Science In Action [Inaction?]

I have slacked off a good bit here since for the most part, we've been quite busy here aboard the Palmer.  I say for the most part because we have now lost 5 days of sampling due to bad weather, and though I had plenty of free time during the bad weather, I hardly was able to do anything productive due to the pitch and roll of the ship. 



A large wave passing the porthole near my workstation



Our IT displaying the pressure record that bottomed out
(on the right side of the page)



Since I last wrote, we spent our 2 days of transit heading out to our first station only to be met by our first storm.  This region of the world is especially treacherous in terms of weather since (a), it is near the point where constant cold meets more temperate air and the two mix rather turbulently, and (b) there is no land mass through the Southern Ocean, and wind is allowed to circle the globe continuously undeterred by land masses and spins up low pressure regions which then become storms that make their way right through our path.  In the same manner, the ocean is allowed to flow continuously around the globe here and is therefore important to all of the worlds oceans and hence one of the reasons we are down here. 

   

Pressure close up

When the storm came, we resigned ourselves to take cover in the ice closer to the continent near Cape Adare (Western Ross Sea/ North West of McMurdo).  The ice at least dampens the storm waves making it somewhat calmer.  However, the winds were something fierce, blowing at a near constant 40 knots (46 mph) and full of snow and ice.  When it was finally all over, I went out onto the decks and to my amusement, they were now covered with snow.  It felt very strange seeing snow there on the ship.  I knew I should expect it, but something about actually seeing it out on a ship goes against my intuition.  First against the notion of snow over water; since snow cannot remain on the surface, it unconsciously came to be thought of a phenomena that occurs strictly on land, even though a ship is a suitable surface for snow to stick.  Second, I think the majority of instances where one thinks of a ship voyage  (at least myself), a warm sunny locale is imagined.  Again, I expected the snow, only found it to be most amusing.



The same deck covered in snow
after a storm





The deck outside my cabin before the storm



After the first storm passed we began our stations over the shelf and slope off of Cape Adare in a north-easterly direction.  Not long into it, came our second storm and halted progress again.  This time the ship had no ice to hide in, so our only option was to turn into the wind and just ride out the storm while dodging wind blown ice bergs that can only be detected through the thick snow and fog by radar equipment.  Luckily the ship handles very well in rough weather; we were in 20 foot seas (trough to crest), and the rocking motion seemed no worse than what I've experienced on smaller ships in smaller seas in the Gulf Of Mexico. 

A cargo van dented from waves on the fantail (stern)

Progress was still hard to manage due to the pitch and roll.  Walking anywhere is of course hard, especially up the stairs and through the sets of fire doors found on each upper deck.  I found for myself, that I don't get seasick, but I can sure understand why people do.  I do however get headaches while trying to look at a computer screen, which certainly hindered or eliminated entirely my ability to do my own work or update the travelogue.

NOTE: Some of you may not know that I am also quite busy finishing up my Master's thesis while I am out here, which is what is meant by my own work.



A wave crashing over the bow during one of the storms
with ice on window from spray.



Before the second storm had even finished passing by, we were then hit by a third low pressure system, one even worse than the previous two.  We were seeing continuous 50 knot winds (58 mph) with gusts up to 60 knots (69 mph) and the pressure plummeted down to about 935 mb which was so low that it went off of the bottom page of the old analog pressure recorder.  It is surprising to see pressures this low that aren't hurricane force winds. Usually near the tropics, anything less than 1000 mb is at least a tropical storm.

The storms may sound a little scary, and they are a bit, especially in such a very cold region where there's little chance for rescue if anything goes wrong; yet I must confess, that I get kind of excited by the experience of such storms out in the polar ocean (sorry for you to have to hear that Mom).  I very much enjoy going up to the bridge, feeling the rocking motion, and watching the large waves crash over the bow and splash high enough to splatter saltwater drops over the windows of the bridge 5 decks up from the main deck.  I am unsure if it is the excitement of adventure, or if I actually enjoy a continuous multi-day roller coaster ride, but either way, I love it.

Vessel Underweigh

Unfortunately, I will no longer be able to access the internet to update the travelogue, so I will be updating through a friend.  We have email capabilities through satellite, though it is rather limited since the satellites only see the Antarctic region infrequently.  The limit is down in the kilobyte range which will severely limit my picture posting abilities.  Nonetheless, I will try to select a few of the most relevant and engaging pictures, reduce their resolution and send them through email to be posted.  Fortunately, at some point during the voyage, most events will become repetitive, so the pictures reduction comes with little bearing.

Leaving McMurdo

We shoved off from McMurdo and got underweigh on a beautiful sunny Antarctic day following a blustery stormy day that renewed the snow pack.  As we steamed away from the ice pier breaking through large chunks of loose sea ice floating in our path, our magnificent view of McMurdo station situated between the mountains in freshly fallen snow was augmented with occasional orca fins breaking the water's smooth as glass surface while lounging seals lay on nearby pieces.  I am nearly in disbelief that I was really present in that almost magical scene.  Ever since I've been here, I find myself constantly looking through my pictures in my camera almost to convince myself that it really happened.  The orcas were too unpredictable and so quick that I was disappointedly unable to snap a good picture of one that I could share here.

Lazy Seal

From McMurdo, we then proceeded on a two day journey to our first station.  This was no leisure time however, as we still had plenty of work and preparations to do.  We of course had to attend several safety meetings of different topics covering such unthinkable topics as abandoning ship, man overboard, fire, or just general safety procedures while deploying our instruments as well as informational meetings telling us what we generally needed to know such as meal times, hallway etiquette, and such.  During the first safety meeting, we each had to bring our in room life jackets and what they call an immersion suit out for inspection.  The immersion suit is a full body thick neoprene suit that is supposedly going to keep you alive something like ten minutes more than you would otherwise survive in the -2 degree Celsius waters.  We each had to put on our respective immersion suits to make sure they were in working order.  These suits make one look appreciably like the claymation character Gumby, only orange like Gumby's enemies of the series; so some naturally call them "Gumby suits".  We then each climbed into the fully enclosed lifeboats to see how to get there, where to position yourself once there, and how to strap yourself in.  Some of the general safety issues for the boat include, securing down everything that needs to be, making sure to wear steel toe boots and a float coat (heavy work parka with flotation materials built in) whenever outside on the main deck (this includes the Baltic room when the door is open), and wearing a hard hat whenever on the deck and something is going on overhead (i.e. winch deployment of instruments).

Me in a Gumby suit

There are 4 physical oceanography (PO) graduate students from different schools around the country on board to get oceanographic work experience, and to help out with some of the basic work.  There's myself from Texas A&M, Eric from Florida State, Jessie from the University of Washington, and Sam from Scripps Oceanographic Institute of the University of California at San Diego.  The boat will operate in 12 hour shifts around the clock so that the expense of the boat (something like $100,000 a day) is maximized.  Jessie and myself are on the nightwatch, midnight to noon, while Eric and Sam are on the day watch, noon to midnight.  The co-chief scientist Alejandro "Alex" Orsi from Texas A&M is also on the midnight watch, which partly dictated my being on the nightwatch.  There are 4 meals a day on board; 4 to accommodate those on the night watch, 7:30-8:30 breakfast, 11:30 to 12:30 lunch, 5:30 to 6:30 dinner, and 11:30 pm to 12:30 am for midnight rations.  The food is excellent and is prepared by a Chilean kitchen crew who really know what they are doing.  So far we've had excellent selections of fresh vegetables, but those should run out before the end of the cruise, so I am trying to get my fill of veggies.

Captain, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Mates

In addition to all of the safety meetings, we (the PO students) had to basically learn what we were to be doing during the research cruise and go over our steps.  Ultimately we will be manning the CTD station (Conductivity Temperature Depth measures Salinity & Temperature vs Depth to identify the structure of the water column; see Intro post) and assisting in sampling the water brought aboard in the bottles.  I will give a more specific description in a future post about the specifics of our job on board.  But for the two days of transit, we prepared the CTD rosette by making sure all of the o-rings were replaced on the bottles to be sure they would hold the water from the correct depths and not leak or mix with a different water depth and making ready everything to do with the rosette all while going over the procedures for deployment, recovery, and sampling of the rosette.  We stopped for a few hours during the transit and made a test cast to make sure everything was working alright.  After a few minor adjustments, we were ready to go and continued to head towards our first real station at Cape Adare at the western entry to the Ross Sea.

Pushing through the ice

Ship arrival

The Palmer steaming into port

The vessel that will be our home for the next two months, the RVIB (Research Vessel Ice Breaker) Nathaniel B. Palmer, came in to McMurdo Sound at about 8:00 am to a beautiful view of the snowy mountains in the background and flattened pancake like sea ice amidst a half melted harbor. The ship broke through some leftover fragments of ice and came to dock at the ice pier.  It is a magnificent ship, chartered by NSF, driven and maintained by Edison-Chouest Offshore, and science support given by Raytheon Polar Services Corporation, the same group that provides support for the United States Antarctic Program.  We had to wait approximately 24 hours once the Palmer was secured on the pier for the previous team to have all of their gear unloaded and for the ship to be fully fueled (about 10,000 gallons, enough to last us the 68 days planned at sea), before we were allowed to board, load, and setup our own gear.  The previous cruise had been out for about a month doing the some the same research only in different locations; and several members will re-board and join us along for our cruise as well making their cruise about 3 months with a couple of days stop in McMurdo.

Forward starboard view of the Palmer on the ice pier with McMurdo in the background

The ship is a large one, at 308 ft overall length and 60 ft breadth with 4 decks above the main deck and a large overhanging bridge from which to view the ice.  My stateroom is on the 02 deck in just about the center of the ship.  Myself, two other Physical Oceanography students, and a teacher joining us from Madison, Wisconsin to blog about the voyage to his students, are sharing the only 4 person stateroom on the ship, all the rest are 2 person.  We do have more floor room, but of course less storage and we have to deal with 4 of us (not bad at all, they are all very nice people; I'm the only unpleasant one!).  Everyone else's stateroom (of the science crew anyway) is on the 01 deck, except for the Chief Scientist Jim Swift from Scripps Oceanographic Institute in San Diego, and the Co-Chief Scientist Alejandro Orsi from Texas A&M University, who are both on the 03 deck.  The remaining ship's crew are all on the 02 deck and above.  We mostly will work from the main deck except for some of the trace metal group who will be working from the Helo deck (deck for a helicopter) in a garage like enclosed room.  On the main deck there are several labs.  Two wetlabs are aft (towards the rear), and are next to the Marine Technician's workshop.  There are three dry labs, one aft on the starboard side (the main lab for chemistry), one aft on the port side (more chemistry), and one forward (the main one for data processing and CTD control; lots of computers) on the starboard side.  On the port side across from the command control lab, is a computer lab.  Forward of all the labs are the mess hall and the galley (kitchen).  In between the wet labs and the dry labs on the starboard side is a room they call the "Baltic Room".  This is considered a deck even though it is a room, since it has a giant hydraulic door that opens up with a hydraulic extending boom that sticks out to deploy our CTD package (see intro post).  This room and the CTD command room, is where I will spend most of my time.

My stateroom.  I'm in the bunk on the lower right.  All of the other staterooms are two person, but we students are the greenhorns and must pay our dues.  The TV shows camera angles from all parts of the boat including heading information

The Baltic Room with huge hydraulic door to deploy the CTD, retrieve it, and sample within this room.  This room will be my second home.

Ice on the deck 2 levels above the main deck

The Galley

Once we began loading, we remained busy for two days.  First, all of the cargo vans (large cargo containers) had to be placed by crane on the deck, then opened and all of the contents moved inside the ship.  This took the majority of the first day.  Next while the cargo vans were being placed below decks in the cargo hold, we had to shuffle containers to near their respective setup locations, then unpack everything, and reshuffle empty boxes away and bring in new ones to be unpacked.  Then each respective station setup their equipment which of course has to be secured by screws, rope, bungee, ratchet straps, or whatever means necessary since each piece of equipment is usually at least several thousand dollars worth of equipment, and often tens of thousands or more.  Most equipment then needs to be calibrated, adjusted, initialized, checked, etc. as often multi-thousand dollar equipment requires.  Things like chemicals need to be placed properly and secured as well.  While inherently, climate and ocean water masses and their changes through time are physical phenomena, the majority of measurements on board are of a chemical nature and maintained by chemical oceanographers.  This meant that a large portion of the containers were chemical reagents of some kind which usually require special treatment.  I will explain more in detail later, but the chemical properties we are studying are CFC's (as in the banned in the 90's aerosol product), Helium, Oxygen, pH, Alkalinity, Dissolved Inorganic Carbon (DIC), Carbon 14 isotope (C14), Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC), Nutrients, Salinity, Trace Metals, Tritium, Oxygen 18 isotope (O18), Colored Dissolved Organic Matter (CDOM), Pigments, and probably some others that I am forgetting.  So you see there is a lot of chemistry that goes on here, so it took a long time to get all of it setup.  As I know very little about the measurement and analysis of most of the chemical processes, and much less about their setup, I was resigned to do the container shuffling and stowing down in the cargo hold.

The main lab.  Lots of chemical analysis is done here.

The computer lab.  Texas A&M's Dr. Alejandro Orsi at the computer

The Science Command Console.  CTD information will be broadcast on these screens for me to watch.  This will be home number one for me.

The night of the first day of loading, we got to sleep on the boat.  Oh it was so much better than staying in the room we called "man camp" in the McMurdo dorms.  It was nice to be making some headway towards our goal by that point.  There were some setbacks though.  First, some containers labeled "Do Not Freeze" ended up being frozen, and many chemicals fell below freezing, and may cause some unwanted affects.  There were also some sensitive instruments also in the frozen Do Not Freeze package, some drifting sensors that did not respond when tested, and their deployment was canceled altogether, essentially wasting a good bit of money.  And then we had expected to be able to be loaded and setting up as the boat was fueled in McMurdo, but instead we were made to wait while being fueled (half a day) and load after.  This has pushed our leaving date back a day.  On a better note though, as we were loading up over the two days, we were visited by Adelie penguins that had come to see us off from the bank just opposite the ice pier. 

Adelie Penguin to show us off

View into the sound from the ice pier, ice has melted much more than my first day there

The Palmer's starboard while moored to the ice pier

McMurdo 2

   I took a hike around the large pile of volcanic dirt and scree that is the aforementioned obs. point.  It was so bitter cold, but nonetheless enjoyable.  I don't recall the exact temperature, but it has typically been in the positive numbers.  The problem is the wind.  The slightest breeze seems to amplify the cold so much more than anywhere I've ever been.  During the hike, we rounded the hill on pretty unstable scree to face directly into the winds blowing from across the frozen sound between Ross Island (where McMurdo sits) and the mainland of the continent.  I had just purchased from the McMurdo store a wind blocking face mask and the biting wind on my face hastened my decision to put it on right then, which required removing the hood on my issued giant down parka and my warm hat.  So I ended up feeling the bitter wind on my bare head for just a moment and it was probably the coldest experience of my life.  I now have a very hard time imagining the people who stay here through the winter.  The stories are that if you have any exposed skin while walking outside in the winter during certain times, you have about 5 minutes before you get frostbite.  They use an interesting weather code system here that has three stages.  Condition 3 is when you can do outside activities and it is generally pleasant, condition 2, the trails close and if you walk outside you must be accompanied by someone else, condition 1 means no matter where you are, you stay put and cannot go outside.  One guy I talked to said, "If you don't dress appropriately and you go outside, you die."  Thats quite humbling.  So far my entire visit here has been condition 3 including my trail hike which was still freezing.  The hike was fun though despite the cold wind.  It took us closer to the sea ice at certain points and had a few views of Weddel Seals laying lazily about near a pressure ridge that had cracks exposing the water beneath.  Pressure ridges occur when wind and currents push the ice from different directions and the ice buckles and cracks and presses up in places making a ridged appearance.  Its very interesting to see since they don't typically occur on frozen lakes as they need lots of surface area from which the wind and currents can push it.  At one of the last points near the sea ice, a few us stopped to observe a break in the ice right at the shore where waves were surfacing from underneath (which I can only assume is from the wind pressing down on the ice and surging water against the shore), and when we stopped talking for a moment you could hear the ice creak.  It actually made both low and high pitched moaning and groaning just like the passage from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, "The ice was here, the ice was there, the ice was all around: it cracked and growled, and roared and howled, like noises in a swound!"  Swound is an old way to say swoon.  It is an amazing sound to hear.  I tried to get a video, but the audio only really picked up the high pitched creak and only minorly.


Hiking group around obs. loop getting closer to the sea ice



  





Hole in the ice at the shore

 


Departing C17 plane as seen from the hike

 


Antarctic jacuzzi

 


Interesting wind blown snow scape

 


Lounging seal



   Robert F. Scott, the person in command of the second group to reach the South Pole, only days after the first group, built a hut on Ross Island in 1902 that is still there and is just on the outskirts of McMurdo down by the ice pier where ships dock.  Tragically Scott and the 4 that made it to the pole with him, perished on the return trip in a severe storm.  The cold and the Antarctic program have both contributed to keeping the hut intact.  We were given the chance to have a look inside the hut and its well preserved state.  There were still pants hanging up on clothes line and seal blubber and furs still on the shelves.  There were all sorts of tins and boxes with odds and ends and a fire place that had the back bones of seals on the burners.  Outside, there is even the still intact carcss (though cracked and dried out) of a seal.  The cold and conservation efforts have allowed the artifacts to not decay nearly at all



Scott's hut



Seal Carcass outside Scott's Hut

 


Preserved furs on the table in the hut



   Along the area near the hut, there are a couple of memorial spots that have been erected to different people that have died in the harsh conditions here.  The area of the memorials is another neat little hiking spot with great views of McMurdo and the sea ice.  Here is where the Ice pier is that our ship, the Palmer, will dock.  Now when I say ice pier, I mean there has been a solid piece of ice that has been lashed to the shore with a bridge across to it, with mooring points for the ship and enough space to load all necessary equipment and the heavy machinery required to move it all around.  I was filming a spot where a break in the ice near the pier was surging water, when a little weddel seal popped up out of the water and swam around for a few minutes.  They are such interesting creatures, and it looked so at home in such visibly cold water (the shallow water is very light blue when ice can be seen below the water and just is one more visual cue of the water temperature aside from the ice on the surface).  At the same point, a lone Adelie penquin could be seen farther out on the ice, making his way a rather long distance across the ice to a nearby break.  Seeing this penquin walk a relatively large distance in a rather short time makes me wonder a bit about penquins in zoos.  At the exact same time and place, a bird that is about as large as a small penguin and looks like a cross between a seagull and an albatross call the Skua flew around and landed not far from where I stood.  Three of the famous Antarctic animals all in one place at once seemed a little surreal to me, but sure enough it happened.  This place really is incredible.




Adelie Penguin

 


Skua



McMurdo Station Arrival

   I've now made it down to McMurdo Station, one of the United States Antarctic bases.  The flight was so interesting.  We took an older C17 Airforce cargo plane that has been adapted to hold a lot of passengers.  Boarding procedures were still suprisingly similar to other airplanes except that we were required to be dressed in our issued ECW gear (Extreme Cold Weather).  The interior is still very much a cargo plane and many of the mechanisms are visible.  When boarding we were all given ear plugs due to how loud the plane would be.  There were several rows of normal forwarding facing seats near the front followed by a middle section of seats against the wall facing the interior and two rows along the middle of the plane facing the exterior.  In the rear of the plane were more normal forward facing seats.  During most of the flight, everyone was more free to get up and move throughout the cargo hold.  There were only small port windows on the exits, but you could freely get up and glance through them.  At one point, I touched some metal near the window and found it was freezing as there was little insulation between it and the exterior of the plane.

Inside the C17

Antarctic Mountains through the rear starboard view port of the C17

   We touched down on a sea ice runway at about 3:00 pm New Zealand time on Monday the 14th (8:00 pm Sunday the 13th Central time) to what we were told was -11 degrees.  It certainly didn't feel that cold.  Perhaps they were telling us degrees Celsius.  It was still freezing of course; about 12 degrees Farenheit.  I was glad to be wearing the ECW gear already.  Upon leaving the plane the scene was absolutely breath taking.  We were surrounded in every direction by miles mostly flat white sea ice fields framed in all directions by distant mountains shrouded in white but streaked slightly with gray far out on the horizon.  We were hurried along into large orange all terrain vehicles that could have driven over any terrain in its path.  Along the bumpy 30 min. ride to McMurdo station, nestled on the edge of Ross Island in the Ross sea, we saw almost immediately our first penquins just sitting right off the flagged ice road.  Perfect views of the nearby active smoking volcano, Mt. Erebus, could be seen the entirety of the ride.

Myself, the ECW gear, and the C17 plane on the sea ice runway

Transport vehicles with a smoking Mt. Erebus in the background

   McMurdo is situated on the edge of the island in a very interesting self contained village that houses upwards of 1,000 people at times.  Large supporting structures can be seen every where such as giant white cylindrical fuel tanks on the outskirts of the so called "Mactown"; a stark contrast to the dark volcanic dust and scree upon which the town sits.

   After the usual tours, briefings, and orientations we got our first taste of the cafeteria, which is just awesome.  Lots of choices and many of them healthy.  After that, many of us proceeded up the very near mini-mountain, obs point, a very steep small mountain made up of all volcanic ash and scree (though not volcanic itself).  It was a a tough but short climb, and the sites from there were absolutely amazing even at a very sunny 10:00 at night.  The sun does not set at all right now.  I've seen similar in Alaska during my mountaineering class, but at least there it dipped below the horizon for an hour or so in a soft twilight light.  Here it merely dips from its circular path around the horizon but never falls below it.

Obs. Point

McMurco looking down from Obs. Point

   Unfortunately our brief week in Antarctica puts us into a temporary housing dorm that is referred to as "the man camp".  It is a single long room with 12 bunks in it housing up to 24 in one room with very little room for baggage (all of us have 2 or more medium to large bags). It will be an interesting arrangement until the Palmer (research vessel) arrives and we can move into our staterooms on the 17th, followed by two or more days of loading and setup of instruments, computers, and work and analysis stations.  Nonetheless, it is incredible to be here on a continent that few visit and many don't ever care to.  Such an extreme environment.

The station sign with an ice pier for the ship and the ill fated explorer Robert F. Scott's original 1902 hut in the background (both right side of photo)

Christchurch, New Zealand

  Our flight down to McMurdo station was scheduled out of Christchurch, New Zealand, one of the major support points for Antarctic operations.  I flew down to New Zealand a week ahead of time to spend a little vacation time there.  During my vacation time, I went for a couple of hikes through both the mountains and down the beach, visited an Early Antarctic Expedition photo exhibition at the local art museum, toured the local Botanical Gardens, and took a harbor cruise to see endemic endangered dolphins as well as sampled a delightful array of foods and spent time hanging out with a small group of multi-national European travelers.

The city's namesake, in the central downtown Cathedral Square

  During my set of flights to New Zealand, I met a fellow physical oceanography student, Eric, from Florida State who ended up being a welcome travel companion in a foreign (but English speaking) place.  I surprised him in a humorous manner when I noticed his Florida State sweatshirt and that he was holding a book about Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic expedition, a famous but disastrous one, and I approached him and asked if his name was Eric?   I had remembered his name from the endless list of info emails we've been receiving since November.  

Eric on the mountain hike over looking Christchurch

  The first full day there, we hiked through a small set of mountains just south of Christchurch.  The island is volcanic in origin and has mountainous features almost everywhere outside of the city.  We first hiked up a very steep grassy mountain, then followed a ridge line along the top through an enclosed vegetation corridor butted up against rocky bluffs and then through a ridge top World War 2 anti-aircraft battery strewn with sheep, then down off the mountain to a small harbor town called Lyttleton.  The hike had incredible views, but the thing that caught my awe the most was just how different everything was.  Aside from the dirt, rocks, and generic grass, everything was very different.  The plants looked entirely different aside from a few oak like trees, and the bird calls and insect noises were entirely foreign with different patterns and pitches.  The following day, was a rainy one, so we walked through the cities Botanical Gardens and again the difference was entirely noticeable.  Although in the confines of the Gardens, trees were allowed to grow to massive height and size, almost giant sequoia or giant redwood size.  The giant gnarled Eucalyptus trees were quite a sight.

Interesting bird I don't know the name of

Eric along the volcanic bluffs before venturing down into the vegetation corridor.  Lyttleton harbor in the background.

Vegetation Corridor on the hike

Sheep strewn about the anti-aircraft battery

sheep on the hillside over looking the entrance to Lyttleton harbor and the Pacific

Interesting and very different looking tree in the Botanical Gardens

Me standing next to a giant Eucalyptus tree

View from the beach hike

   The harbor tour was also from the town of Lyttleton and while it showcased the harbor's beauty set in between the mountains against volcanic bluffs and out to the open Pacific Ocean, the main attraction of the cruise was to catch a glimpse of the Hector Dolphin, an specialized dolphin local only to the harbors of the southern island of New Zealand.  We did see them, but only for a few minutes of intermittent surfacings.  Still the harbor cruise was worth it, although I lost a red hat that I like lot to the wind and the harbor waters.

Bluffs in Lyttleton Harbor from the tour boat

Hector Dolphins, very hard to photograph so this is the best I have

New Zealand flag with bluffs

   I very much like the New Zealand way of life.  It is a very laid back and friendly one that is entirely welcoming.  Perhaps this is due to the majority of their industry is tourism, but I just like to think it is the Kiwi way of life.  Christchurch itself may not be entirely the New Zealand way either since it is very multi-cultural throughout, but I enjoyed it immensely.   

   I am keeping the New Zealand post here to a minimum since A. the main part of the travelogue is about the Antarctic trip and the ocean voyage, and B. it was my vacation time.  But I've posted several pictures here to demonstrate my time there.

Statue of the ill fated Antarctic Explorer Robert F. Scott who was the second person to reach the South Pole