AMLR 2002 Weekly Report No. 6

17 February 2002

1. The Russian R/V Yuzhmorgeologiya departed Punta Arenas, Chile at 0930 on 14 February 2002 en route to the U.S. AMLR study area in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica. Good weather has allowed excellent progress and landfall was made early this morning at Cape Shirreff field camp.

2. Cape Shirreff field camp operations: Personnel (David Demer, Adam Jenkins, Joe Warren, and Stephane Conti), provisions, and equipment will be transferred ashore. Rennie Holt, will be coming aboard the ship from the Cape Shirreff field camp to act as Chief Scientist, while A. Jenkins is conducting the Inshore survey (see item 3).

3. Beginning 18 February 2002, a high-resolution survey for krill will be conducted by A. Jenkins and J. Warren in the vicinity of Cape Shirreff using a multi-instrumented Zodiac (near-shore). The ship will extend the high-resolution survey through coverage of the offshore area. A. Jenkins, J. Warren, and D. Demer will begin the survey with an echosounder calibration and then survey bathymetry for a mooring site. A. Jenkins and J. Warren will then conduct an acoustical survey augmented with underater video and plankton net tows. Meanwhile, at the shore camp, D.Demer and S. Conti will make Total Target Strength (TTS) measurements of a variety of live Antarctic zooplankton. Zooplankton specialists aboard the ship will support this effort by providing live zooplankton from nighttime net tows. Thirdly, D. Needham and D. Demer will be deploying a buoy instrumented with GPS, a 38 and 200 kHz echosounder, and a radio modem. A. Jenkins and R. Rowley will assist in deploying the buoy from the zodiacs and mooring it at a canyon head circa 5 nm from Cape Shirreff. The instrumented spar-buoy is being tested as a means for long-term monitoring of krill availability to land-based predators. Data will be telemetered to the shore camp.

These three experiments will be conducted at Cape Shirreff over the next six days.

4. Scientific party remaining aboard will include:

A. Jenkins, SWFSC, chief scientist, inshore survey

J. Emery, SWFSC, acoustics

V. Loeb, Moss Landing Marine Labs, zooplankton

D. Demer, SWFSC, Instrumented buoys, TTS measurments

R. Rowley, small boats, zooplankton

N. Gong, SWFSC, zooplankton

M. Force, SWFSC, zooplankton

S. Peters, SWFSC, zooplankton

E. Bredesen, University of British Columbia, zooplankton

L. Linacre, SWFSC, zooplankton

M. Soule, Marine Fisheries Surveys Inc., oceanography, ET support

D. Needham, South Africa, oceanography, ET support

S. Giglio, Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso, phytoplankton

C. Hewes, Scripps Inst. Ocean., phytoplankton

A. Allen, SWFSC, lipid extractions and scat analysis

S. Conti, SWFSC, TTS measurments

J. Warren, SWFSC, inshore survey

A. Jenkins sends