{"id":8263,"date":"2015-04-20T17:03:52","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T01:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mlmlblog.wordpress.com\/?p=8263"},"modified":"2020-10-23T12:03:55","modified_gmt":"2020-10-23T19:03:55","slug":"tales-from-the-field-in-antarctica-post-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/2015\/04\/20\/tales-from-the-field-in-antarctica-post-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Tales from the Field in Antarctica: Post 1"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Jamie Sibley Yin<\/h3>\n

Dr. Valerie Loeb is an adjunct professor at Moss Landing Marine Labs. Currently, she functions as an independent Antarctic ecosystem research scientist collaborating with Jarrod Santora of UC Santa Cruz. In April, she headed out to sea with a new NSF funded project entitled \"Pilot Study:\u00a0 \u00a0Addition of Biological Sampling to Drake Passage Transits of the 'LM Gould'\".\u00a0\u00a0The following are updates from the field by Jamie Sibley Yin who is in charge of communications.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

April 8th<\/sup>, 2015 - First Entry<\/strong><\/p>\n

My chair sways gently, a jackhammer-like sound comes from an undisclosed location, men with white beards and black wire rimmed glasses stare into their laptops.\u00a0 Where am I? I\u2019m somewhere in the Straits of Magellan, en route to Antarctica.<\/p>\n

Hi, my name\u2019s Jamie and I\u2019m going to share my journey to, and my time in Antarctica with you all.\u00a0 I\u2019m a recent marine biology graduate from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and I\u2019m working with Valerie Loeb of Moss Landing Marine Labs on her ecosystem survey of Drakes Passage.<\/p>\n

Today was the first day of real work--which I have been eagerly anticipating.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t quite what I was expecting but, then again, I haven\u2019t known what to expect this whole time.\u00a0 There was lots of back and forth, running in and out of the ship. Tying down the microscopes and lights putting away boxes of petri dishes, pipettes, and one liter glass jars.<\/p>\n

Outside the cool wind blows and the sea delivers unexpected blasts of seawater to my face.\u00a0 It\u2019s cold, but not unbearably so.\u00a0 We have been issued special ECW (extreme cold weather) gear, which consists of everything you need to survive on an Antarctic boat including steel-toed boots (always needed on deck) and lined rubber gloves similar to the ones my mother uses to wash dishes.<\/p>\n

The bird and marine mammal observer for our project, Mike, said he saw a minke whale and various birds including a giant petrel.\u00a0 I visited him in the bridge where he does his observations behind panoramic windows through a large pair of binoculars.\u00a0 The bridge is on the fourth level of the ship where the captain and mates orchestrate the movement of our ship, the Lawrence M. Gould or LMG.\u00a0 All I could spot were some birds that looked like small sea gulls (actually Antarctic fulmars), and lots of choppy waves.\u00a0 On the horizon I saw a snowy island, which, upon further inspection proved to be a cruise ship.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still getting my \u201csea legs\u201d as they say, and after breakfast I felt like regurgitating the eggs and bacon I had just eagerly consumed.\u00a0 But after seeing a whale, some\u00a0 Peale\u2019s dolphins, and two penguins, my on-the-verge seasickness had left me.\u00a0 It was time to take a nap in preparation for our 2am zooplankton net tows.<\/p>\n

\"Jamie<\/a>
Jamie standing in front of the US's National Science Foundation's icebreaker and research vessel, the Laurence M. Gould, named after an American scientist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Project summary by Dr. Valerie Loeb<\/strong><\/p>\n

Overview<\/strong><\/p>\n

Changes in the Southern Ocean due to climate warming are expected to\u00a0be visible in ecosystem dynamics.\u00a0 Analysis of ADCP records from\u00a0supply transits of Drake Passage by the \u201cL.M. Gould\u201d, 1999-present,\u00a0indicate that underway observations of the upper ocean scattering\u00a0layer can serve as a proxy to monitor these changes.\u00a0 Recent results\u00a0indicate that interannual variability in backscattering strength\u00a0(i.e., quantity of responsible organisms) is correlated to climate\u00a0indices.\u00a0 The interpretation of these ecological changes is severely\u00a0limited because the sound scatterers have not been identified and\u00a0linkages to upper trophic level predators are unknown.\u00a0 This project\u00a0adds biological sampling to the \u201cL.M. Gould\u201d time series with the\u00a0expectation that ADCP data, calibrated with net-tow data and\u00a0depth-referenced underwater videography and predator distribution, can\u00a0be used to extend the spatio-temporal coverage of in situ sampling in\u00a0Drake Passage.<\/p>\n

Intellectual Merit<\/strong><\/p>\n

This proposal provides a novel approach on how to make use of long\u00a0term ADCP records in identifying those organisms responsible for\u00a0seasonal, interannual and longer term variability observed in ADCP\u00a0records collected since 1999.\u00a0 Net tows accompanied by videography\u00a0during spring, autumn and winter periods will provide information on\u00a0the abundance and taxonomic-size composition of organisms likely to be\u00a0dominant sound scatterers within the 3 biogeographic zones of Drake\u00a0Passage.\u00a0 The distribution and densities of distinct zooplankton\u00a0assemblages and backscattering strength will be linked to\u00a0seabird\/mammal predator populations to illuminate ecologically\u00a0important areas (i.e., characterized by high trophic transfer), which\u00a0may be candidates for Important Bird Areas (BirdLife International).\u00a0Establishment of \u201cbottom-up\u201d trophic connections enable future\u00a0integrated assessments of climate variability on upper trophic level\u00a0predators.\u00a0 Examination of ADCP backscatter variability and trends in\u00a0southern Drake Passage with respect to zooplankton data independently\u00a0collected here from 1994-2009 should indicate organisms underlying\u00a0past ADCP trends and cycles relative climate indices (e.g., ENSO).\u00a0Successful implementation of this project may initiate spatially and\u00a0temporally coherent biological sampling extending over a sufficient\u00a0number of years into the future that would provide statistically\u00a0robust data sets on the species composition and abundance of\u00a0zooplankton and seabird\/mammal populations essential for assessment of\u00a0significant ecosystem change in Drake Passage associated with a\u00a0warming Southern Ocean.<\/p>\n

Our first field season is October 27-November 22, 2014 (Austral\u00a0spring) and the second is in April-May, 2015 (autumn).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jamie Sibley Yin Dr. Valerie Loeb is an adjunct professor at Moss Landing Marine Labs. Currently, she functions as an independent Antarctic ecosystem research scientist collaborating with Jarrod Santora of UC Santa Cruz. In April, she headed out to sea with a new NSF funded project entitled “Pilot Study:\u00a0 \u00a0Addition of Biological Sampling to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":8266,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[41,114],"class_list":["post-8263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drop-inblog","tag-antarctica","tag-fieldwork"],"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"MLML Student Life","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20585,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8263\/revisions\/20585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}