Friday October 17, 2008, DJ writing

Today we had one of our last training sessions required to allow us to do our research in Antarctica. Besides operating the submarine under the sea ice some of the members of the team are also going to be SCUBA diving under the ice. This specialized diving technique requires a thorough check out by the United States Antarctic Program Diving Safety Officer, Rob Robbins. Today we did our first dive under sea ice and proved to Rob that Stacy, Francois, Marco and Bob are fully competent to perform under ice science diving research. It was quite a day involving lots of equipment preparation, gear movement, and technique check out. My duties, besides the super fun job of driving around the Piston Bulley, was to perform all the dive tending needs for the group. Basically, I was their third and fourth hands while they were piling on all their cumbersome gear and dealing with their equipment both before as well as after the dives. It was a fun day but it was also very important as I will be the lead dive tender on many of the dives. I need to make sure I know all the details that need to be addressed when we leave town and head out across the sea ice for an ice dive. The divers are each ultimately responsible for their equipment of course, however, everything I can do to help them complete their dive safely and efficiently will make us a more successful team. We will be taking volunteers from town to go out and assist us with the dives and I will need to make sure I am comfortable tasking them with all the things with which we will be needing their assistance.

We started the day in the dive locker by sorting gear,  Rob talked with us for a bit and explained again many of the techniques and details that we would need during the dive.   Rob was a wealth of information for both the divers and for me, the tender.  His supportive attitude and down to earth style made everyone sure they were comfortable and ready for the test.  Everyone had heard all this information before, but it was great to have Rob go over all of it again with his mellow but infinitely competent attitude.  All the divers have collectively had literally thousands of dives and they are all well prepared and trained for this check out dive.  I helped the divers gather all their equipment and organize all the associated gear we would need for the dive.  After some time getting things ready, making sure we had everything we needed, making lists of things we would need on future dives, we headed out to the dive site.

Antarctic ice diving requires a great deal of preparation, support and specialized equipment.  The first thing required is a large hole in the ice.  The shocking thing about the ice in the McMurdo Sound right now is the thickness.  When Iceberg B-52 partially closed off the inlet to the Sound about nine years ago, this area has not been able to flush the sea ice as is typical at the end of the summers.  The massive iceberg remained for several years and caused the ice thickness in the Sound to increase every year as it became thicker and thicker multi year ice.  At this time, the ice just outside McMurdo station is 19 feet thick!  Typically this ice is only around six feet or so.  When diving is required close to town the hole can be drilled with a massive auger attached to heavy equipment.  Todays dive hole was close to town and was previously drilled by a heavy equipment operator.  Also, we had a dive hut pulled over the ice hole to allow us to stay warm during the dives.  Other ways to make dive holes through the ice involve large melters as well as even using explosives.

The divers all had excellent dives, although they only stayed in for about 25 minutes in the 28 degree F water, it seemed like long enough from my perspective.  They all came up smiling and exhilarated from the amazing environment they just explored.  The visibility in these Antarctic waters is extraordinary, the sea life abundant and the view back up under the ice is surreal they say.  Marco said it was almost like a dream and he just could not stop smiling after his dive.  It was fantastic to have such a great morning and watch everyone so stoked.  We loaded up all the gear, went back to the dive locker, washed it all off and headed back to town for lunch.  All the divers had plenty of calories to make up and a warm lunch was nice to find waiting us.   Directly after lunch, Stacy needed to hang up some special flags that had been hand made and sent down by the many students of our close friend from Santa Cruz, Charmaine Ryan.  After getting special permission to display the flags, Stacy carefully strung them to a line and we found just the perfect place to display them best in the galley.  The flags  proudly stand literally in the center of town where everyone can see them and enjoy them.  More will be written about these flags on a future post, but I wanted to show a few pictures since it was the highlight of our lunch.  These flags are amazing pieces of art work and they were a sight to behold – hanging them for everyone to see was an honor.  Since then, I have seen many many people reading them, talking about them and enjoying them.  So stand by for more to come on this special project…  The Antarctic is truly a special place and we are happy to share it with everyone that does not have the unique fortune of being able to actually visit in person.

To end the regular working hours before supper, Stacy and I fired up the Piston Bully and made a pass thru town to take care of a few equipment details. We grabbed three small generators, our core drill heads, multiple drill strings and a few other odds and ends. Our main mission though was to drive to Scott Base, the New Zealand research center, and trade some ice coring bits and then mark a spot on the sea ice to be used to mark a dive hole. Tomorrow the heavy equipment will show up and core a very large hole through the super thick ice. This site was chosen because years ago, Dr. John Oliver reported enormous sponges at high density in an area that was too deep to dive. These beautiful animals could potentially be some of the oldest living things on the planet. We took some photos from the waypoint that we marked with a green flag. This amazing area is a junction of research station, sea ice, extinct volcano and permanently frozen ice shelf. Looking back towards Scott Base seemed like looking back at a small outpost on another planet. I hope it shows up in the small resolution photograph, if not please click on the photo to enlarge. The day ended with us returning back to the lab to work towards getting SCINI ready to dive tomorrow. Our minimum goal for tomorrow is to put SCINI in the test tank outside our lab, test all functions and if everything is good we hope to make our first engineering test dive in the same dive hole we were diving in yesterday. To a certain extent our success is based on our preparedness, however, the environment here is harsh and the design variables many and we just hope we have a robust design. Until next time, this is DJ over and clear. (Just me practicing radio talk!)