Another Scientist from Poland

As reported by Sam:

16 November – Neal and Doug perform "back-to-back" surface supply dives. Doug uses the large airlift sampler to harvest specimens directly beneath the dive shack. Neal uses the hand-held "minisampler" to collect specimens from seafloor locations distant from the fixed sampler. After the dive, we discuss ways to improve the minisampler – right now, the diver must unscrew the sampling bag when he is done with one spot, cap it, and then screw in a new sampling bag for the next spot. This is extremely cumbersome and time consuming when you’re wearing the thick, three-finger gloves often used for extreme cold-water diving. Ideas abound, and we will have to try one of them. In the afternoon we pack up and return to McMurdo Station for a long-awaited shower!

17 November – specimens are secured in the large holding tanks back at the Crary Lab. During the day, Doug, Neal, Bill, and Jan make a trip to Cape Evans. This is the place where some of the epic voyages to the south pole were staged at the turn of the 19th century. The objective here is to collect samples of red algae for biochemical studies of light-harvesting pigments. The red algae growing at Cape Evans are perhaps the southernmost "seaweed" on the planet, and as such are undoubtedly adapted to the highly seasonal light levels they encounter. Our colleague, Dr. Robert MacColl, has already discovered one new type of pigment molecule in these algae, and more undoubtedly await discovery. Because they trap light energy with high efficiency and specificity, these types of pigments are finding more and more uses in medicine and industry. Maybe one of the pigments discovered here will be used in products back home one day...

18 November – Neal and Doug make two more dives at Cape Evans, and we now have a good sample of red algae for Dr. MacColl’s studies. We wash the algae and collect the attached debris. Why? Because this "debris" is mostly microscopic algae (diatoms) that grow on leafy surfaces, and these would complicate the identification of pigments unique to the red algae. However, the "debris" also contains foraminifera – and we separate them for Dr. Pawlowski’s study of the genetic relatedness between foram species. This is an example of how polar science is done: One project, such as our study of how forams build shells, spawns several other projects – some related to the main theme, others unrelated. In the long run, much more work gets accomplished this way, and a spirit of cooperation is established that leads to lifelong friendships.

19 November – we are back at New Harbor camp after a frantic evening of preparation. The helicopter we were supposed to take, a big "huey" operated by the Kiwis, was broken. We had to split into three groups, and the friendly helo support people had to reshuffle their entire schedule to get us back to New Harbor. There was no room for Dr. Travis, who stayed behind in McMurdo to do a little catch-up work with Dr. Stockton. We spend most of the day staging gear, filling dive tanks, and preparing for the upcoming week’s work. A new person joins our group for a short visit -- his name is Wojtek Majewski, and he is a scientist from Poland working with colleagues at Ohio State. It is fun to listen to Wojtek and Jan speak Polish.

20 November – A stiff wind is blowing from the east, laden with very fine snow. The temperature hovering in the teens. There won't be any helicopters visiting us today, which is too bad because we are waiting for some equipment and fresh eggs.

Dr. Travis makes it back to New Harbor. Neal tests improvements to the minisampler, and it now works fine! He then completes a harvest using the fixed unit. Doug makes the second surface-supply dive, and I tag along on scuba to hunt flower forams. Wojtek proves to be excellent at sorting through our samples and isolating the foraminifera. He is also extremely helpful with the camp chores. It would be nice if he could stay for the rest of the season!

We recovered a remarkable sample today. It contained a huge bloom of "silver saccammina," an unusual foram that typically is not very abundant here. I counted over 158 specimens in this 7.4-cm-diameter core; that translates to about 34,000 specimens per square meter. By comparison, the "Tree foram" Notodendrodes hyalinosphaira occurs in densities of about 130 specimens per square meter (Delaca et al, J. Foram. Res. 177-187). The picture of the picking tray below should give you an idea of the relative abundances. Everything shown was retrieved from the top cm of sediment in a single 7.4 cm^2 core.

The "silver sac" builds a large (1-2 cm), brittle, agglutinated shell. It can be easily cracked open with tweezers, revealing the silver foram inside (see photo). The silver color is imparted by the reflective properties of the "true" agglutinated shell encasing the cell body. Unlike the coarse sand comprising the outer shell, the agglutinated material coating the cell is submicroscopic. We are going to examine the composition of this material to see if it is perhaps secreted by the cell, rather than being collected from the environment.

It always amazes me that there can be such extreme population shifts in what is regarded as a stable, predictable marine environment. But I shouldn't be amazed. The huge seasonal input of organics, whose magnitude is tuned to minor fluctuations of trace nutrients (in turn regulated by currents, glacial meltwater, ice cover, etc.) is overlaid by a complex web of biological cycles and activities (reproduction, predation, competition for food/space, to name a few). From this complexity emerges the observed populations of organisms. We seek simple explanations for this complexity, but I doubt we will find them to be simple.

21 November – we finally dive the "tile hole" which is located at the northeast corner of Explorers Cove. This is where Dr. Stockton deployed some ceramic tiles about a dozen years ago, and we would like to find these and see how many organisms have settled on their surfaces over that time interval. Unfortunately, we do not see any tiles. The sediment here is extremely fine – like chalk dust – and undoubtedly the tiles are buried in it. Neal uses the minisampler to harvest forams from this site, and I scoop some of the mud and put it in bags for sieving on the surface. Dr. Pawlowski is discovering many new species of tiny forams in these samples! It seems as though each area in the cove has its own discrete assemblage of tiny forams, whereas the giant agglutinated species I am interested in occur everywhere. Toward the end of the dive we ascend and examine the shallow "anchor ice" region near shore. Here, the terrestrial permafrost supercools the seawater it contacts, forming large, plate-like ice crystals that project from the bottom. Organisms living in this anchor ice risk being frozen to death. If they don’t freeze they can also get trapped in the ice and float to the underside of the surface ice cover. This can result in their death through starvation. I see quite a few scallops frozen in place there. I also spot some depressions in the bottom, and these "pits" are filled with black ooze. There is some red scum associated with this black ooze, and I collect some of this stuff for analysis. Elsewhere in the ocean we have discovered that life abounds in strange settings like this, for example the oxygen-free and hydrogen sulfide-rich basin off of Santa Barbara, California. I wonder what’s in this stinky, cold, black soup? Suddenly a creepy feeling overcomes me – I am wedged between a layer of anchor ice below and 12 feet of sea ice overhead. My chin is literally immersed in black/red slime, and everywhere I see the frozen corpses of scallops and other creatures entombed in the ice. I don’t want to get stuck in here! So I close my eyes, regain composure, and slowly back out from this tight jam. Sometimes all you can do is laugh about those terrifying moments underwater. There never was any real danger, but it feels good to survive. Later that night we do a foram harvest below the dive shack.

22 November –

Part of our morning routine is to wake up, start the coffee pot, and peek out the window of the Jamesway tent to check the weather and Erebus. That's probably a standard thing to do wherever people live near a volcano, like Hawaii, but it's an odd thing for a New Yorker to do. This morning, Mount Erebus blew its stack. Although an eruption sounds dramatic, in actual fact the volcano is constantly erupting -- it's just that the winds at the summit usually blow the plume away and we fail to appreciate the action from afar. An excellent Mt. Erebus web site is maintained by Dr. Philip Kyle at New Mexico Tech. Checkout their eruption videos!

We attempt harvesting more forams under the dive shack, but during descent Dr. Pollock’s hood gets stuck against his ear. This causes a dangerous situation – if he descends or ascends like this, he risks rupturing his eardrum. I do not notice his problem at first, and collect a few flower forams, and then ascend to where he is hanging. There’s nothing I can do for him underwater at this point but stand by. He ascends very, very slowly and reports his condition to the tenders monitoring his dive on the surface. There’s a sigh of relief when he’s back on the deck safely. Later that evening I dive with Doug, who harvests forams. I find eight flowers, and also recover an old experimental array consisting of bottles tied together with cords. Every now and then we find experimental arrays left behind by past science groups, usually abandoned for lack of time. Unless it is marked "do not disturb" we always clean this material from the bottom when we find it.