Antarctica

Glen Walker is the bosun aboard NIWA’s research vessel Tangaroa currently exploring the waters around Antarctica. His reading list is exclusively sea disaster stories.

It is interesting to watch all of the pieces of our science story come together with each day’s water sampling and our long term experiments.

We are now four weeks into the Ross Sea Life in a Changing Climate (ReLiCC) 2021 voyage on RV Tangaroa and our time in the Ross Sea is rapidly coming to an end.

Antarctica is an incredibly pristine place; we are here to do good science and leave no trace. So, you can imagine my horror as I watched my camera start to float away from the boat.

Sitting in the library of the R.V. Tangaroa, I’m contemplating the (almost) three weeks spent at sea. From the nauseating swell of the ferocious fifties to the mornings when I’ve woken to beautiful vistas of Antarctic mountains.

If you want to get accurate scientific readings from the icy depths of the Ross Sea, who do you turn to?

Day 20 and we are now more than halfway through the Ross Sea Life in a Changing Climate (ReLiCC) 2021 voyage on RV Tangaroa.

Tue 19th: At 00:00 this morning we came across an extremely large tabular iceberg. It was easily picked up on the ship’s radar but due to the foggy conditions was only visible at a range of 1.7 miles.

Marissa Judkins is second mate on RV Tangaroa. Watch her navigating through the "ice bridge" in Antarctica's Ross Sea for the first time.

Day 13 of the Ross Sea Life in a Changing Climate (ReLiCC) 2021 voyage on RV Tangaroa finds us close to Cape Adare on the tip of the Antarctic continent. We’ve had a busy and icy week.

This is now my eighth voyage to Antarctica on Tangaroa. While my medical skills have been called on many occasions, my daily consultation rate at sea is low. So, I fill my time with other activities including getting involved in the science if needed.

At midnight on Saturday, the crew on-board RV Tangaroa spotted the first iceberg of the voyage.