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January 11, 2006 Sheathbill and iceberg collapse
Today I had a meeting in the morning with the lab coordinator. She had to go over some things about using radioactive chemicals at the station, which is something we do in our research. The meeting was routing and no problem. Shortly after lunch, the cruise ship Ushuaia arrived in Arthur Harbor right outside the station. The ship is named after the city Ushuaia which is located at the southern tip of Argentina. It is even further south than Punta Arenas, where we sailed from. This cruise ship was carrying young folks (many college age kids) from Seattle. I didn’t get to meet any of them because I was working. The Palmer Station personnel go out of their way to show these people around. They set up the galley as a welcome center and set out brochures and things for people to look at. They give people a tour of the lab facilities, but not into the actual research labs. That would be too disruptive of the research activities. It turns out that the Ushuaia is actually an old NOAA ship, formerly the Malcom Baldridge. I am not sure, but it might actually be a sister ship to the Discoverer, which is the ship that I sailed on to Easter Island in 1989.
As I was sitting here in my office writing this log at 1:30 am I heard a booming noise outside. I thought it was the glacier calving. I rushed outside to a little platform outside the door and found nothing amiss with the glacier. But then I heard another little noise from the icebergs sitting off the station. As I was looking at them there was a massive breaking of a big section of the edge of one of these icebergs and then a noise almost like a gunshot. It was like one of those demolition videos of buildings or mountainsides. The edge of the iceberg just collapsed. It set up some impressive waves, some of which I captured on my camera as a video clip. This place is amazingly entertaining! I hear more noises as I am writing this so it is breaking more!
Tonight as I was about to work out in the gym, the sun peaked through the clouds and it was low on the horizon. This illuminated the glacier in a pink, orange light. Beautiful. To top that, some people came in the gym and said that whales had just swum by. I missed seeing the whales.
Tomorrow is another sampling day. I probably will remain in the lab to run the GC while the others go out in the Zodiac to collect the water. I need to get out there though – last time they sampled they saw a leopard seal! I haven’t seen any of those yet – but I want to.
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The cruise ship Ushuaia, formerly a NOAA research vessel, moored in Arthur Harbor.
A sheathbill walks among our resident elephant seals
View of the brash ice released from the collapse of the edge of the iceberg seen at right. This was at about 1:30 am. The sun is down, but its still twilight. |
