When I traveled to Antarctica, working on finding writers to contribute to Antarctica: Life on the Ice (then just a hope in my heart and an idea in my head), I spent a night in Christchurch, New Zealand. There, I shared a hotel room with a complete stranger, Julie Rose, a scientist who was heading out to research on the Nathaniel B. Palmer. I tracked down Julie recently to find out what she's doing and how her research is coming along. It wasn't hard to find her, since she works at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the world's largest private, nonprofit, ocean research, engineering, and education organization. Read on to hear about Julie's experiences on a research vessel and to get a sense of polar ocean research.
"I met Susan in 2004 when we were roommates in Christchurch before departing for the Antarctic. Susan and I parted ways shortly after we met, when she left for the ice by air and I set sail from nearby Lyttelton onboard the RVIB (Research Vessel Ice Breaker) Nathaniel B. Palmer. The Palmer, or NBP according to Raytheon lingo, is one of the vessels commissioned by the National Science Foundation for ocean-based research in the Antarctic. The ship can break through several feet of sea ice and is able to navigate through the rough, stormy weather common to the Southern Ocean. The NBP can hold up to 37 scientists and 22 crew members, and has lab benches, cold rooms, wet labs, computer labs and even a stockroom of common lab (and craft) supplies. As far as research vessels go, the NBP, its crew and the Raytheon support staff are first-rate, which makes research cruises (relatively) easy and (relatively) less stressful.
Working on a ship is very rewarding but at times frustrating and difficult. As with any field research, an enormous amount of time goes into planning and preparation. When the weather is bad, not only can no samples be collected, but often no work can be done in labs because the ship’s motion makes it too dangerous (or the researchers are too seasick!) At the same time, research cruises are incredibly productive, intense and often exciting. A huge amount of work and data get collected in a short period of time, and a tight community forms, with 60 people working, eating and sleeping together on a roughly 300 foot long ship for over a month. I’ve found that a lot of great ideas and new, unexpected collaborations can form on research cruises as people with very different backgrounds and perspectives interact on a daily basis. And while research cruises are typified by intense periods of work, people still find time for fun and creative activities. Whether making birthday costumes for fellow passengers, conducting knitting and language classes, watching movies from the huge selection of DVDs available on the ship, or even the occasional rendezvous with international research vessels, the spirit of community on a research vessel makes the time fly by.
I have been on five cruises to the Ross Sea, Antarctica on the NBP with two separate projects. I am a microbiologist and ecologist, and am interested in the microorganisms living in the coastal ocean that surrounds the Antarctic continent. A lot of people think of biology in the ocean in terms of a food chain: the phytoplankton are microscopic plants harvesting the sun’s energy, they get eaten by krill, who get eaten by fish, who get eaten by whales or penguins or seals. However, there is actually a dynamic and fascinating food web of predators, prey and recyclers just within the microbes themselves. I’m very interested in how this microbial food web may be affected by changes that scientists have predicted for the future ocean, including such seemingly disparate (but actually closely linked) factors such as temperature, CO2, iron concentrations and light.
The Ross Sea is a wonderful place to do research in microbial ecology because it is the home of one of the largest annual blooms of phytoplankton in the world. It may seem surprising that plankton can thrive in what we perceive as a hostile, forbidding environment. But every year, when daylengths get longer and light levels increase, this nutrient-rich region becomes a hotbed of microbial activity. The phytoplankton blooms that regularly form are populated by either Phaeocystis antarctica (a small flagellated microbe that can form colonies big enough to see with the naked eye) or a mixed assemblage of diatoms (a diverse group of microbes enclosed in shells of silica, that can range in size over several orders of magnitude). Scientists aren’t sure why these two types of phytoplankton grow to such high abundance in the Ross Sea every year, or what causes one to dominate the other in different areas of the Ross Sea, but understanding these two questions will be very important to understand the biology and chemistry of Antarctica’s coastal oceans."
Thanks, Julie, for letting us in on your research!
Blogs and websites from some of the Antarctic cruises:
http://www.whoi.edu/sbl/liteSite.do?litesiteid=2530
http://www.vims.edu/bio/corsacs/cruise_2006.html