January 31

Yesterday we finished sampling in the northwest near the shelf break. We found the warm oceanic water where we expected, but we also found it over some banks (shallow spots). We are going back to the our numerical circulation model solutions to see how well the model is doing at producing warm water in this region. This will be a real test of the model skill - not something we usually have the opportunity to do.

The heavy red line is the ship track.

We then headed south to return to the place where we sampled after leaving the Korean fishermen at McMurdo Station. As you can see from the maps, we have wandered over much of the western Ross Sea. The part near the western coast is still covered in sea ice, so we cannot get into that area.  

We will stay in the southwest for the rest of the cruise. We are re-doing some samples to see how conditions have changed. We are seeing much fresher water in a place where there used to be sea ice. The melting ice has changed the salt structure near the surface.

We started to work on our styrofoam cups. A tradition on cruises making CTD casts is to take foam cups and send them down attached to the CTD. The higher pressure underwater crushes the cups making them into shot glass sized containers. We decorate the cups so that different patterns emerge.

The bag with decorated styrafoam cups that is attached to the CTD.

The conditions here are a bit marginal for good cup crushing. The deepest water around here is between 800 and 900 meters (2600 to 3000 ft). It sounds like a lot but it will only reduce the cup sizes by about a third or a half. To get a dramatic change, the CTD needs to take them down to 2000 or 4000 meters (you can figure how many feet, if you want). We would need to be off the shelf in the ocean to see those depths. We have not been off the shelf since we arrived in early January.

As you see from the pictures below, the styrafoam cups were crushed a bit. The white cups at the top show the original size.  Although the cups are not as small as they would be from a deeper CTD cast, everyone who participated got
something rare to take home.