The trip

Sorry folks, but your teacher lied to you in geography class. There are actually 5 oceans on Earth (according to Oceanographers): Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, and Southern. You probably already know where the first 4 are located. How about the Southern? It's defined as the waters south of 60°, which encircle Antarctica. 

The Southern Ocean as delineated by the red line (60° S).

While we're looking at the Google Earth image of Antarctica, compare it to North America:

The US (including AK and HI) is 9.65 million km². Antarctica is 14 million km²!

Antarctica is HUGE!

So where exactly are we going? 

We're starting the science portion of our trip at Palmer Station, Anvers Island - Antarctica. This is just north of the Antarctic Circle (defined as 66.34°S), located near the tip of the long skinny peninsula that juts out towards South America. We'll be spending our time on the R/V Laurence M. Gould, on the West side of the Antarctic Peninsula (to the left in the Google earth image above).

 

The sampling grid: each dot is a "station" to sample at. [From lternet.edu]

Why?

This research expedition is part of the US Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program. The idea behind the 26 US LTER sites is to observe the environment year after year not only to understand what's happening now but to look at trends and document changes happening over time. Lots more on this in future posts!