Winning!

Halloween.

Since Sunday is our only day off during the week, Halloween in McMurdo is always celebrated on the closet Saturday to Halloween. It is one of the biggest events of the year. People mail down costumes months in advance, or make them from locally discarded materials. There is a party in the big gym that begins with a costume contest. There are several categories: best group, best individual, best Antarctic themed, etc.
Of course, as an Antarctic fish team, we decided to dress up as our favorite local fish, Trematomus bernacchii.

As the Best Group category was called onto stage, we jumped up, wiggled, wriggled, and flopped. The crowd loved us. It was a challenge against other groups that worked hard for their costumes, but everyone loved the fish. We were victorious and swam through the crowd all night.

Hut Sweet Hut

The story of Fish Hut 6.


It has been a challenge this season to catch one of the species we are looking for, Pagothenia borchgrevinki (or "Borks" for short). At the moment, we do not have access to the sites where we caught many of them last season, so we had a large hole drilled in an area where Brad has caught them in the past.


Borks are different from Bernies and other benthic species we often catch, in that they are a cryopelagic fish, meaning that they live near to the underside of the sea ice. They also school and seem to be more mobile than Trematomids. Today, we had a hole drilled a few miles from station and had a fish hut placed over it so we could try for borks. The depth at this area is about 800-1000 meters.

Accompanying our Pisten Bully was Steve Z, operator of the Challenger and Reedrill. After hooking up the drill, bit, and fish hut, we caravaned out to the site. Steve connected the Reedrill and started drilling into the 1.5 meter thick ice.



After shoveling around the Reedrill and clearing the ~meter wide hole, Steve pulled our new fish hut over our new fishing spot.

Welcome home fish hut 6!

Maps

Thirty countries host over 60 permanent, year-round staions in Antarctica. The US operates three: Palmer, McMurdo, and South Pole. Our team is based out of McMurdo Station, the largest on the continent. 

McMurdo Station is located on Hut Point Peninsula on Ross Island, adjacent to the Ross Ice Shelf, and about 60 miles from the continent.



A close up view of Hut Point Peninsula on Ross Island, and the areas we are fishing: Inaccessible Island, and Cape Evans Wall. With the cracks in the sea ice and precautions we must take along the way, it takes us about an hour and a half to get to our sites, about 12 miles north of McMurdo.



On the north side of the Erebus Glacier Tongue, there is a crack in the sea ice that we must profile everyday in order to make sure that it is safe to cross. To do this, we must shovel out along the crack, measure its width, and drill holes to measure depth in several areas. Here, three sea ice teams that are working in this area look at the crack together.

The fish that made everything better.

It was one of those Mondays. The door to our Pisten Bully sprung and our whole team excursion to a fishing site further afield was cancelled. We were able to borrow a PB from another team, and three of us went to a local site in the afternoon. The wind picked up, and the weather was less than ideal. The jiffy drill didn't work for a while. We stood outside for hourse. Monday was out to get us. Then:

Isaac caught a fish.

A different fish. A rare fish. Not a bernie or a bork. Gymnodraco acuticeps, more commonly known as a dragonfish. It is benthic, and hanging out in the same area as where we've been catching bernies and pennelliis (about 60 feet deep). It has a pointy "snout," teeth, and an underbite.
Our spirits lifted. We rejoiced. Isaac caught another one.  The following day, Brad caught another.


Bravo 308 welcomes three dragonfish to their new home in the Crary Lab aquarium.

fish!

Fishing operations have been coming along. Most of our fish have been acquired from a few holes close to station. "Bernies" (T. bernacchii) are often found clustered together at the bottom of the tank. As you can see, there are several color morphs ranging from brown and mottled to pinkish and pale. Some exhibit a white patch on the back of their neck (above), while some have three bright white lines. The lined bernie below is a gravid female, as noted by the significant bulge aft of its fins.

A visual glossary

We live in a different world here in McMurdo, full of acronyms, confusing language, strange vehicles, unique critters, and a thriving culture. Here's a bit of a visual glossary so you can understand our references.

        

Ivan the terra bus: A large 57 passenger bus that transports people to and from the airfields.

Pisten Bully (PB): the red tracked vehicle we most often take out on to the ice. In this photo, we are standing over fishing holes that we drilled open with a jiffy drill. In the backgound is a fish hut we sometimes fish in.   

 

Jiffy Drill: a drill we use that is capable of drilling through the sea ice. We use jiffy drills to drill our own holes when there is not a large hole already there (usually for divers, inside an orange fish hut). Here we are, assembling the jiffy drill.

The jiffy drill  has a two-stroke engine on it (like a lawnmower) and a 10 inch wide bit. Each flight is one meter. At the moment, the ice is about 2 meters thick, but we had to use three flights due to all the snow on top of the ice. 

 

Hagglund takes a group out to Sea Ice Training

 

Haaglund: another tracked vehicle that can take more passengers (left). We don't normally use these vehicles, except for when we do various trainings outside of town.



Tomato being towed behind our PB, 2010

 Tomato (aka Apple) : A small, red, round, mobile fish hut that we can pull behind our Pisten Bully. Sometimes we will place a tomato out to further field sites where we can't put a larger, orange fish hut. In these situations, we consider our operations to be "tomato-based."

First fish!

Success!

Once the group was all trained up on safety, survival, and vehicle trainings, it was time to take the B308 Pisten Bully for a spin and go catch some fish. Our first stop was a close fish hut to station, at a place called the Jetty. The ice is about 4-6 feet thick, the water about 60-70 feet deep. A wide hole was drilled here for divers to access, and we figured we'd see what fish would be hanging around. Marissa Lee was the first one to reel in her catch (above), soon followed by Dan Hassumani (below).

These fish are Trematomus bernacchii, more commonly known to us as "bernies, " less commonly known as the emerald rockcod, and an all-around common species found in this part of Antarctica. They enjoy laying on the bottom of the ocean and not doing much. By the end of the evening, we reeled in five bernies to bring back to the aquarium at the Crary Lab in McMurdo.

Challenges

In February 2011, the sea ice in front of McMurdo station blew out and there was open water along the coastline for the first time in over a decade. Last season (Oct-Dec 2010), we were used to the safe multi-year ice which was thick and safe to travel across. This year, due to the dynamic activity of the sea ice interfacing with the Erebus Glacier Tongue and Dellbridge Islands (just north of station), there are many cracks that are too wide to cross by our tracked vehicles.


Most of our excellent fishing spots from last field season (in the pink area) are now inaccessible to us by vehicle, and we may have to fly to them via helicopter in order to obtain the variety in fish species that we are looking for. We are staying positive and flexible, looking at options for what we CAN do now, and hope to fish at some sites just in front of station until we can work out logistics to fish farther afield.

These are fish we caught last year, swimming in the tanks in the aquarium facilities at McMurdo. We are after the same species this year. 

Bravo 308 on ice

It’s been a long week for the team as they made their southerly journey from one continent to another via another, but Bravo 308 has finally made it to Antarctica safely on a clear sunny day with balmy temps of +10F.

 

Today, Dan and Marissa are in Sea Ice Training (pictured right), where they will learn the mechanics of the daily shifting sea ice and how to identify and profile cracks to see what is safe to travel across.
The rest of the team is busy with refresher courses and vehicle trainings, but hope to commence 2011 field operations as soon as possible. Antarctica is a unique environment which doesn’t come without its dangers, so days of trainings are necessary to ensure a safe and productive season.

Boarding the C-17 cargo plane for the 5.5 hour trip to McMurdo. Somehow we mostly slept the whole way...

The team! Every science team on the ice has an "Event Number" and ours is Bravo-308. From left: Marissa Lee (lab manager), Brad Buckley (Principal Investigator), Isaac Sleadd and Dan Hassumani (graduate students). We'll be joined by our field coordinator, Allison "Sandwich" Barden once we arrive.