The fourth major ongoing program of the cruise has been the sea ice project carried out by Dr. Shusun Li, his grad student Xiaobing Zhou, and assistant Kim Morris, all from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. Images of Antarctic ice cover taken from space can be troublesome to interpret, and the ability to compare them to what is actually encountered on the spot provides a valuable method of understanding them more accurately at other times from, say, a university office. They also made periodic video recordings of the ice and kept a record of weather parameters. Whenever conditions were favorable they went out by Zodiac or personnel basket onto an ice floe to take specific measurements of the ice and snow and collect samples for analysis. These ice stations were preferentially coordinated with passes of the Terra satellite.
Sea ice helps to make an Antarctic voyage uniquely picturesque.
Coverage of the sea by snow-blanketed ice can be more or less flat or sculpted by wind and water until it looks like a layer of meringue extending to the horizon. These can be as small as a few inches across or they can become cemented together to cover many acres. Pancakes generally occur in enormous groups, sometimes surrounding the ship to the encircling horizon. Often the various forms of sea ice are stained brown at the water or on overturned chunks, which indicates the presence of microscopic diatoms in numbers too vast to imagine. Normally the Palmer serenely cuts through sea ice with no problem, but when the ice is too thick the bow rides up on it and crashes down, using the weight of the ship to break the ice.