Last message from Polarstern!
18.04.2011
Blog by Henri Robert
This is it, our expedition to the Antarctic is coming to an end!
After our successful work in the eastern Weddell Sea and the BENDEX area, we finally began our way back towards Cape Town. At first, Polarstern had no difficulties breaking through the sheet of ice that was forming all around us and after about a day of steaming we reached the ice free waters of the Southern Ocean.
Just about halfway between the Antarctic and South Africa, we planned to stop for at least two days at the very interesting island of Bouvet. Unfortunately, really bad weather conditions forecasted by our meteorologist on board forced our captain to make the difficult decision to cancel most of our work at this station and escape to the North as soon as we could. A couple of days later the weather report from this area indicated extremely violent winds with a strength of about 10 Beaufort and waves up to 15 meters high!
Luckily enough we had the chance before leaving Bouvet to deploy one bottom trawl to catch some fish and one little Raushert Dredge that came back on board full of amphipods, some of which can be expected to be new to science.
After this last station the only thing left to do was to pack all our gear, clean our laboratories and start work on our cruise reports.
Yesterday, the captain of the ship, Uwe Pahl, and the chief scientist, Rainer Knust, invited all participants of this cruise for a little farewell party in one of the saloons with speeches from the Captain and Rainer, followed by a glass of Champaign and some cheering to celebrate the end of this successful expedition. This is how after a 16500 km voyage, from the tip of South America to South Georgia, then the South Orkneys Islands, the South Shetland Islands, the eastern coast of the Antarctic Peninsula (down to Larsen “C” area), the eastern coast of the Weddell Sea and Bouvet Island we will finally reach our destination of Cape Town.
During his speech, Captain Pahl indicated that during these 10 weeks we burned about 2.2 million dollars only in diesel oil… This just gives us an idea of how expensive an expedition such as this one can be. This also indicates how valuable our researches and results are, and the price of science in general. It may sound expensive, but after all isn’t this the least that we can do? The least we can is try understanding today’s dramatic phenomenon of climate change and hopefully bring a little piece of what will be necessary to preserve our environment, our home!
Thank to Captain Pahl and the crew of Polarstern, Rainer Knust, the Alfred Wegener Institute and all of you for reading this blog.
Best regards,
Henri Robert
