A fond goodbye

Here’s how well things went for our scientists:

• Holly’s lab has never been to Antarctica before! They put down tubes to grab cylinders of mud from the seafloor, then they sift nematodes (microscopic worms) out of the mud. The samples they got here will hopefully establish an entirely new branch of Holly’s research program. She says they definitely found new species, and one of them has a totally different body plan than any nematode she’s seen before. You can get to Holly’s social channels and results announcements at https://HollyBik.com.
• Kevin Kocot’s team used a sled to very gently collect tiny, delicate organisms. They found so many that Kevin says he’ll need to hire more people just to finish processing all their samples. His team also found the “holy grail” of the species were looking for (the attached picture is Kevin’s team telling him about it as he's coming on-shift), and they’re documenting species with unexpected behaviors and reproduction strategies. Kevin writes fun blog posts here! At https://IcyInverts.com/.
• Sarah Gerken’s team combed through organisms from the same sled runs as Kevin, but looking for different species. They found more critters in the first 3 science days here than they found during their entire previous expedition, in 2020. Beautiful photos of their study organisms are on Instagram at @crustacea.cumacea.
• Andy Mahon and Ken Halanych combined teams to sort through the bigger stuff hanging out on the seafloor, which they brought up with a trawl net. They’ve both been to Antarctica many times but of course never studied in this area, so they were telling me excitedly about how different their results are from this side of the continent compared to what they usually see. They want to know how connected (or not) the groups of animals are that live in different areas of Antarctica. Different, say their results, but they also found very different animals from site to site over here. They also post about their work here at https://IcyInverts.com/.
• Derek Learman and Drew Steen’s team used the same mud cylinder gatherer that Holly’s lab did (this vid shows my favorite core ever to come up, which happened to bring up a swimming sea cucumber). They sliced the mud into thin layers to see what the deal is with how food and nutrients move through each layer, which tells them about how the whole ecosystem works at each different site. They’re comparing sites around Antarctica, and this expedition lets them say something about how the ocean works all around the continent. They talk about their work at https://adsteen.github.io/.

 
Antarctica is full of familiar life doing really weird things. There is so much we still don’t know, and it’s so hard to get there and figure it out. Sailing the Drake passage, between South America and Western Antarctica, is famously rough but takes just a few days- short enough for tourist cruises. But New Zealand is as far from Antarctica as the Caribbean is from Africa. And the distance it takes to sail from Africa to Antarctica would take you more than 2/3 of the way from California to Japan. More people have been to space than have studied ocean life around East Antarctica. Pretty much everything is left to be discovered.
 
This trip has changed the way I look at ice and world geography. I’ve seen wildlife and landscapes that I expect I’ll never get to see again. But like any good science project, it’s really all about people. Most of my days end with some kind of yelling about how incredible the staff, crew, and scientists are that I’m sailing with. I cannot emphasize enough how much I mean it. This expedition has changed me because I’ve experienced it with these phenomenal humans.

Virginia Schutte