At last we are here, I can see the main land of Antarctica, we have stopped sampling for a few days since other activities on the ship requires the ship to stop, deploying the AUV and seal-tagging. I will briefly explain each of them.
Antarctica
I am very interested in the AUV, it supposed to go under the ice and gather information on how the melt water forms there, quite a high tech vehicle. It has lots of instruments to observe the mixing phenomena and the bathymetry beneath it. Last time they deployed it in 2009 it got stuck and thanks to some good coding on its path finding it managed to free itself, this time they hope the AUV journey goes even better and the vehicle gets back unscratched.
On the matter of seal tagging, Brice and Bastian volunteered to go to the islands nearby to help the seal tagging team, making a 4 man team. I also volunteered and tried to get on the team with lobbying with my cabin mate, Simon, who is part of the seal tagging team. He was alright with taking me but it turned out he was not the one calling the shots on who to take. I envy Brice on this matter I hope he takes lots of pictures, I wanted to take some funny pictures with Penguins and elephant seals, but one can’t always get what one wants. I will upload some pictures when they get back.
Anyway, right now I am staying in my cabin watching some random TV-series, quite boring considering the alternative would have been helping with seal tagging.
Will keep you guys updated
Arash