Homeward Bound

We’ve been transiting north towards Punta Arenas, Chile for several days now. After exchanging some personnel and gear at Palmer Station on Anvers Island we passed through the Gerlache Strait and into the Drake Passage. We were extremely fortunate to have favorable seas on both our transit south toward Antarctica and again heading north. (The Drake Passage can have some of the roughest seas in the world!)

A 180° view of the Gerlache Strait

We’ve noticed much warmer air temperatures and more sea birds since reaching the tip of South America. Soon we’ll turn into the Straits of Magellan and we are hoping to spend our last day at sea observing dolphins, penguins, and whales before the hectic off-load and long flights home begin.

As we near the Argentinian coastline we’ve spotted quite a few fishing and re-supply vessels like the one above

This afternoon we held a “science symposium” where the leader of each research group shared some of their team’s more interesting findings from the previous month. The photos and vast quantity of data were remarkable, but what struck me the most was how all of our research – physics, microbiology, macrobiology, and chemistry – fits so well together to tell a “big picture” story about the changes that are occurring on the Western Antarctic Peninsula as our climate changes. The LTER (Long Term Ecological Research) Program is one of the more unique scientific endeavors that the US supports; normally research studies are only 1 – 3 years in the field. Having 20+ years of interdisciplinary field data is rare; having it in one of the most rapidly changing climate systems on Earth is priceless. Let’s hope funding for this type of vital research that helps us understand food webs, sea level changes, ocean circulation, and climate change continues for many years to come.


~ This is the final post for the Southern Ocean 2015 blog - thanks for reading along! ~