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| The Aurora Australis, my home for the next three months | I am participating in a krill acoustic assessment study being conducted by the Australian Antarctic Division, located in Hobart, Tasmania. | A couple of hours before departure, officials bring sniffer dogs aboard to see if anyone is taking any food or drugs that they shouldn't be. |
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| As the departure time draws near, people gather on the Macquire wharf to wish friends and family goodbye. | Get the streamers out. Hundreds of coloured ribbons are cast from the ship just prior to departure. |
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| Bye-bye Hobart -- see you in 3 months. Hmmm, I won't see a car or tree in the next three months either. | Immediately we deploy a CPR (Continuous Plankton Recorder). | A few hours out of Hobart the winds picked up and they stayed that way for a week. Some people hid in their cabins for a week due to seasickness. |
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| My cabin for the next three months. During the latter portion of the cruise we'll need to triple or quadruple up. I'm not looking forward to that. | Time for a little party to get your mind off the seasickness and lack of work to do while spending 2 weeks getting to Antarctica. This is the "Catch of the Day" party, featuring Steve N. as a giant krill and Stephane as a coccolithophorid |
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| I came as a lobster fisherman from Nova Scotia. | Of course there were a few interesting games to play at this party. | Time to keep the oceanographers happy. Throw the CTD into the water and let them play with water samples for a few days. |
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| Although the weather wasn't too fun for the first week and a half, one day it turned beautiful and everyone gathered to observe the first icebergs. |
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| Everyone came out to view all the icebergs and of course a lot of pictures were taken. Whales played in the seas and the day couldn't of been more perfect. |
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| Of course to end a beautiful day you need a sunset. This was at about 11.30pm one night | Another sunset over Antarctica -- note the mountain on the left | The Green Flash. I've waited ten years to see one of these, and this one lasted 10 seconds before turning into the extremely rare blue/purple flash that followed as the sun set. |
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| Weekly emergency musters are conducted on board. You must report in full Antarctic clothing since you could be on the deck for hours in the cold. | Of course, you are all dressed up and have no where to go during these musters, so they often lead to some interesting post-muster shots. |
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| One muster required the testing of expired flares and other signaling devices. | The heli deck is also a good place to get a little exercise outside of the ship's two gyms. Totem tennis in one case and Hacki Sack in another. |
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| Up in the conference room massive amounts of krill are detected on the echosounder. Time to do a net trawl. Over the RMT8 plankton net goes. Our target species, Euphausia superba. | In the aft control room we decide from sounder information where to target the trawl to catch superba. |
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| Success! Buckets of suberba in our net. | Time to measure the krill to obtain a size-frequency distribution for the acoustics | Vic helps me measure both the krill's length and width. |
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| We also get a sampling of other zooplankton in our net | An abundance of krill in a trawl gets our voyage leader excited and extra samples are microwaved and served to unsuspecting scientists and crew with a mixed response. |
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| Maya coaches Andreas on the Australian experience of eating "Timtams" with coffee. | Step 1: Bite off two opposite corners | Step 2: Stick one corner into your coffee and suck through the other corner | Step 3: Know when to stop as the timtam starts to melt rather quickly | Step 4: Ewww, hands all covered in melted chocolate. Where's the timtam Andreas? |
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| Time for some relaxation in the bar. A rather long game of Settlers of Cetan. | The cooks attempt to start a garden in the galley with the tops of plants. | Whale spotting on Monkey's Island. |
