Ross Sea Connection

The microscope room on the Palmer is just big enough for a slide preparation table and two bulky microscopes. It’s dark inside, and the microscope tabletops are designed to rock back and forth on an air cushion to counteract the ship’s rolling. As they do this, they make a deep sighing that sounds like Darth […]

The Palmer has an ample supply of Dutch hot chocolate mix to warm people as they come in from the wind, spray, and snow on deck. Today I fixed my cup as normal, but I walked away from the galley without a spoon. As I sloshed and swirled my cup, hoping the hot chocolate powder […]

We’ve been on the Palmer for 20 days, we’ve been to 49 sampling stations, taken thousands of water samples, flown three separate gliders, and started dozens of incubations. So, have we learned anything? It’s not a rude question—for decades oceanographers have been mostly unable to look at the results of their work until after they […]

Late yesterday evening we recovered glider RU26, which had been cruising the waters of the Ross Sea since December 11. After 55 days, RU26 had traveled 732 miles, made 2,187 dives, and come within 2 miles of crossing the International Dateline and becoming a Golden Dragon like the rest of us (see yesterday’s post). But […]

It was the color of the ocean from space that brought us here. We knew it was a gamble, a dogleg away from our main sampling plan. But satellites were telling us that phytoplankton were flourishing here, over deep water, where no one could explain it and no one had ever been to study it […]

At 5 a.m. we came to a stop at the sea-ice edge about 10 miles north of McMurdo Station. A single emperor penguin was asleep about a quarter-mile away, its head tucked snugly out of sight. In the patch of open water our ship had created, a minke whale surfaced. Underneath the ice plain before […]

It’s January 17th, and we’re in Christchurch, New Zealand—about as far south of the equator as Rutgers is north of it. If you were holding a globe in your hands and looking at New Jersey, Christchurch would be all the way around the other side, near your pinky fingers. All that you’ve learned about the […]

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.

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.