Under The Sea....

Diving in Antarctica is a part of my job (how brilliant is that!). It's not as cold as you might think, despite the water temperature being a chilly -0.5 degrees C our dry suits keep us fairly warm. We use 'Agas' (a type of full face mask) with in built comms which allow us to speak to eachother underwater and to the supervisor at the surface. Diving tasks may include photographing settlement plates, checking study areas for signs of iceberg scour and retriving data loggers which record temperature and flourescence (which gives an indication of the amount of phytoplankton in the water column, loggers can be seen in the photo below).

As the temperatures drop over the next few months the surface of the sea will start to freeze. Once it's in a stable state we'll be able to create holes using our outrageously sized chainsaw and dive under the ice. Now the summer phytoplankton blooms are dying off the visibility is improving all the time. This week it's been about 20m but we can apparently expect 50m + in winter.