Position of Aurora Australis

FROM: Martin Riddle
DATE: 23/12/07
REPORT (SITREP) NO.: 307
UNIVERSAL TIME: 0100
LOCAL (SHIP) TIME: 1200
AUSTRALIAN EASTERN STANDARD TIME: 1200
POSITION: -65 59.8, 142 39.6
HEADING: 186
CURRENT SPEED (KNOTS): 2
DISTANCE TO NEXT WAYPOINT (NAUTICAL MILES): N/A
DISTANCE COVERED LAST 24 HOURS (NAUTICAL MILES): 74.4
WEATHER CONDITIONS: Visibility good, sunny periods, wind 9 kts from 134T with gusts to 12 kts
AIR TEMPERATURE: -1.5 SEA
TEMPERATURE: -0.6
SEA CONDITIONS: Rippled seas &long low NE swell
ICE CONDITIONS: 2/10 loose pack ice, distant icebergs
REMARKS: The ship is now doing scientific activities around the clock with most people working 12 hour shifts. Transfer of equipment between the decks in preparation for the CEAMARC sampling went smoothly yesterday and was completed by 1500 hrs. We started set-up of the first Polynya mooring at about 1600 hrs and this was deployed by 2030. During the night the remaining 3 moorings were prepared and deployed, with the last one in the water in the early hours of the morning (0400 hrs). We then moved through loose pack-ice to the first of the CEAMARC sites (Ceamarc-27) and at 0715 deployed the first of the CEAMARC sampling equipment - the very robust epibenthic sled which collects the top layer of seabed and anything living in it. The first organism to be photographed, tagged and bagged was an octopus. The sled contained enough sea-bed animals to keep a large team happily sorting for several hours - zoot alors! qu'est-ce que c'est? We have since collected a CTD water sample and used the box-corer to collect a relatively undisturbed sample of the seabed sediment. We have tested the procedure for deploying the beam trawl and are fine tuning the information read-out which tells us how much winch wire has been paid out and the tension on the wire. The next deployment will be the Geosciences Australia seabed camera so that we can see what the animals look like in their undisturbed habitat.
Regards, Martin and Sarah.