Weekly Report ANT XVII/3-4 (08-14/04/2000)

We have returned to paradise. That is how many of us felt yesterday at the mid point of the cruise. Having spent days passing through boring snow covered icefields, we finally came upon free polynyas, pancakes as far as the eye could see, and bizarre looking icebergs that materialised out of the mist. Today, the weather is putting the icing on the cake by providing marvellous sunshine. There are icebergs with round domes and dreaming spires and, on almost every ice floe, there are groups of Adelie penguins and crabeater seals whilst between them are Minke whales and the fin of a killer whale that is after the adelies. Around the ship are Antarctic and snow petrels, and even some cape pigeons. But, if you think that we have just reached the coastal polynya at Drescher Inlet towards which we were heading, you are completely mistaken. Instead, we are positioned at 69°S 27°W at the northern edge of the pack ice zone in the Weddell Sea and there is a very good reason for this: one portside main engine has given up the ghost. On Wednesday morning it suddenly stopped because the cuff of one of the exhaust compensators came loose and caused a chain reaction which, amongst other things, damaged the turbo quite badly. This is not as bad as it seems as the vessel has another three main engines and two auxiliary engines, however, our chief, Volker Schulz, cannot repair the damage on board; this will only be possible in Punta Arenas once a spare part has been flown in. In view of the continually worsening ice situation, we had no choice but to leave the pack ice belt (although we all love the Antarctic we really do not want to spend the winter here on board). That is why we are already on the way to our second working area, the Antarctic Peninsula.

In this fourth week we have not exactly been spoiled by the weather. Except for Sunday, when the sun was smiling down on the iceberg cemetery at Austasen, we have had misty cold stormy weather with occasional heavy snowfalls which have increased the snow layer (on top of ice that is already 30 cm thick) by up to a metre in places. This hampers our progress considerably, as do the ice barriers which accumulate when the wind rafts the floes together. Rough seas are hardly noticeable within these ice fields even when it is stormy but the strong winds make it impossible to work with CTDs or plankton nets. When thick snowdrifts form, as in the last few days, and the shapes of the icebergs lose their contours so that only the radar can put them into the right order, work on deck has to be completely abolished. At least it does in an area like Austasen where Uwe has counted 53 icebergs varying in length between 250 and 3,500 metres within a 29 km stretch of water; 35 of them were in the central iceberg cemetery. Last Sunday, six new lumps drifted in. At the shelf ice edge at Kapp Norvegia alone, there were three major break offs in the last two years.

Before this tragedy with the engine happened and we had to abolish work in the Southern Weddell Sea, we had completed the programmes 'iceberg disturbance' and 'benthopelagic coupling' in Austasen. Connie and Martha had to work right through the night at the hydrosweep in order to find suitable transects between the icebergs for the net, and the navigators had to make pin point landings with the bottom trawl in the disturbed areas. Three out of four bottom trawls brought the expected disturbed fauna, in particular countless brittle stars, and Rainer and his group got the right fish species which had been identified as indicators of disturbance during the last EASIZ cruise. That consoles him a little bit for not being able to fish in the Drescher Inlet. Dieter discovered that grounding icebergs can compact the bottom so much that even the multi-box corer has problems penetrating it and, because of the engine failure, he had to abandon two moorings just off Kapp Norvegia. We recovered the third just a ship's length in front of the iceberg that was trying to mow it down. Before leaving Austasen, we took an epibenthic sledge for Anne from 750 metres depth. Howe ver, Martin's mini-dredge (hanging behind) stole the show: the sledge was apparently a very effective tickler chain for amphipods.

Once the EBS haul was complete, the bad weather prevented us from deploying any other gears. We could not even manage the extra planned deep sea haul for the biodiversity researchers who had just found an archaic mollusc in the epibenthic sled. Taking into account the fierce catabatic winds, we did not pursue our idea to have a second shallow water station under the shelf ice edge with the video and the TV grab either. This is a pity considering that the workshop has replaced the teeth of the grab, which continuously just trapped stones, with razor sharp blades and that our two electronic geniuses have managed to provide us with good quality video images for the TV grab, even though the new 10 km long "Polarstern" cable did not transmit the signal. We certainly have some first class 'fixers' on board amongst both the crew and the scientists. For example, Boris has managed to get the white luxurious cooling container up and running; this is equipped so fabulously that all the fishes and invertebrates of the Weddell Sea are fighting for space in it.

I described all the other important things at the start: the enforced cancellation of Drescher Inlet, the cruise through the animal free pack ice desert, northward progress through zero visibility, blizzards, and continual dusk. It was a bit of a horror trip but it made it crystal clear to everyone just how extreme the Antarctic conditions can be on the ice during winter. The sea floor conditions of minus 1.8°C seem rather cosy in comparison. But today many people were late to dinner because, just in front of the ship, a whole school of whales were blowing through the grey sea of ice flows, illuminated by a marvellous blood red sky. The last few days were forgotten immediately. The first thing lined up for the next few days is the deployment of the pancake group's UFOs into the pancake ice zone. Then we shall have place for the 'Bergfest' half-way party and the polar baptism (there are so many fliers that there is hardly any free space on the wall to put up the weekly report) and we can finally head for the Bransfield Strait.

Best wishes from all on board to all at home,

Wolf Arntz