Ross Sea Connection

Far up in the bow of the Palmer, past the cold rooms, beyond the dry labs, and five stories below the bridge, two people are at work in a gleaming steel room. They mix compounds in metal bowls, sprinkle in precisely measured powders, and then arrange their mixtures on trays to put into calibrated heating […]

We love getting questions from people reading along on our blog or in classrooms. Yesterday we heard from Shiquan at Monument School, who asked why iron makes plants grow. That’s a great question that gets right to the heart of biological oceanography, so let’s take a day and explore the answer. If you remember from […]

Last night, Captain Yousri Maghrabi steered the Palmer toward Station A, at 76.5 degrees south, 170 degrees east. It’s just a patch of open water about 40 miles northeast of Ross Island, but oceanographers have been measuring water here since the mid-1990s. When we got there, the only land left visible were Ross and Beaufort […]