Members of the Scripps GOLF 1-8-2 Team  (Julie Bowles, Hubert Staudigel, and Elise Sbarbori) are currently braving the elements (extreme cold, wind and maybe snow fall) in order to collect samples of volcanic rocks from the McMurdo area in Antarctica. By studying these igneous rocks, they hope to view a “snapshot” of what the Earth’s magnetic field looked like in the particular time and place the rocks were formed.

Below are some excerpts from their diary:

Day 22 – 5 December 2006 – Sea Ice Blowout
The sea ice will be breaking up soon (we’ve seen it get progressively slushier and progressively more cracked with each day that we’ve been out). Luckily we are through with our sampling of Erebus Bay. Twelve sites. Not bad! Now we’re keeping our fingers crossed that the sea ice recedes past Hut Point (it hasn’t in the past 7 years). If McMurdo Station becomes waterfront property, we may be able to see killer whales from our laboratory window!

Day 20 – 3 December 2006 – Skua: 2, Julie: 0
You’d think she’d have learned her lesson the first time around. This time the bird took a ham sandwich and Julie’s left pinky finger. Kidding, kidding. We’ve been extremely wary since the first skua incident, and opt to eat lunch in a warming hut instead of in the open air. Sites taken today include Little Razorback and Tent Island.

Day 19 – 2 December 2006 – Keeping Warm, Antarctica Style
Vicious winds today! With speeds as high as 20 knots this is probably the windiest weather we’ve seen so far, but at least it gives us the chance to fully utilize every last piece of our extreme cold weather gear on the snowmobile ride home. In spite of the cold, we manage to sample Big Razorback Island and explore Tent Island for good outcrop. Unrecognizable as human beings, looking more like piles of laundry, we navigate the sea ice, making sure to stop at the “warming huts” along the way to defrost our fingers and toes.

Day 18 – 1 December 2006 – Skua: 1, Julie: 0
Julie has a very “Hitchcockian” incident this morning while returning from the galley. In a scene that could be straight out of The Birds, Julie is attacked by a vicious skua, determined to free her from her buttered toast! Despite her best efforts to thwart the feathered beast, she steps away from the scene absent one continental breakfast. Fieldwork today includes revisiting the dike near Turks Head to finish orienting our samples as well as sampling Turks Head itself. The slush ponds deepen as the tide comes in, so we have to wade through water in order to make it home!

Examples:
ALIA Expedition around the Samoan Hotspot (April 2005)
Hawaiian Volcanoes Field Trip (September 2005)
GOLF182 Antarctica Expedition (Currently Underway)

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