The team are clearly glad to be out of their 10 day quarantine in a hotel in Cape Town, and are enjoying the sunshine on deck (after the storms that kept them in) – preparing kit to be deployed.

Ice Mass Balance Buoys

In the coming days, the team will be deploying these Wave and Ice Mass Balance Buoys (that were custom made over the last few months, in super-quick time thanks to Bruncin – Lovro and his team in Croatia who worked overtime to get these built in only a few months since the project started in December.

These buoys shown, with PI Jeremy Wilkinson, will be deployed in the #WeddellSea. They measure the energy balance of the snow – how much sunlight and thermal energy it absorbs and emits, as well as how much heat the snow gives and receives from the ice and ocean below.

Ice-Tethered Profiler

In addition, the team will be deploying and Ice-Tethered Profiler (below). It will be only the second to be deployed on the Antarctic sea ice!

It will measure the properties of the water under the ice, helping to explain what controls when it melts and grows. It needs to be lowered on a cable attached to a rope, so it’s incredibly important that we tie the rope on properly and don’t drop the whole thing into the sea. So some ropework practice is needed:

These will be deployed next week or so, after the AWI ship PolarStern resupplies the German Antarctic Base.

Before that will be glider deployment for sister project SO-CHIC…. to follow…