{"id":3044,"date":"2022-02-07T19:44:05","date_gmt":"2022-02-07T19:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/endurance22.org\/?post_type=expedition-blog&p=3044"},"modified":"2022-02-14T20:12:23","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T20:12:23","slug":"7-february-2022","status":"publish","type":"expedition-blog","link":"https:\/\/endurance22.org\/expedition-blog\/7-february-2022","title":{"rendered":"7 February 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"
Our lives are now slipping into routines.\u00a0 The scientists have their routines, the meteorologists and subsea teams have theirs, and so on.\u00a0 For John and myself, it seems to be mostly one meeting after another.\u00a0 For everybody, although they are enjoying the voyage, their days are so packed that by 22.00 they are utterly exhausted and ready for their bunks.\u00a0 Covid, of course, remains an abiding concern;\u00a0 we all wear masks, we keep our distances from each other as best we are able and the first thing we all do when we get up in the morning is to conduct a lateral flow test and report the results on a tick-sheet as we go into breakfast at 07.30.<\/p>\n
We are now starting to pay close attention to what is happening within the Weddell Sea pack. Today we had our first ice-strategy meeting.\u00a0 Chaired by expedition Chief Scientist, Lasse Rabenstein, from the German ice monitoring company Drift & Noise, we will be holding these sessions every day at 09.30 in the ship\u2019s auditorium.\u00a0 Also at these gatherings will be the Chief Meteorologist, Marc de Vos, who will be reporting on the weather ahead as well as that over our destination.\u00a0 Today they presented the latest MODIS ice-data of the search area and its surrounds (courtesy of NASA), as well as TerraSAT-X radar satellite imagery (courtesy of the German Aerospace Centre DLR) and optical imagery from Sentinel-3 (courtesy of the European Space Agency).\u00a0 What they show is that the ice is currently being driven south by the wind, but that will change and the whole gyre will resume its northerly trend.\u00a0 At present ice conditions are good.\u00a0 From the ice edge to the search area it is 125 nautical miles, of which the last 20-25 is old, gnarled multi-year ice that will be challenging.\u00a0 But of course, we still have a week to go and in that time the pack could further open or, just as easily, it might consolidate.<\/p>\n