September 25

We arrived near Peter I Oy (Peter the First Island) in pretty miserable weather Monday night around 11:00 p.m. We then started heading due south to the ice which we penetrated sometime early Tuesday morning. I was in the ice tower early and started seeing lots of crabeater seals almost immediately. Later "lots" turned to huge numbers scattered all over the congested ice. We also saw leopard seals, though less abundant, a Ross seal, minke whales, killer whales, Adelie penguins and scattered emperor penguins...a very interesting area here.

We stopped for our first ice station at around 1430hrs and had about 15 people out on the ice in two parties. I was designated leader of the ice geophysics party...so I'm hoping to get an "Ice geophysics" certificate at the end of this trip. We'll do some CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) casts and other oceanographic sampling as well as an ROV (remotely-operated vehicle) deployment in just a bit. We then head south again for about 5.5 hours where we will do another ice station at around midnight, and then repeat every 5.5 hours for two more days before getting to first big floe processing station. More later.... Brent