPietro complained that herhabits from the U.S. were largelyunaltered because there wasn’t a lackof anything at McMurdo Station likeshowers, laundry, communications,or even warm weather. (“It’s notcold,” she said flatly.)

“…So then I went to the Pole, andnow that I’ve been there, I’m not sureit was hard enough.”

Where do you go next if the aus-terity of the Amundson-Scott SouthPole Station seems a bit soft? Space,of course.

“I will have no problem going toMars,” she confided. Her aim is tomake it to space as part of NASA’sastronaut-educator program. Dozensof participants train to be among thefew selected for shuttle missions. Shewas among the top 500 selected inprevious years, and once she returns to teaching, she intends toapply again.

For DiPietro, part of the draw of going to places likeAntarctica, or even leaving the planet, is bringing it all back to theclassroom.

“I get to come back and I get to teach kids about it,” DiPietrosaid, smiling. Originally from Pennsylvania, she’s been living andteaching in Seattle for seven years, at all levels between firstgrade and high school. She has also worked at places like theSeattle Science Center whereshe ran the planetarium. Shelooks forward to making topicspersonal to her students via herAntarctic experience when sheeventually returns to teaching.

“I actually think that’s whatkids remember the most,” shesays. “They don’t really carehow fast the speed of light is… That’s not what makes a classexperience stick out... I think if you can personalize somethingand actually give it more ownership and make it more relevant, Ithink that’s the way that you actually get things across.”

DiPietro will work this winter in McMurdo as a labor alloca-tor with Facilities Engineering Maintenance and Construction.Before her job in McMurdo this winter, she spent the summer atthe South Pole, where her avid correspondence with classroomsin the U.S. usually revolved around a lively approach to questionsof science.

“I’m a goof-ball about that,” she said. “I think science is a lotof fun.”

If she’s not at the South Pole telling 3rd graders whether spitactually freezes before it hits the ground (it doesn’t, unless you’re

on an elevated platform), she’s used tobeing in a classroom turning things dif-ferent colors or blowing stuff up toteach some science. As with everything,she looks to arrive at an “ah-ha”moment through humor and exploit.Spend some time with DiPietro andyou’re bound to experience her infec-tious laugh.

Does that mean she is attracted toextremes?

“I’m the kid that likes all the rollercoasters at the amusement park,” shebeamed.

Her favorite volunteer work inAntarctica was the time she served asguest blaster, helping a team prepare theway for construction. In other words,she got to blow stuff up.

Her sense of adventure extends toher volunteer gig playing music onMcMurdo’s radio station, where herapproach to programming is sponta-neous.

“Sometimes I also do the old lookthrough the book, see the name ofsomebody I’ve never listened to in mylife, and play that,” she said. “Justbecause that way you get to know moremusic.”

Her pluck has also lead her to teachabroad. DiPietro spent a year in

Ecuador teaching science, where she learned to handle threatsfrom natural disasters to taxi strikes, as well as the valuable les-son that she could survive in a country where the language andthe culture are completely new.

It was in Quito, Ecuador that she ran into a former student andhad one of those moments that every teacher lives for. Turning atthe familiar sound of her teaching name in a foreign capital, shefound one of her first eighth-graders standing there, now a collegestudent on a college-exchange year.

During their subsequentconversation, the former stu-dent revealed that DiPietro’steaching had influenced herchoice of study.

“‘My second major is biolo-gy because of you.’” DiPietrosaid the student told her.

“Being a teacher, that’s probably the greatest compliment any-body could ever give.”

DiPietro hopes to teach next in Thailand or Tunisia. Thatwould further her goal of living on all seven continents. WithAntarctica under her belt, and counting her year in Ecuador, she’svisited five, and she’s lived on three.

Throughout her travels, DiPietro stays connected to her fami-ly, friends, and former students via her bi-weekly e-mail newslet-ter. It now goes to over 400 people, and she is gathering morereaders all the time. She just learned that reading her newsletter isextra-credit for a group of 6th, 7th and 8th graders in Maryland.

She seems to make friends just as easily as she gains new read-ers. “I try to make the most of where I am,” she said, as shelooked forward to a winter in McMurdo.


Prof i le Teacher eyes Mars from McMurdo

Photo by Brien Barnett / The Antarctic SunDani DiPietro takes a break and reads the newspa-per in the new South Pole Station dining hall.

“The whole reason I went to Pole wasbecause I wanted a bigger challenge. I thought (McMurdo) was way too cush.”— Dani DiPietro, about her summer at South Pole

the antarctic sun, february 6, 2005 · february 6, 2005 the antarctic sun • 3 by emily stone sun...

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