Antarctica the Sequel...

So where to this time and why?

A slightly different area this time - more North, more ocean, less land (potentially none at all in fact), less penguins - but still as much fun I am sure. The map above shows the Drake Passage and Scotia Sea (basin to the right) which is where we will be sampling. The objectives of this cruise is to find, take underwater pictures of and to collect deep-water corals in this area. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) runs through the Drake Passage and is the strongest current in the world, and it is this current that feeds into the Atlantic ocean, mixing with northern water coming down from the Arctic somewhere around the middle. Some corals live for over 100 years (some much more than that),and they have been around for many tens of thousands of years, and as they grow signals from what the water is like (temperature in particular, but also other nutrients) are recorded into their skeletons - so we can take those skeletons and look back in time to see what water masses were doing - pretty cool huh. This is the main thrust of the proposal and is my friends Laura's work. 

My part is to use underwater towed cameras and trawl collections to look and see what corals are where - no one has gone into the middle of the Drake to look for corals, so we're not really sure what we're going to find. We know certain species live on the Argentinian and Chilean shelves, and we know certain species live on the Antarctic shelf - but what lives in the middle and how does it get there. Also pretty cool. 

We then also have a group of geologists from the University of Texas that are sharing the ship with us and will be collecting rocks in the scotia sea - unfortunately no zodiacs and penguin tours this time, it's all work! 

I'll of course also be rooting for more coral babies...:0) Still hoping the ones left in PA in the warehouse have survived, but guess we'll see! 

We also have a cruise website this time - so although I will try and write updates to my blog, I'll also be working on the website (with pictures!), so may not be able to put things up here as often. The website is here - Censeam Cruise - and also if you click the title of the post.