Mrs. Brice boarded the R/V Roger Revelle in the Southern Pacific Ocean south of New Zealand in January 2005. She flew to Tahiti January 4th and spent several days there before meeting the ship and sailing south toward the continent of Antarctica to observe and share the water sampling cruise with her students.

For detailed information about the cruise and the research on board, see the page Dr. Bernadette Sloyan & Dr. James Swift's Cruise.

She left the ship February 25, 2005 in Wellington, New Zealand and returned to her San Marcos Middle School classroom.

You can see exactly where the R/V Revelle is now by clicking here.

Mrs. Brice's Daily Logs

January 9, 2005: Log #1
Log #1 Summary: The Revelle left Papeete, Tahiti on January 9, 2005 and will sail into Wellington, New Zealand on February 20, 2005. CTD casts will be done every 30 miles as far south as we can go, or about 70°S. We will go south until we start to see ice. The weather is nice and warm with a calm sea.

There are 32 people in the science party and 22 crew members on board. The chief scientist is Dr. Bernadette Sloyan from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the co-chief scientist is Dr. Jim Swift from Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Tomorrow I will introduce the scientists and start to give a description of each of their jobs.

January 16, 2005: Log #8
Log #8 Summary: Position: Lat: 27-48.0S, LONG: 150-00.0W
It's Sunday. We all know that because today we have our weekly fire and abandon ship drill. The weather is a little cooler and the skies are gray. The water temperature has also dropped by about 10°F.

Tomorrow we will be doing our 3rd live broadcast, this time from the deck just ourside of the main lab so that my students can watch the launching of a CTD rosette. We will be talking to Dr. Jim Swift, co-chief scientist of P16s, about his many past expeditions, his research on this expedition and what he hopes to learn from the data being collected on this cruise.

In class, we decorated styrofaom cups and wigheads to send down on some of the CTD casts. These were chosen as a way of demonstrating the effects of pressure underwater. We will observe what happens when we let the water pressure squeeze the air out of the styrofaom. We will also see what happens when we send down several different groups to various depths.

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January 17, 2005: Log #9
Log #9 Summary: Position: Lat: 29-30.0S, LONG: 150-00.3W
We received a bad weather warning today from the Captain. It said, "All hands, please secure your rooms and working spaces. The current weather pattern is for rougher conditions." We all had to make sure our gear was seurely tied down. The crew was our on the deck securing the lab vans and anything else that might move with chains.

We are almost 1/3 done with our CTD casts. The CTD slides on a rail to the side of the ship and then the winch pulls it up and the boom takes it our over the water. It is then lowered to within 10 meters of the sea bottom. The water samples are taken as the CTD is raised and are tripped at regular intervals. Salinity, temperature, and pressure are all recorded on the computer during the ascent.

The CTD has 36 sample bottles and sends out a sonar beep to locate the bottom. The sonar signal is received in the lab and lets the CTD controller keep the rosette from actually hitting the bottom. The winch driver and the lab are in constant contact. The lab tells the winch driver when to stop at each sampling station. The winch driver stops for 25 seconds as the bottle is tripped, then proceeds to the next station.

January 19, 2005: Log #11
Log #11 Summary: Position: Lat. 33-00.0S, LONG: 150-00.0W
AABW is cold!!!! (Antarctic Bottom Water), Especially in the boots!!! We plotted an ocean water mass diagram in class using data from CTD casts to make a horizontal model of the ocean basin. The horizontal scale of this model is greatly exaggerated in order to see the water masses and their movements form source areas. In reality, the layers of water in a scale model would be very, very thin.

Dr. Robert Knox, a physical oceanographer of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, commented that when viewing ocean layer diagrams in books, the depth scale is expanded enormously relative to the horizontal scale, which makes it easy to lose sight of how relatively shallow the ocean really is.

I am now sample cop. That is the person with a clipboard that keeps track of the order of sampling, bottle numbers, types of samples collected, etc. I am also learning how to direct the rosette up and down. It is interesting to watch the deepening appreciation for the skills and talents of the resourceful crew of the Revelle for fixing things at sea. Sometimes the most important person in the progress of science is the experienced boatswain coming on deck at 0300 to help sort out some snarl in the scientific equipment or rigging.

A penguin was spotted off the fantail last night. No one is seasick yet, although there is quite a bit of motion. I am starting my interviews. I will do a broadcast at 9:45 tomorrow from the bridge with Captain Dave. He will have several other crew members there also to answer students' questions.

I was reassured to find Captain Dave reading up on navigating in ice. I think that, when we finally see ice, it will be spectacular!. Hopefully we won't get too close though, remembering that the Revelle is NOT an icebreaker. The first icebergs have been sighted at 48°S, not far from New Zealand. I was also lent a notebook on "Reports on Acts of Robbery and Piracy Against Ships" to help explain to my students that this is still a concern in some areas, and, no, they do not resemble Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean.
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January 20, 2005: Log #12
Log #12 Summary: Position: Lat 35-00.0S, LONG: 150-00.0W
The weather is still pretty nice, but we are wearing jackets outside most of the time now. We are still doing about 3 CTD casts per day. tomorrow is the broadcast from the bridge with Captain Dave Murline. I spoke with Captain Dave and asked him some questions about his career at sea:

Interview with Captain Dave Murline
Catain Dave has been a captain since 1996 and has worked for Scripps Institution of Oceanography for 20 years. He studied to become a captain at the California Maritime Academy in Vallejo, California. There are several Maritime Academies throughout the United States. The format is a bit different that a regular university because, in addition to course-work, you also need to spend a certain amount of time at sea.

Before coming to work at Scripps, Captain Dave worked on glass-bottomed tour boats on Catalina Island. He has always been interested in science and the ocean. He took summer courses at Scripps when he was younger as part of the Junior Oceanographers program.

Athough, when he was young, he wanted to be an oceanographer, Captain Dave says that today he is happy to be the captain of an oceanographic research vessel and to play an important part in world-class research in oceanography. He is always learning new things from the scientists with whom he travels and he participates in many unique and fascinating research projects.

Tomorrow we will be broadcasting from the bridge of the R/V Roger Revelle and my students will tour the bridge with the Captain and be able to ask him questions about his interests and insights into life at sea.

January 21, 2005: Log #13
Log #13 Summary: Position: Lat: 36-30.0S, LONG: 150-00.0W
We are doing our broadcast from the bridge with Captain Dave Murline today and still doing our CTD casts. There were some problems with the ARGO floats we deployed earlier. Two of them are not communicating with the satellite, so two more were uncrated and turned on out on the deck to see if they could be detected by the satellite. When we know if they are working, we will deploy them.

The ARGOs can communicate for about a year and a half. They provide a new source of data from the top 2km of the ocean. A fleet of robots spend most of their life at depth, but surface regularly to make the temperature and salinity profile measurements. As of January 2005, there are 1,583 floats worldwide, including the ones we deployed. I will be bringing back several sets of ARGO data for my classes to work with and plot.

Albatrosses are AMAZING! Today we had several flying around the ship. They are among the largest flying birds, weighing in at up to 10 kilograms (22 lbs.). Albatrosses are oceanic birds. They live at sea feeding on fish and squid in the open ocean. They come to land on islands only because theri offspring need to be on land until they can fly. Albatrosses can fly thousands of kilometers during one trip to find food for their babies and themselves. Scientists have found 24 species of albatrosses.

We are at 37° latitude today and will soon be entering the "Roaring Forties". This region has been dubbed "Roaring Forties", "Furious Fifties", and "Screaming Sixties" by sailors - a reference to the wild, unpredictable weather found between 40° and 60° latitude including gale force winds and huge waves. Wind speeds of 120kph are common, but they can reach more than 250kph.

Making seafaring conditions even more treacherous is the Antarctic Circumpolar Current that flows against these winds in an easterly direction. This is the largest ocean current in the world, transporting five times more water than the Gulf Stream in the Northern Hemisphere. This massive wall of water acts like a cold insulator, blocking warmer tropical waters from the north and maintaining Antarctica's permanent ice sheet. Antarctic coastal temperatures can drop as low as minus 50°C.
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Water sampling
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January 25, 2005: Log #16
Log #16 Summary: Position: Lat: 43-15.3S, LONG: 150-00.0W
Tuesday and still fairly calm, but we received another weather warning from the Captain, "Everyone has been doing a good job keeping everything secure, please continue to be consciencious about securing your gear. Be careful going through the heavy doors, especially when carrying your samples."

Monitoring the CTD cast
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View of the ice shelf
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Chief engineer Paul and his BBQ
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CTD cast in progress
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Engine room of the Revelle
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