Tuesday 13^th April

We have delayed sending this email out until today so that we could tell you about our visit to South Georgia. It has been another week of hard work for all of us, and we have had some rough weather to contend with, so the short break was very welcome. Science wise all continues to go well. We have now chalked up 122 CTD stations and have completed almost three sides round our box. After the test station, we have 45 stations in Drake Passage, one at Rothera, then 55 along our southern section, and 20 along the short repeat of A23, the WOCE section we occupied in 1995. We now head northwest repeating stations occupied annually by BAS, the Maurice Ewing Bank section (or as Lucy calls it, the Bobby Ewing Bank!). Then west along the Falkland Plateau, back to Port Stanley. Due in lunchtime Thursday next week.

At the end of the southern section, as we went into triple figures with the CTD stations, we had a short detour to recover a bottom pressure recorder (BPR) for Chris Hughes at the Proudman Oceanographic Lab. This has been sitting on the sea bed for the last year, recording the pressure due to the amount of water above it - this tells us how variable the currents are. We arrived at its location soon after daybreak on Thursday, and were astonished when it responded immediately to the acoustic signal we sent it, to tell it to wake up. Happy that we were talking to it, we sent the signal to release, then waited for it to begin coming up. As it rose we could track its progress as it sent back its pressure reading (this was a bit of a black art since it sent back about 6 different numbers and you had to choose which one was most realistic). At a depth of 300 m, we lost track of it - no more response. We all went up onto Monkey Island or the Bridge, to search for it on the surface. No sign. The BPR should have a radio transmitter to allow us to get a bearing on its location. There was silence on the receivers on the Bridge. The ship began to do a box around the supposed location, and we discussed whether it could have drifted out of sight or perhaps was never released in the first place. Suddenly, good news spread round the ship, Charlie had spotted it! There has since been some debate over which Charlie saw it first, since both Charlie the radio officer and Charlie the Motorman claim the right to the prize. We were extremely lucky that the weather was so calm with no wind or waves to speak of, otherwise we would never have seen the BPR on the surface. Its radio transmitter was not working, although it did start working belatedly when safely on deck. We were expecting a large BPR rig and had the crane standing by to haul it out of the water, so were surprised when the rig turned out to be a small capsule only about as big as Karen.

After the BPR recovery we had several more days of unbelievable seas, glassy calm with barely any wind, and plenty of sunshine, which lifted people's spirits considerably. It was hard to believe that this was the Southern Ocean. On Friday we were excited to find that we were repeating A23 station 42, which we had occupied on the same day, 9^th April, exactly 4 years ago. Conditions could scarcely have been more different. In 1995 we had our big storm immediately after that station, and were 'hove to' for 24 hours. In 1999 we completed the station in flat seas and sun.

One of the unusual sights of the week has been a green iceberg. Most icebergs are white or grey, and some older ones are vivid blue or black. This one however was green. We decided that it was worth a closer look, for scientific purposes of course. According to Mark, it was green because it had chlorophyll growing inside it. As the glaciers flow seawards, they pick up soil and, presumably, plant life, from the rock beneath. Then the iceberg calves, eventually rolls over, and the chlorophyll is exposed to light and begins to grow. We knew the iceberg was something special when even the Chief Engineer and the Captain were getting their cameras out for the first time this trip. The green iceberg was covered with hundreds of penguins, and a small whale was spotted cavorting about in the surf beside the berg. Other wildlife this week has included fur seals and chinstrap penguins swimming round the ship, and krill swarms - big brown streaks on the sea. Plus the usual birds accompanying the ship from time to time, including petrels and shags. The different types of albatross we usually see are Wandering, Black-browed, Grey-headed and Light-mantled sooty albatrosses; the latter look rather like chocolate point Siamese cats. One night around the CTD there were dozens of long stringy things drifting about in the water. Some people caught them in nets. They were up to about a metre long and a couple of centimetres in diameter, translucent and jelly like. Apparently they are salps, a kind of zooplankton.

After the glorious weather early this week, the ocean returned to its more usual state on Saturday evening and we were hove to for much of Sunday, about 24 hours in all. Force 9 winds, together with snow, rain and just about anything else the atmosphere could hurl at us. Lots of ship rolls so furniture falling over, luckily no kami kaze computers this time. This caused a 24 hour delay in our visit to South Georgia, planned for Monday. There were suggestions that this had been deliberately arranged by Mikey so that he could spend his 30^th birthday on South Georgia. By Monday we were back doing stations and completed the A23 repeat in the evening. Our last station was a shallow one on the shelf of South Georgia. Overnight it got very windy again and there was some concern that we would not make it to the harbour at Grytviken by morning.

However early Tuesday found us steaming past spectacular mountains, turned pink in the dawn, as we approached Grytviken. Glorious sunshine again, and the high mountains were sheltering us from the strong wind. Glaciers came down to the sea and had jagged edges where bergs had calved. There was much more bare rock than there had been in Antarctica, giving a greater contrast between glaciers and mountains. Strangest of all, there was a green colour on the lower slopes - rough grass. It was noticeably warmer out on deck than it had been in Antarctica - we had forgotten how much further north we are now. Furry hats and gloves are now optional rather than essential.

Grytviken was a Norwegian whaling station until the 1960's, then it was used as a BAS base, and now it houses a small contingent from the British army. There is also a museum and a post office. We had hoped to lie the ship alongside the jetty but the wind was strong onshore and the idea was abandoned. Instead the cargo tender was launched. The ship's officers refer to this as the floating skip, but it also looks rather like a child's drawing of a boat. We had to climb down a ladder over the side of the ship, and stand in the boat as it chugged to land. All the scientists went ashore to explore Grytviken for a couple of hours. The whaling station is deserted and eerie, derelict buildings, rusty machinery and half sunken ships. It had a macabre atmosphere. Some retail therapy was liberally applied in the post office and museum shop. The museum was fascinating. High spots included a huge stuffed albatross, wings extended, hanging from the ceiling, and a fur seal's whisker, very long and wiry. There were big displays on Shackleton's Antarctic expedition which ended in South Georgia, and on the life and times of the Norwegian whalers. A short walk from the whaling station was the cemetery where Shackleton is buried. To get there we had to run the gauntlet of the fur seals, who were getting cross at the number of visitors so decided to run after a few to frighten them. There were fur seals everywhere, and we managed to get close to some of the least aggressive ones (and some people got closer to the aggressive ones than they intended - fur seals can run remarkably fast!). Also there were elephant seals all over the place. These are frankly not one of nature's most attractive inventions. They smell, and their throaty snores could be heard reverberating across the bay. They paid us no attention but continued basking in the sun, all piled on top of one another. A lone Gentoo penguin seemed to enjoy being the centre of attention and would happily let people get within a metre to take pictures.

We left Grytviken after lunch, and after a quick CTD station in the bay for Richard, continued our steam west across the South Georgia shelf, towards our first Maurice Ewing Bank station, due late this evening.

Karen and Dave, Chief Scientists

This week's joke : What goes 'now you see me, now you don't'? A penguin on a zebra crossing.

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