In addition to our posts in the Polarstern App https://follow-polarstern.awi.de/ appearing every few days, we want to report in more or less regular intervals (about biweekly) on our scientific work during this expedition and the progress more comprehensively.
The Polarstern expedition PS134 began on 23rd December in Cape Town. We are now in Antarctica with a team of 43 scientists and technicians, supported by the ship’s crew of 45 persons, two helicopter pilots and their two mechanics as well as two meteorologists for the weather forecast. As expected in the Southern Atlantic, we encountered a couple of storms on our long transit to Antarctica. However, we were still able to conduct some of our scientific work. For instance, the marine biologists collected jellyfish from water depths down to 2000 metres at various sampling stations with special nets and sampling bottles. Some the species have only rarely been observed so far. Also, our two oceanographers from France were busy and deployed new oceanographic moorings on the Maud Rise which is already in the Antarctic domain. They also recovered moorings that were deployed one year ago. These long-term measurements serve the improved understanding of changes in water masses and currents of the Southern Ocean. Their short instrumentation program was completed for this expedition after they were done.
With a short delay due to the storms we arrived at Neumayer Station in Antarctica on 6th January. The AWI operates this year-round research station which is located on the Ekström Ice Shelf at the eastern end of the Weddell Sea. Supply operations from Polarstern are normally done on this ice shelf so that the overwintering team of nine people have enough fuel, materials and food for their one-year stay at the station. For this supply operation, Polarstern docks next to the 20 metres high ice shelf edge, and the station team tows the many containers and cargo with snow tractors and large sledges 18 kilometres to the station. The science groups and some of the ship’s crew had opportunities to visit the impressive station and talk to the overwinterers and the summer season staff.
After an emotional farewell ceremony at the ice shelf edge, we set sail again on 8th January for our long transit across the Weddell Sea and then along the western Antarctic Peninsula to our main work area in the Bellingshausen Sea of West Antarctica. We should arrive there on 16th or 17th January. All science groups on board cannot wait to come to the work area after we have had, and still will have, plenty of time on the transits used for installation of equipment and preparing laboratories. After arrival we will have about 5-6 weeks of time for our research work in the Bellingshausen Sea and possibly also in the eastern Amundsen Sea.
Investigating the behaviour of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet in the geological past is the main scientific aim of this expedition, with a particular focus to those time periods that are relevant for the understanding of the present climate change. Knowledge of these past processes help improve future estimates and projections, for instance, on global sea-level rise. We will conduct geophysical surveys and collect geological samples in various areas of the continental shelf and the adjacent deep sea. Rock samples will be collected by a land team from the few ice-free coastal outcrops. The marine biologists will search for Antarctic jellyfish that can reveal a lot about the state and changes of the Southern Ocean ecosystem. Another marine biology group aims to study the behaviour of whales in relationship to our presence in this region. Of all of these exciting research projects we will report in this letter series when we are in the main work area.
Best regards and wishes
Karsten Gohl
(Chief Scientist)