Images of

ANTARCTICA

Polar Sea

Photos © 2002 Seth White

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Each year, an icebreaker is deployed to McMurdo to break a channel in the sea ice so that the cargo ship, fuel ship, and research vessels can dock here. McMurdo is the farthest south solid ground in the world that can be accessed by ship. But that doesn't mean it's easy. This year (and the past two) have been especially difficult. The reason is that there is a massive iceberg (tens of kilometers long and wide) which calved off from the Ross Ice Shelf, moved to a place where it's blocking the entrance to McMurdo Sound, and decided to stay there. Annually, Antarctica becomes surrounded by a ring of sea ice in the winter. This ring of ice is nearly the same area as the land mass of the continent and as summer progressesit breaks up, flows out to sea, and melts. But, with this giant iceberg blocking the outlet path of the sea ice from McMurdo Sound, we have not had open water anywhere close to McMurdo in a few years. The closer you get to McMurdo, the thicker the ice. Close in, there is two- and three-year ice. Farther out there is one-year ice. This has had significant effects on wildlife, especially penguin colonies. At Cape Royds, the penguin rookery has seen a severe dropoff in population, as the sea ice has prevented them from swimming back to their usual breeding grounds. At McMurdo, penguins are now a very rare sight. I managed to see a group of 5 Adelies a while back (see here), but that was lucky. There have been a multitude of other effects attributed to the iceberg, including a buildup of pteropods which clogged the intake to our water purification plant several times this year. A very noticeable effect has been the amount of work it requires to get ships here. This year, the Coast Guard cutter Polar Sea was deployed to break the channel. This ship is a serious icebreaker. It can cut through 21' ice, I am told, and it develops a ridiculous amount of horsepower (75,000?). Anyway, when it reached the 'ice edge', or the spot where the sea ice ends and open water begins, it proceeded to do about 14 miles in the first day. This was good progress, since at the time the ice edge was about 30 miles from McMurdo. After that, things got significantly slower as it hit the old, thick ice. It was working 12 hours or more per day breaking the ice, and was just crawling along. From Arrival Heights, I could see this ship long before it was in sight of McMurdo.

Another view of the ship. I like this shot, where it's in the shadow of a long cloud.

One night I decided to chill out at Arrival Heights and watch the ship come in. For several days, I had watched it beating on the ice and making very little progress. The way this thing works is to ram the ice and actually get its bow up on top of the ice. Water is then pumped forward and the weight of the ship is then supposed to crack the ice from above. This particular night, I watched it take a long series of passes at the ice. Over the course of an hour and a half, I only once saw it actually break through the ice as it's supposed to. The rest of the times it would simply plow its way up onto the ice, sit there for a bit, and then slide backward into the ocean without fully breaking through. The difficulty in breaking the channel was compounded by the snow sitting on top of the ice, which lessens the ability of the ship to crack the ice through impact from above. The Polar Sea encountered such difficulty this year that the NSF summoned a second icebreaker (the Healy) from Seattle to come down. This voyage, as you might imagine, takes a while. But at the time, the operations people were starting to sweat the situation. So they called for the Healy. Although it's a much newer ship, it does not have the icebreaking capability of the Polar Sea. But since the Polar Star (the Polar Sea's sister ship) is in for repairs, they made the decision to bring it. The Polar Sea finally did make it to McMurdo (breaking one of its three propellers along the way), and it has been dutifully going back and forth along the channel to enlarge it in preparation for the cargo and fuel vessels. The American Tern (cargo ship) arrived at the ice edge a few days ago, but has not entered the channel because the ice keeps re-freezing and it does not have any icebreaking capability. The Healy arrived today (2/7/03), and has been tag-teaming the channel work with the Polar Sea. One of these cutters will actually escort the American Tern into port, sailing directly in front of it the whole way to create a fresh path for the Tern. It's a lot of work, but things seem to be going OK. This has had an impact on scheduling though. I think the station closing may be delayed a bit this year because of this. We shall see how things pan out. I just hope the beer supply arrives intact....

Here is the Polar Sea cutting the turning area just outside of McMurdo. They have to cut a circular area just out from the ice pier so that the rest of the ships have a place to turn around as they come in and out.

Here is the Polar Sea arriving at McMurdo. It is breaking the very last bit of ice in front of the ice pier.

Another pic of the ship coming in. I had never seen an icebreaker, let alone seen one actually breaking the ice up close. Pretty impressive. Here, it has just rammed the ice and its bow is up out of the water. It's also listing a bit as it rides up.

Another pic of the ship coming in.

Port McMurdo. A slightly blurry pic taken from a helicopter on the way back from Erebus.

A sharper aerial picture of the cutter in port....

Here is the ice pier. It is constructed in Winter Quarters Bay, where Scott's ships docked in 1902, and is the only one of its kind in the world. The thick sea ice and tidal effects do not allow for any permanent docks or piers, so they build this. It is begun during winter by piling up snow around the pier area and flooding it with water. This is done repeatedly so that the area becomes thicker and thicker, a 4" layer at a time. They reinforce it with steel cables and insert large metal posts into the pier. The final thickness is about 20'. Finally, they drill around the perimeter to detach it from the sea ice.....and poof, one ACME ice pier. It is connected to the nearby land with two bridges, and is covered by a layer of rock.

Here is the entrance to the ice pier, complete with toll booth. There is a lot of this kind of funny, slightly sarcastic humor all around McMurdo.

I was going to try and wrangle a tour of the Polar Sea while it was in port. Little did I know that I had the perfect connection the whole time. Len Shulman from the University of Delaware was in town doing the yearly site visit for Bartol Research Institute, which has a number of cosmic ray monitors around the world. I worked with him on various items with the neutron monitor setup at Cosray, and as it turns out, they have a portable monitoring system which was traveling on the Polar Sea on its journey here. It's beneficial to take cosmic ray measurements at as many places on the globe as possible, so Bartol and the University of Tasmania developed this portable system. It was placed on the Polar Sea during its voyage to McMurdo. Len was going to head out one day and do a little work on it, and invited me to come along to "help out". He didn't really need any help, so I spent some time wandering around the ship with him and Mike Holstine, the South Pole Cusp Tech who was in town on R&R (they will send Pole winter-overs to McMurdo for a week during the summer, and less often, will send McMurdo people to Pole for the same reason). This is Len and Mike the inside of the "Tas Van", which sits on the deck of the Polar Sea. It's a Milvan (storage/transport container) which was converted to house a couple neutron monitors by the U. of Tasmania in Hobart.

Len and Mike in the Tas Van again.

One of the neutron detector tubes in the Tas Van, nearly identical to those in the Cosray building.

A neutron detection calibrator, made by the U. of Tasmania.

The U. of Tasmania data acquisition system, which clearly and unabiguously shows the user where the power switch is.

Len had been on this boat a few times before for the same purpose, so after doing a small bit of work, we headed out for a self-guided tour of the boat. First stop: the bridge. Here is the helm. Or, more accurately, one of three identical setups spread across the (wide) bridge.

Another pic of the helm.

Yours truly, doing my best to seem intimidating in a very maritime sort of way. This picture makes me laugh because I am SUCH a landlubber. Arrrrrr.

A clinometer on the bridge. Yep, it reads plus/minus 60 degrees. Whoa. This boat is more or less flat bottomed, and thus completely at the mercy of the swells. So you get severe listing in rough waters. In fact, I'm told that a couple years ago the ship listed so violently that one poor guy on the bridge who had not held on tight enough was thrown from one end of the (wide) bridge to the other and actually died.

Mike and Len on the bridge.

Len, striking a very captainly pose.

A good old fashioned conn tube. I really didn't expect to see this.

The bow of the ship, as seen from the bridge.

A bizarre antenna near the bridge. I don't know what it does, but it looked cool enough for a picture.

Every external stair handrail on the ship looks like this. A nice touch, and probably pretty functional too - nice and grippy. This door at the top of this stairway is the bridge.

The crows nest. The ship is often driven from here. As you might imagine, every little change in angle of the ship is magnified when you're up here. I didn't get the change to go up, though.

A generic corridor inside the ship.

A dark, crappy picture of the galley. But I put it here anyway to show how small this room is.

At the back of the galley is a nice painting. I didn't know this was the first US surface ship to reach the North Pole.

The crew's weight room.

Ship's store. Unfortunately, the hours for the store are completely arbitrary. Basically, if someone feels like opening it, it's open. Or, if you can talk the right person into opening it, you can get something. I figured they would have it open quite a bit while in port - they'd make a killing. But not so.

The ship's laundry. Woo hoo.

The medical office, complete with medical officer. He didn't seem to think the motions of the ship were too bad at this location. I think this office is close to the ship's center of gravity, for obvious reasons.

Painting on the door of the medical office.

This was a nice surprise. We came upon the coffee stand, which happened to be open. I am told that Coast Guard vessels are actually known for having great coffee. This particular one had a contract with Tully's for their coffee. Which makes sense, as it's based out of Seattle. Also, it was surprising to see such a pretty girl in the depths of this ship!

The captain's room. We walked by this spot and I noticed the rug. So I stuck my camera hand in the room to take a quick picture. At that instant a regular-looking guy walks by us into the room, and as he did so asked if we needed any assistance. Nope, just taking a look around we replied. Turns out that was the captain, and although he was very polite, he seemed a bit annoyed at the group of rabble that had assembled near his quarters. Oops.

Official Polar Sea placque. The ship is older than I would have guessed.

Mike Holstine, with heroically standing on the bow with his latte. I'm king of the world!!!

The official Polar Sea life preserver.

The helo pad on the ship's stern.

A lifeboat on the side of the ship.

The ice channel.

This is a little video clip of the Polar Sea breaking the last part of the channel, right before the ice pier. The noise this ship makes as it's running full throttle at the ice is not very loud, just a powerful sound.

This picture was taken about two seconds after I dropped my crack pipe. It landed on a seaman's head on the deck below. He yelled and looked up. But ah, I was thinking quickly. I had stepped back and totally shoved Mike forward. So this guy thought Mike had actually dropped the pipe on his head! This was a big dude, and he was really super mad. So he ran up to this deck and totally uppercutted Mike, like lots of times. I hid out of sight in the lifeboat and laughed really really hard. I think I peed myself I was laughing so hard. At first, Mike was mad at me, because I had caused him to get beat up by a large Coastie, but he foregave me after I agreed to take that latte picture. And that's the end of my really big raging Polar Sea adventure.

A pic of the Polar Sea working the turning basin, as seen from the McMurdo Ground Station.

In port.

The American Tern actually got stuck pretty good in the turning basin. The Polar Sea and Healy passed by it, helping to break up the ice so it could get into port. It sat out here for hours, hardly moving, while the two icebreakers worked back and forth, and finally it got free and cruised into port.

The Polar Sea, seen through the telescope in Crary Lab.

And again.