"Antarctica" Adventures at the Bottom of the World

SCINI

2009-10-12T08:39:00.020+13:00

Introduction
What is SCINI?

SCINI stands for Submersible Capable of under Ice Navigation and Imaging. She is an underwater robot specifically built to complete science missions beneath the frozen surface of the ocean in Antarctica.

The remotely operated vehicle SCINI cruises over the seafloor under the ice in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica.

SCINI is a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), which means that a tether to the surface allows the pilot to see what she sees through her camera “eyes” and control where she “swims” with her five thrusters.

A test mission at MBARI in Monterey Bay, California. You can see the lighted camera dome on the left, and thrusters to move SCINI up/down, left/right, and forward/back arrayed down her body.

The pilot uses a joystick that looks suspiciously like a video game controller (because it is one) and views the world on a computer flat screen that shows not only the seafloor around SCINI but also the vehicle status array and engineering diagnostics.

The central screen is the views from the cameras, the screen on the left is the engineering screen, and the screen on the right is the navigation screen.

SCINI finds her way around in the ocean using an integrated South Star navigation system that has been developed in partnership with Desert Star Systems. This wireless array allows us to extend the accuracy of GPS beneath the water where satellite signals cannot penetrate. And, what is SCINI finding her way towards? That is what the scientists decide, and this year SCINI will be diving deeper and in more remote locations, in order to describe Antarctic seafloor communities that have never before been seen by human eyes.

SCINI found this unidentified octocoral species at 190 m depth under the McMurdo Ice Shelf.

Cooperation
Where are we going?

Antarctica! This is the –est continent – the coldest, windiest, highest, driest, and roundest continent.

Looking across a barranca (a canyon in the ice shelf) to the Antarctic continent.

It is also a continent that is not owned by anyone, but is preserved for peaceful research purposes by the international Antarctic Treaty. The Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica is even more unknown than other oceans, because of its remoteness and roughness.

In this south pole view, you can see how large the Southern Ocean is, and that it is continuous around the entire Antarctic continent.

The antarctic is the last unexplored place, where we still do not know and have not even seen 99% of the seafloor. To help us work here, we need dedicated tools and better, faster, and more specialized instruments to let us go where our living bodies would fail and to visualize what our organic eyes can’t perceive.

SCINIs “guts” are electronic, and protected by a waterproof metal housing they allow her to dive to depths beyond scuba divers.

SCINI is one of our tools, mixing new technology with intense creativity, hard work and a little bit of wild imagination. It is the close partnership between science and engineering that is the unique strength of this project. Scientists ask “what” and engineers tell us “how!”

Deploying SCINI through the ice in Antarctica is the big reward after months of planning, computer design, and lab and local field testing.

Science
What are we doing?

People are curious, driven by questions, and scientists are the worst of the lot. Like a bunch of perpetual 2 year olds, we incessantly inquire – “What is around the next corner?” “What happens if I climb this mountain?” “What lives in the deep ocean under the ice in Antarctica?”

This year our goal is to create maps of the seafloor. All real exploration starts with mapping as a first step. Without knowing the lay of the land around you, how do you know where the mountains are, where the rivers go, and in which direction the sun sets? Under water and ice, it is even more difficult to see the mountains, the rivers are invisible to our eyes, and during the Antarctic summer the sun never sets. Because light is absorbed by water more than it is by air, even with SCINI’s lights we can only see a few meters in the blackness below 70 m depth.

In the darkness under the ice, SCINI’s 22 forward pointing and 12 downward pointing LEDs provide enough light to capture high resolution images.

To create an overview, the equivalent of an aerial photograph, we take hundreds of pictures and meld them together on a computer. With these photomosaics we can see if distributions of certain animals are limited to the underwater equivalents of “mountain tops” or “river valleys” or if they are only found on the “sunny side.” Where animals are found tells us some basic information about the ecology of the communities.

The rich sponge community at Cape Evans, outlined by SCINIs protective dome cage. The blue streak overhead is a crack near an iceberg.

In 2008 our science goal was one of discovery, intended to expand our view of Antarctic seafloor communities into deeper depths and under thicker ice. We used SCINI to visually describe ecosystems down to 300 m water depth near Cape Armitage and Cape Evans on Ross Island, and under 70 m of ice near Heald Island and the Koettlitz Glacier.

Surprisingly, even tens of km back under a permanent ice shelf near the Koettlitz Glacier, anemones, sponges, tunicates, bryozoans and brittle stars were abundant.

In 2007, the first year of this project, our science goal was one of searching. We set out to relocate experiments that had been set on the seafloor up to 47 years ago. Initially designed to look at the effects of predation, the “Lost Experiments” now give us a record of how antarctic communities have changed over nearly five decades.

Giant volcano sponges (Anoxycalyx joubini) cover an experimental settling structure.

This decadal perspective is an incomparable ecological gem, and next year we will be returning with the original researchers, Paul Dayton and John Oliver, to rescue and resample this rich antarctic history.

Engineering
How do we do this?

The starting point was to find the easiest way to get into these deep, dark and cold habitats. As scuba divers, we can only go to very shallow depths of less than 40 m.

In an early mission, both scuba divers and SCINI prepare to descend through the same hole.

Manned research submersibles are not allowed to work in Antarctica because of the dangers of ice overhead. Autonomous vehicles are useful for preprogrammed surveys, but are not adaptive and responsive to new finds. A remotely operated vehicle like SCINI balances nicely in the middle – it can go deep, it does not risk lives, and it is responsive in real time. It does have limitations on tether length, but this also keeps it from becoming lost in case of a catastrophic failure!

SCINIs tether is flaked out on the ice just after recovery.

The guiding principles of our engineering efforts are reliability, flexibility, and economy. Our time in Antarctica is limited to a few months during the summer. It is too easy for that time to slip away in fixing broken hardware instead of accomplishing significant new progress, so everything has to be tested, and retested, until component failure is a rare thing indeed. Minimizing down time is critical. Especially in a developmental effort, our strict adherence to this principle is unusual. We are very proud of running 44 consecutive missions, with a total seafloor time of 144 hours, without a single failure during our 2008 season.

Engineers work to trouble shoot a problem in the field.

When we are in Antarctica, we cannot just run to the store to replace a part. We are our own spare parts catalogue and supply. We bring spares with us, but we also make every effort to make components swappable. This means that we try to use the same resistors in everything, instead of a unique resistor in each location. We extend this concept to everything from individual components up to boards, so that we not only have to kit ourselves with fewer kinds of spares, but in desperate situations — which happen with disturbing regularity in Antarctica — we can scavenge from a non-critical system to get a critical system running.

We also make every effort to be economical. We try to use commercial off the shelf components that are industry standards and are therefore readily available and reasonably priced. As we are also using cutting edge technology, this can be a struggle when standards are still developing! We take shameless advantage of the extensive testing done by commercial companies to select the sturdiest, most dependable elements, at the best prices. We could not do this if we were designing and building one-off unique parts from the ground up. But, why reinvent the wheel? Instead we use existing motor, power, and electronic components, merged together in a specialized ROV that is accessible to all!

A team of 3 – pilot, scientist and engineer - are all it takes to run a SCINI mission.

Education
Why do we care?

Let’s face it, we are addicts. No one spends every snowboard season in Antarctica, where the surfaces make east coast ice look like champagne powder, unless they cannot help themselves. And like any fanatic, we are out to convert others. So watch it…it starts with a simple joystick, and before you know it, you have robots crawling out of closets and investigating new planets. We enjoy the enthusiasm generated by new explorers, and we learn from them too.

The Second Opportunity for Students program at Cabrillo College in Watsonville, CA created flags for each country signatory to the Antarctic Treaty with wishes for improvements to major societal challenges. The flags flew in the katabatic winds over Antarctica.

As a society, we have done a good job over the last few years in showing what science can accomplish and in demonstrating the wide diversity of things that scientists do. The plethora of web sites available to bring science into the classroom is testament to this. And many of us now know that we each have scientific interests, or inclinations, or at the very least, know to ask questions, which is what scientists do. Our next goal as a society should be to uncover and demonstrate the engineer in all of us.

Students and teachers in the Southeastern Cooperative Educational Programs work on building an Antarctic ROV.

Who did not take the flashlight apart (and likely fail to put it back together), resculpt the garden to divert the water and save the “town” (or destroy it), or use duct tape and paper clips to make beautiful jewelry that was so appreciated by our parental units? Engineers do all this – they figure out how things work, they fix stuff, and they invent new uses for existing bits and pieces.

Existing technology lets us make small holes in the ice easily, and SCINI engineers invented a small ROV to take advantage of this.

With the challenges that are now facing our planet and our species, we need to use the collective power of all of our skills to find solutions to the problems. We have learned to question and to have confidence in our ability to draw conclusions from observations – to believe in our abilities to be scientists. Today, we need to know that we can repair what is broken, that we can create solutions. With all of humanity believing in our own abilities, we can overcome the global issues that we confront now, through our individual efforts as well as our cooperation.

Waterproofing LEDs by potting them in a mix of transparent and heat conducting compounds allowed us to use high intensity, low power lighting solutions.

Thank You!

The SCINI team is very grateful to the many people who have donated their time, expertise, and financial support towards the success of this project.

Many thanks for the support.

Jim Oakden and John Oliver, Benthic Lab stalwarts, for ongoing inspiration, encouragement, and wonderful shoulders to cry or stand on.

DJ Osborne and Jon Erickson, MBARIites who generously shared their experience and provided very helpful guidance, as well as Kim Reisenbichler and Mike Kelly for test/training tank use.

Kent Hammerstrom, retired software engineer and dad, for creating our laser ranging software despite pesky missing dlls.

Alexandria Gallizioli, Ben Kaiser, and Jessica Madden, summer interns, for cheerful web page construction, driving, packing, and a plethora of other very diverse tasks.

Jason Smith for lending us his oscilloscope (yet again) and Lara Ferry Graham for the use of her shark tank as an ROV test tank.

Steve Dunbar and ARS for their much appreciated donation to our work.

Erica McPhee-Shaw for training such excellent physical oceanographers/engineers, and allowing us to hire them almost before they defend their theses.

Last but certainly not least, Rob Robbins, Ken Kloppenberg, Patrick Fitzgerald, Kevin Rigarlsford, John Harter, Aaron Seaman, and all of the support staff in the USAP who help us accomplish the seemingly impossible.

USAP support staff, always willing to lend a helping hand.

Shopping in Antarctica

2009-09-25T15:17:00.002+12:00

Need some new swag? Try McMurdo Store. Their motto is "If we don't have it, you're not going to get it."

NZ air force medevacs sick man from Antarctic

2009-09-22T07:54:00.005+12:00

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — An American working at a U.S. scientific base on the frozen continent of Antarctica has suffered heart problems and was being evacuated to New Zealand, the New Zealand air force said Monday.

The air force was asked to help Sunday and sent a Hercules C130 airplane on the 16-hour return flight, New Zealand Sq. Ldr. Richard Beaton said in a statement. The man suffered cardiac problems at the McMurdo base and was being flown to a hospital in Christchurch, southern New Zealand, for treatment.

He had been working as part of the U.S. Antarctic Program and was in a serious but stable condition, Beaton said. The man's name and hometown were not immediately available, nor was more information about his illness.

"He needed immediate evacuation from here for treatment" but was stabilized for the flight, Raytheon Polar Services operations manager Kerry Chuck told The Associated Press by telephone from McMurdo.

Colorado-based Raytheon provides communications, logistics and other support services for the U.S. National Science Foundation's programs in Antarctica.

Two New Zealand defense force medics and two civilian medical staff were also on board the Hercules C130 airplane to provide medical aid during the flight back to New Zealand, Beaton said.

"Medical evacuation is a capability the air force can deliver as and when required," said Beaton. "Our crews are experienced flying in and out of Antarctica and this task doesn't present any issues for us."

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

More Outside McMurdo September 1-10, 2009

2009-09-10T08:30:00.004+12:00

A few more random pictures of the skies around McMurdo.

Fun and Science

2009-09-09T13:33:00.005+12:00

Nickolas Logan and James Maslanik from the University of Colorado Boulder launch their Aerosonde® unmanned aircraft system (UAS) off a truck traveling 60 miles per hour across Ross Bay sea ice near McMurdo Station Antarctica. The UAV then lands on the sea ice and skids to a stop.

The Aerosonde® unmanned aircraft system (UAS) offers an impressive endurance of more than 30 hours (with a minimal payload). In fact, it was the first UAS to cross the Atlantic Ocean, a feat achieved as early as 1998.

This impressive endurance, as well as the aircraft’s flexibility and affordability, make it an ideal choice for remote data collection and reconnaissance missions for military, civil, and scientific entities. The aircraft employs a catapult system to take off from small, remote clearings, and also can launch from the roof of a fast-moving ground vehicle.

With these capabilities, the Aerosonde aircraft has accumulated several significant flight milestones including:

In 2007, it was the first UAS to penetrate the eye of a hurricane. Under a program administered by NASA and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Aerosonde aircraft flew a mission of more than 17 hours, a record 7.5 of which were spent navigating Hurricane Noel’s eye and boundary layer.

During 2006, the aircraft set a world flight endurance record in its class by remaining in flight without refueling for more than 38 hours

McMurdo Sunset

2009-09-07T13:20:00.003+12:00

A very clear Saturday night I looked out my window and saw rainbows in the clouds. Unlike a normal rainbow which forms an arch due to the uniformity of the raindrops, these rainbows form ice crystals in the clouds that create patches of color amongst their fellow clouds.

I threw on Big Red and ran past the Uppercase Dorms to snap a few photos. The dorms lie just above the sea ice. Normally the dorms block most of the wind but as I passed the last building the wind chilled me to the bone. I was only able to shoot 5 or 6 photos before I noticed the LCD screen on my camera begin to freeze.

Leonard Discovers Music in the Cracks and Creaks of the Ice

2009-09-05T12:22:00.017+12:00

By Peter Rejcek
Antarctic Sun editor
An Adélie penguin colony can be a cacophonous place, with hundreds of birds braying in an unlikely chorus. That was one of the sounds that Cheryl Leonard wanted to capture, but it wasn’t the most interesting one that she discovered.

Instead, she literally found music at her feet. Or, more accurately, at the feet of the Adélies. The dense stones on Torgersen Island off the Antarctic Peninsula produced melodious sounds — like coins falling together in a pile — when the penguins walked across them.

“Little melodies would come out from their feet as they walked on the stones, kicked the stones, jostled the stones,” says Leonard, a San Francisco-based composer and musician who spent about a month at Palmer Station this past season on an Antarctic Artists and Writers Program grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Leonard composes musical pieces not for piano and violin, but from more unconventional sources such as pinecones and shards of glass. She started her career writing traditional compositions, but eventually gravitated toward stranger sounds that can be made with instruments, such as playing the strings of a violin behind the bridge, which produces high, squeaky notes.

“It was a slow morph into weirder and weirder sounds and sound sources,” she explains, adding that she was later influenced by friends interested in “noise music,” an avant-garde art form that uses a variety of elements, from feedback to random electronic sounds.

Leonard found inspiration in urban objects, producing music from box spring mattresses and circular saw blades. At the same time, she developed an interest in the outdoors, and took up mountaineering and climbing.

“I think for me it was a natural progression from playing sounds with urban objects to playing sounds with natural objects,” she says. “I was looking for a way to combine the musical side of myself with the outdoors side of myself.”

An opportunity to work in Antarctica and record the creaks of icebergs and the calls of its birds seemed ideal.

“I’ve always been attracted to remote, wilderness places. Antarctica is the ultimate location for that,” Leonard says. “At the same time, I was really interested in what kind of sounds one might find there. Antarctica’s sounds haven’t been that well documented. We’ve seen lots of pictures and films and science about Antarctica, but not heard many of its sounds.”

She found those sounds in dripping icicles after rappelling down a crevasse, and in growling snow and ice while boating near the edge of the calving Marr Ice Piedmont.

And just as her companion and fellow artist, Oona Stern , discerned immense variety in the types of ice in Antarctica for an unrelated sculpting project, Leonard discovered a range of music in the icebergs that calve, float and disintegrate in the sea.

“I was really surprised at how different the icebergs sounded,” she says. “The melting ice was always different, sometime subtly and sometimes extremely different. … It’s kind of like snowflakes. Visually, snowflakes are all different and aurally, the icebergs each have their own sounds.”

Leonard’s recording equipment — which she carried on hikes or on the small inflatable boats used for local travel around Palmer Station — included contact microphones, condenser microphones and hydrophones. Contact microphones pick up audio vibrations directly from objects that they touch, while hydrophones record sound underwater.

“I sort of looked like I was doing sound for a film,” Leonard says.

Recorded sounds only make up part of Leonard’s compositions. She also collected various objects found during her trip, including limpet shells and Adélie penguin bones. Normally the removal of such items from Antarctica is restricted, but Leonard had a permit from the NSF.

She is undecided about how she will incorporate the penguin bones into a composition, but says she will likely assemble them into little instruments that she can slide a bow across or rub, brush or strike with mallets or other objects. “Some of the thinner bones can probably be plucked.”

“I’ll be amplifying those and playing them live together with field recordings and projected video,” she adds.

How do you notate music for a penguin bone? You really can’t use traditional musical staves and notes, Leonard says. Instead, she has developed her own style of sheet music that combines graphics and words to describe how someone should perform on one of her unique instruments.

“Every time I have a new instrument and a new way of playing an instrument, I also have to invent a notation to explain that to the performer,” she explains. “I like the idea of performing [my compositions] live. It’s been a big focus for me because I’m using these unusual materials and getting these unusual sounds from them. I think it’s interesting for people to see where the sounds are coming from and how they are being produced.”

The public won’t have to wait too long to see and hear some of Leonard’s first compositions from Antarctica. She will premiere several pieces in October at Mills College Concert Hall in Oakland, Calif., including a composition called “Lullaby for the E [lephant] Seals.”

Many of the works, she explains, subtly combine aesthetics with a message of environmental awareness. “I am trying to make a great piece of music, but I’m really inspired by aspects of the environment and ecosystems.”

NSF-funded research in this story: Cheryl Leonard, Antarctic Artists & Writers Program, Award No. 0739804.

A walk around McMurdo Station early in the morning

2009-09-02T12:32:00.003+12:00

Welcome to Beautiful Antarctica!

2009-08-30T13:36:00.004+12:00

One more day in the States

2009-08-24T15:47:00.003+12:00

Today I finished my first day of training here in Denver. We learned about what to expect on the ice, and some information about the rumors amongst the “locals.” One rumor that is true, this year there will be no bowling in McMurdo due to the bowling alley being condemned. The manually set alleys will be truly missed.

Tomorrow is the final round of trainings where we will discuss safety and other very important facets of preparedness before heading off to the air port on our way to Christchurch New Zealand. I will leave on Monday the 24th and land Wednesday the 26th. This year I decided to cancel Tuesday the 25th due to crossing the International Date Line.

Some Antarctic Basics…

2009-08-11T08:36:00.000+12:00

Antarctica…
This continent is the highest, driest, coldest, windiest, and emptiest place on earth. An ice sheet covers approximately 98% of Antarctica. At its thickest point the ice sheet is 4,776 meters (nearly 3 miles) deep. This ice is approximately 90% of all the world's ice (by volume) and is 70% of all the world's fresh water. There are many penguins and abundant sea life along the coast – but there is little life on the continent, and there are no indigenous people.

Temperatures…
The mean annual temperature at South Pole Station is minus 49°C (-56°F). During the austral summer, temperatures at McMurdo Station may reach as high as 10°C (50°F), while at South Pole Station, the summer temperature may reach minus 18°C (0°F). Palmer Station has a milder climate, with summer temperatures reaching as high as 13°C (55°F).
Daylight and Darkness…
Simply put, much of the area below 66.5 degrees South enjoys one long day and one long night each year – with weeks of sunrise and sunset in between. There are spectacular displays of aurora australis (southern lights) during the winter darkness.

Ownership…
No nation owns Antarctica. The Antarctic Treaty, which has been signed by 46 countries, reserves the area south of 60 degrees South as a zone for the peaceful conduct of research. Treaty nations coordinate and cooperate to maximize research results and minimize logistics requirements.

Size and Distance…
The continent is roughly 14 million sq. kilometers (5.4 million sq. miles). The USA is smaller at 9.36 million sq. kilometers (3.6 million sq. miles). The area of sea ice around Antarctica varies from 4 million sq. kilometers (1.0 million sq. miles) in summer to 20 million sq. kilometers (7.7 million sq. miles) in winter. The distance from Washington, D.C., to McMurdo Station is approximately 14,830 kilometers (9,920 miles).

Science…
Antarctica provides excellent conditions for scientific research on such topics as global warming, ozone changes, UV radiation, earth sciences, glaciology, astronomy, oceanic and atmospheric circulation, marine ecosystems, meteorite studies, etc.

History…
The existence of Antarctica was only a hypothesis until it was first sighted in 1820-21. No one set foot on the continent until 1895. The South Pole was first reached in 1911 and established as a year-round research station in 1956. Antarctica's history is packed full of extraordinary stories of heroism and survival.

Welcome

2009-08-09T15:29:00.000+12:00

I have decided to start a vblog about my life in Antarctica. My adventure will start August 22, 2009 when I travel from Wichita KS to Denver CO where I will receive my first set of trainings before heading out to Antarctica.