Ross Sea Connection

On Friday night (Saturday afternoon in the Ross Sea) our glider ru26 was deployed. It was a great weather day, temperatures around 37 degrees and calm winds. Our crew Chip Haldeman and Clayton Jones headed out to the ice along with a support crew that included an ice expert and helicopter pilot. The helicopter took […]

Josh Kohut talks about nutrients, deep currents, and how robots will be used to scout water masses in the Ross Sea.

Adam Kustka talks about the different phytoplankton he expects to find in the Ross Sea and why they are important.

The Ross Sea Ice Shelf is considered to be the largest ice shelf in Antarctica. It is about 182,000 square miles, which is about the size of France! Find out more about ice shelves, Polynyas and what sea ice concentration looks like from space.

Underwater gliders don’t have an easy job collecting data in the harsh environment of the ocean. But sometimes, even getting to the experiment location is a tremendous challenge.

Here are some pictures taken by science photographer Chris Linder, from the Ross Sea Teacher Institute held at Liberty Science Center in August 2010.

Liberty Science Center hosted a week long teacher workshop in August 2010. This workshop was the result of months of planning, and was designed to incorporate teachers in the ongoing science research: Ross Sea Mission.

RU26 had one final test before she heads to a southern hemisphere summer vacation! The test focused on the glider’s altimeter. The altimeter is a very important part of the glider.  It uses short sound pulses to measure the distance between the glider and solid objects, like the sea floor!  Without the altimeter the glider […]

RU26D, our deep glider, is ready for shipment to the west coast of the U.S for delivery to McMurdo station in Antarcitca.   Along with the installation of a new  quick release nose recovery system, the glider has passed all the final hardware and software checks in our lab at Rutgers.   We are confident it […]

The following collection of datasets can be used in Google Earth to explore the Antarctic Ocean environment before and during the cruise. Real-time datasets provide students an opportunity to gather scientific evidence, which they can use to investigate scientific processes that occur in the ocean.