Aquarium senior educator Jo Blasi is on expedition to Antarctica to help study the impact of climate change in these areas and changes in the marine ecosystem. She will be live blogging frequently about the expedition, research technologies and marine life encountered during the trip.

First, a quick update: After 29 straight days of calm weather, we ran into a nice 50-60 knot gale yesterday, just in time to pick up the NSF representatives at Rothera and start the mooring deployments. It has calmed down some, so we managed the first deployment at 200.140, and are moving on to the 300 line for the pair of moorings and the recovery of the two gliders.  (You can follow us by tracking the ship.)

Typical types of phytoplankton along the Western Antarctic peninsula.

While I wait for the seas to calm, I wanted to explain in a little more detail what I'm doing with all those CTD water samples. My team studies phytoplankton (algae), the tiny plants in the seawater that use sunlight as energy to make food and oxygen. While plants on land can be very large (for example, trees), the plants in the ocean for the most part are small with an average size being only around 50 microns in length.

We are studying the phytoplankton in the Antarctic because they are the base of the food web and our data suggests that the number of phytoplankton is changing as the West Antarctic peninsula is warming over the last few decades. Phytoplankton are found in the upper ocean where there is sufficient light to promote photosynthesis. Check out this sample from our 200.0.40 line on our sampling grid. Can you recognize any diatoms?

Phytoplankton sample from the 200.-040 line (Photo credit: Beth Simmons PAL/LTER)

We recently left our most southern sampling station near Charcot Island.  Here is what a water sample from the canyon looked like.

Charcot Canyon phytoplankton magnified! (Photo credit: Beth Simmons)

If you would like to learn more about Antarctic phytoplankton check out this page. How can we catch such tiny things? We take a sample of water from the CTD and extract the plankton by passing the seawater through tiny filters! It starts with water from the CTD being poured into the top of a funnel.  Then, a vacuum pulls the water through a special filter. The water ends up in a flask but the filters capture the plankton. These filters are frozen and sent back to Rutgers University for further examination when the crew returns to the states. Examining how much phytoplankton is on each filter informs scientists about what concentrations of phytoplankton are in the water in the area, where the water sample was collected from and what depth the sample was taken.

It can take a long time to filter seawater and I do it several times a day so here's a quick view of what it's like!  Check it out...






All of Jo's entries are cross posted on the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research Station site here. Track her progress on the R/V Gould, and learn more about the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research Station.

Aquarium senior educator Jo Blasi is on expedition to Antarctica to help study the impact of climate change in these areas and changes in the marine ecosystem. She will be live blogging frequently about the expedition, research technologies and marine life encountered during the trip.

The research cruise is in full swing.  The entire ship is teaming with scientists, technicians and support crew 24 hours a day, all working together to make sure the research gets done in the short time we have until we return in two weeks.

Jo concentrating (Credit: Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER | 2013)

However, that doesn’t mean that people don’t have fun on the boat. People spend their free time watching movies, reading, participating in a ship-wide cribbage tournament and most recently decorating Styrofoam cups.




In my last post on the CTDs (and Nicole also explained during the recent webcast), I mentioned that the LTER group studies deep sea canyons. Some of those canyon areas are really deep! If you check out the graph, you’ll notice that the area we were in on January 14was close to 4000 meters! That’s over 2.5 miles deep! Did you ever think the ocean had areas that deep? At that depth the pressure is great enough to squish just about anything. Including Styrofoam cups!



Everyone on the boat got into the fun, using their creativity to make keepsakes for loved ones, souvenirs to remind them of the trip, fun mementoes in the middle of the busy research time. But my favorite gets goes to my sister—Happy Birthday, Kate! We filled them with paper towels to minimize the damage under the pressure and then placed the cups into mesh bags. Once the bags were full, we tied them to the underside of the CTD.

(Credit: Jo Blasi/Palmer LTER | 2013)

In this particular cast, the CTD was programmed to descend to 3,710 meters.

Built out of reinforced metal, the CTD is not impacted by the pressure; however, as the CTD descended, the Styrofoam cups were slowly compressed. After the 3-hour trip to our marked depth, the CTD and cups were hauled back at the surface by the winch and we took a look… The cups came back with the same decorations and shape, just smaller!

A cup squished at depth – 3,710 meters!