From Tim Page
near Casey Station, Antarctica
7 November 1998, 10am
Hello there to the Students of Winthrop School, Ipswich, Massachussetts,
especially to the classes of Ms O'Reilly, Ms Smith & Ms Adamo, and
of course to Ms Kelly!!!!
PRESENT POSITION: 65 degrees South Latitude, 109 degrees East
Longtitude
DIRECTION HEADING: 197 degrees (South-South West)
DISTANCE FROM TASMANIA: 1883 nautical miles (2139 miles)
DISTANCE TO ANTARCTICA: 68 nautical miles (77 miles)
AIR TEMPERATURE: -11 degrees Celsius (12 degrees Fahrenheit)
WATER TEMPERATURE: -2 degree Celsius (28 Fahrenheit)
WATER DEPTH: 1082 metres (3548 feet)
WIND SPEED: 4 Knots (4.5 Miles per Hour)
Hello there everyone. Well it's been a very exciting few days! For the past week and a bit we've been travelling through the open ocean, but yesterday we finally reached the edge of the ice! Yipee! There's now a lot more to look at. You see the water gets so cold down here that lots of it freezes. In fact the liquid water itself is below the normal freezing point of water (32 degrees Fahrenheit, 0 degrees Celsius). It manages to stay liquid because it is very deep and it's salty, which lowers the temperature at which water will freeze.
Anyway, enough of the science lesson. Now when I go up on deck, everywhere I look I see white ice. Sometimes there are enormous icebergs which have broken off from glaciers on the continent. We go around the icebergs, since some of them have been as big as an entire state! (no I'm not joking, really). Because our ship has a strong hull, we can break through most of the ice, but sometimes we have to back up and get up some speed to break through it.
One of the exciting things about coming into the ice is that there are now loads of new animals to look at. I was very happy to see penguins, which I have always loved. First I saw little Adelie Penguins swimming through the water like big fish, then they leaped out of the water onto an ice floe. I also saw some big Emperor Penguins. They casually watched our ship go past from an ice floe, and then when we got close they slide across the ice on their bellies.
I also got to see some whales!!! We saw two Minke Whales when we were in a big patch of open water. They are like small Humpback Whales. Eventually they swam towards the ice and went right underneath it! Guess what we also saw? Some Orcas (also known as Killer Whales, but really they are just like big dolphins). The males have a huge black dorsal fin which sticks way out of the water, and stands out for a long way against the bright white ice. We were very lucky to see them, they are very impressive animals.
The other kind of animal we saw is the animal which I've come here to study, seals. There are loads of seals down here in Antarctica, but no-one really knows how many. There is one type (species) of seal called the Crabeater Seal, which may be the most abundant mammal on earth. Despite its name, this seal doesn't eat crabs but eats Krill, which are like very small shrimps. It appears that the number of Crabeaters has increased over the years. People think it might be because there were fewer whales. You see years ago people used to hunt whales, happily this doesn't happen much any more. But this hunting meant there were fewer whales and it happens that whales also eat krill. So because there were fewer whales it meant the Crabeater Seals had more to eat, so there numbers grew.
That is why I and the others on the Seal Survey are down here. We are here to count the number of seals, so we can get an idea of how important each type of seal is to the whole ecosystem, and how they compete with other animals like whales and penguins for food (krill).
I hope this all makes sense. It is great fun being down here, I'm very lucky. In fact we had a contest to see who could work out when we'd see the first iceberg, and guess what, I won! In fact I just made a wild guess, but I told everybody else I knew a lot about ice! (I don't think they believed me).
If you have any questions, you can email them here. Have fun.
See you later.
Tim Page