Logbook 15 (05/01/02)

The day of farewell to our ice floe, which for some unknown reason did not get a more personal name. To me it was my "home away from home". Thinking of some suitable words to say good-bye, a movie of my childhood comes back to my memory: "The desert is alive" from Walt Disney.

This motto is also true for the so-called ice desert - maybe even more. Life is based on ice algaes, gets a big boost by copepods and krill, reaches its peaks with stunning creatures like blue wales, penguins, albatross, and sea leopard seals, "creates" the southern cloudy sky by producing DMS through Weddell Sea ice algeas, and fertilizes the ocean with DOM, all without asking mankind whether it is possible or not. It just happens without any scientific reference. At least to a certain extend, Weddell Sea`s gift to the seven seas.

We visited a remote ocean, made famous by Shackleton`s drift, and the pioneer deeds of Germany`s Erich von Drygalski, who first detected the origin of Antarctic Bottom Water. We visited an area which has control on the world ocean's heartbeat, which quaffs the greenhouse gas CO2 and hides the "password" we need for climate models to calculate our future risks.

The floe we are leaving on 2 January, 2005 (67.23 S / 55.25 W) is nothing but a crump or even less compared to what we found at the end of November. But nothing got lost. It only changed.

PS An illustrated report (in German) will be published in June or July 2005: "Die Scholle", by Ingo Arndt (photos) and Claus-Peter Lieckfeld (text), Frederking und Thaler, Munich