This morning's satellite image of the area around Cape Royds. Our old sampling site is heading out to sea, but that means the ice edge should be easier to approach on our next venture out.
The sun has finally risen to a high enough angle that we’re able to get visible light satellite imagery via commercial satellites operated by DigitalGlobe. And just in time! We got this image this morning of the Cape Royds area. The wind wasn’t really strong yesterday, just a peristent breeze of 10-15 knots, but it was enough to cause some serious changes to the ice edge. All of the 40-50 cm thick ice that prevented us from approaching the ice edge with our vehicles previously has sheared away from the landfast ice, the gap ranges from a few hundred meters to well over a kilometer. It would be spectacular to be there now, there should be lots of seals and penguins taking advantage of the new hunting space.
Unfortunately we have our hands full today dealing with the samples from our last outing. Right now there are barrels of frost flowers and ice lining the hall outside of the lab, slowly melting. Melted our not we’ll take a break from the labwork to visit the ice edge tomorrow. We need to collect some first year ice as the last part of the sample set we started on Monday. And we are very keen to see what the new edge looks like, provided the winds don’t shift and blow everything back!
