12/15/01 0200 hrs.
63 40 S
56 22 W
4.5 C
45-50 knot winds
Cloudy, building seas
Good Saturday Morning
Came on watch to find out that we had spent most of the evening mapping the sea floor in the Erebus and Terror Gulf while waiting for a large storm to pass north of us. We are just leaving the Gulf and headed north into the Antarctic Sound. Winds are out of the northwest at 40-50 knots and the ship has a distinct list to the starboard side. Sky is brightening but the clouds are thickening, not sure what kind of a sunrise we will have today.
Bob Gilbert has been melting and filtering a few of the snow samples we collected on Robertson Island and is seeing evidence of windblown material in the samples. Although the amount of material in an individual sample is small, factor this over hundreds of feet of snow and ice thickness and hundreds of square miles of areal expanse and this material becomes a significant source of sediment. Part of Eugene Domack's research involves examining individual cores for evidence of changes in the position of the ice sheet with time. One of the markers of a change from an ice covered sea to an open water environment is a change from sediments that contain a large amount of land derived material to sediments that are mostly biogenic in origin. Bob's findings may provide some additional insight into the sources of the terrigenous sediments that Eugene is seeing in the cores.
Well it's 8 a.m. and just before I send this I thought I'd update it. We left the Erebus and Terror Gulf to plow right into the storm in the Antarctic Sound. This is not a big storm by Antarctic standards, and the waves are only 12-15 feet tall according to the mate on the bridge, but for us it's a big deal.
The photo shows a view from the bridge deck at 70 feet above the water as we moved into the storm. The bow deck is 22 feet above the water.
Everyone is fine but most are laid low with seasickness. Our trip has been so smooth so far that sea legs never developed.
More later.
Dave
