I got everything measured and the results were interesting.  Near the surface the DMS concentration was much lower than it was just three days ago.  I suspect that this is because the sun was out and photochemistry was destroying the DMS very fast near the surface.  Dave Kieber’s work on our Ross Sea cruises has shown that DMS is destroyed very fast by sunlight in these Antarctic waters.  That is very interesting to us!

While the sky was relatively clear this morning I took a little walk around the station. I got a nice photo of the glacier in morning light.  The glacier really dominates the scene around here, and as I told you before, we have a great view of it from our bedroom.  Glaciers form from years upon years of snow falling on the land and it can be over 400 feet thick in places.  But the weight of all that snow, and ice, eventually causes the whole mass of ice to start sliding down slope toward the sea.  That is what our glacier is doing.  It moves slowly, but surely.  You can see the big cracks in the glacier and where pieces have broken off.  I keep waiting for a giant piece to calve off while I am watching.   All the icebergs floating around this area come from similar glaciers which are found all along this coast.  Antarctica is one giant glacier! In fact, over 90% of all the worlds freshwater is tied up in Antarctic ice! That is a lot of water.

With the sky clear I finally got a view of the mountains to the south.  I took two pictures of this with the wide angle setting on my camera and I stitched the photos together using a computer program. The result is a nice panorama shot of snow covered mountains.  In the foreground you see mostly rocks, but these are actually a series of little peninsulas going off in the distance.  From my low angle they just look like solid ground – but there is water in between each of those. It was a beautiful view, but there is even better view (so I am told) if the sky really clears.

One can’t help but be fascinated by the icebergs and ice around here.  It offers so many beautiful views, especially as the light of the day changes.  I took another photo looking north out the mouth of Arthur Harbor. That is Bonaparte Pointe on the left.  The icebergs guarding the mouth of the Harbor are impressive. It was one of these that I witnessed exploding last night. Today you could see the straight edge where it all broke off.  And lots of brash ice (chunks) were everywhere today, including up on the rocks: the waves had thrown this ice up high on the shore.