冰上的阿德利企鹅 @jean wimmerlin on Unsplash
2023年平安夜前夕的南半球，夏日阳光穿过灰色云层洒落在冰面上。美国破冰船“纳塔尼尔·帕尔默”（Nathaniel B. Palmer）号被无边无际的厚冰层包围着，几个小时前，这艘私有破冰船撞上了固定冰（fast ice）——附着于海岸线、不随风和洋流漂移的海冰。船上的研究人员走下舷梯来到冰面上，他们须要花几个小时采集海冰样本，以了解海冰融化对海洋化学、海洋物理以及地球气候的影响。进行了一个多小时的采样工作后，他们看到几千米外的船后面有一排黑点，这些黑点正快速朝他们移动。很快，研究人员意识到那是一群阿德利企鹅（Pygoscelis adeliae），南极最小的企鹅物种。它们排成一条长队穿过冰面——有的在笨拙地行走，有的则用腹部滑行，数量大约 100 只。它们绕着船走来，直奔研究人员采样的地方。它们离研究人员很近，如果允许的话，研究人员甚至可以摸到它们。研究人员别无选择，只能停下工作，欣赏这些大胆地绕着他们的设备走动的好奇崽崽。企鹅们嘎嘎叫着，挥动着翅膀，检查着冰面上每一个用机器钻出的洞。它们对铲子特别感兴趣，有些企鹅看起来甚至想和这些工具“发生关系”，还有一只跳进了科学家用来携带设备的塑料滑道，就是不肯离开。美国阿拉斯加大学费尔班克斯分校（University of Alaska Fairbanks）的化学海洋学家劳拉·惠特莫尔说（Laura Whitmore）说：“我们不应该干涉企鹅，对吧？所以如果它们来了，我们只能让它们待在那儿。”惠特莫尔是“帕尔默”号冰层作业的负责人，她的同事给她起了个绰号叫“冰雪女王”。惠特莫尔表示，她宁愿企鹅别出现在他们的采样区，因为研究人员须要获取干净的样本，而企鹅……很脏。这是惠特莫尔第一次来南极洲，她通常在北极研究海冰，那里没有企鹅，她对这些鸟类的好奇心感到惊讶不已：“我们第一次登上冰面，它们就直接向我们游过来，它们靠近人类的行为是第一件令我惊讶的事。然后，这一幕再次上演，就好像这就是它们会有的行为，它们就是会向我们游过来。”在冰上取样对体力要求很高，部分原因是在冰面上行走非常困难，尤其是穿着三层厚衣服。研究人员会不停陷入雪里，也会各种摔倒。寻找冰块进行采样的整个过程也很艰难。每次研究人员离开船时都很容易被企鹅找到，但对于人类来说，找到合适的海冰要困难得多。厚厚的浮冰经常包围着破冰船，成千上万的浮冰像一块不连贯拼图的巨大碎片，散布在海面上。随着船的移动，沉重的巨大浮冰撞击着船体，发出雷鸣般的响声。研究人员需要找到一块足够坚固的浮冰，以便能够支撑他们踩上去，但又不能太厚，太厚的话用来在浮冰周围航行的小型充气船可能会够不到浮冰顶部；浮冰还必须处在不会被风吹向船体、船上的烟雾也不会被吹入冰层污染样本的位置。另一个难题是亮度。即使浮冰不是平的，它反射的光线也可能让它看起来是平的，你很难看出上面是否有突起、裂缝或不平坦的地方。每次寻找浮冰时，惠特莫尔和船上的海洋技术人员都要在舰桥上花六个小时透过窗户寻找一块合适的海冰，用双筒望远镜和十足的耐心。希瑟·杰克逊（Heather Jackson）是美国南极洲计划（U.S. Antarctic Program）的海洋技术员，她的工作是帮助“帕尔默”号上的研究人员找到一块好浮冰，并在他们登上冰面后保证他们的安全。当寻觅找到一块合适的候选浮冰时，研究人员会穿上覆盖全身的橙色救生衣，这是一种足够厚的救生衣，可以抵御严寒，也能在水中帮助研究人员浮起来。然后，他们会用挂在船体侧面的绳梯（Jacob’s ladder）从“帕尔默”号上下来，跳进小型充气摩托艇，靠近候选浮冰进行初步检查。摩托艇会绕着浮冰行驶，以便研究人员检查浮冰是否稳固，然后找到一个有希望的位置时，驾驶员会将摩托艇慢慢开到冰上。冰面上的往往覆盖着雪，这些雪有时过于松软，让人难以在上面行走，有时掩藏着一层不稳定的、泥泞的冰。海洋技术员会用一根长长的金属棍在冰面上四处戳一戳，确保它的稳固性。确定好稳固性后，研究人员就把他们的重型设备搬到冰上，包括管道、铲子、水桶，以及每个人都有的个人防水袋。防水袋里装有食物、水、额外的冬装和一个用来排尿的瓶子，以备不时之需，毕竟他们会在冰上待上六个小时。在南极洲的浮冰上尿尿并不是一件简单的事情。美国南极洲计划现场主管黛安娜·赫特（Diane Hutt）在船上的安全培训中解释了原因：“你可以往水里小便，但问题是……[查看全文]
Penguins and Ice Samples Make This Research Vessel Paradice
Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, this is Rachel Feltman. You’re listening to part two of our Friday Fascination miniseries all about Antarctica.Last week we met award-winning Brazilian journalist Sofia Moutinho onboard a U.S. icebreaker called the Nathaniel B. Palmer. Today we’ll follow her as she and her fellow passengers hit the ice—literally disembarking onto one of the many ice floes that drift through the Southern Ocean. They’ll have to navigate tricky terrain and frigid temperatures to collect samples of pristine ice, which is crucial for helping scientists figure out how the world’s waterways will change as our warming climate melts this region’s glaciers and ice shelves.But before we get into all that science—and the hard work that makes it possible—Sofia has some new friends to introduce us to.Tara Williams: It’s bowing [laughs]!Kouba: It’s just so much gratitude. It’s just—it’s once in a lifetime, these things. I just—oh, my God [cries louder]!Sofia Moutinho (tape): Are you crying?Kouba: I just—I’m absolutely crying!Moutinho (tape): You cried, too, right?Williams: Yes, a few times [cries and laughs at the same time]. It’s just beautiful and amazing, and who gets to see this?Moutinho: It’s the night before Christmas Eve in 2023. The austral summer sun shines behind gray clouds. An endless, thick layer of ice surrounds the Nathaniel B. Palmer, a U.S. icebreaker. It has only been a few hours since our ship rammed into the fast ice so we could disembark. Fast ice is the technical term for this frozen seawater connected to the shoreline.Our gangway is down, and a group of researchers is out on the ice. They will spend hours outside sampling sea ice to understand how its melting is affecting the chemistry and physics of the ocean as well as Earth’s climate.But with hard work comes feathered rewards.You just heard the researchers crying with joy after an unexpected encounter with local wildlife.Williams: I don’t even have words.Teagan Bellitto: I’m so happy they came over.Williams: My face hurts from smiling so much.Moutinho: “They” were Adélie penguins, the smallest penguin species in the Antarctic.The researchers had been sampling for a little more than an hour, collecting snow from the surface and drilling ice cores with noisy machines, when we saw a line of black dots a few miles away, behind the ship. The shapes were moving quickly toward us.Ken Block: There are a lot of penguins over there!Moutinho (tape): Yes, there’s, like, 100 penguins coming this way!Moutinho: Soon enough we realized it was a group of Adélies. They moved across the ice in a huge line—some walking clumsily, others sliding on their belly.Laura Whitmore: Oh, my gosh!Moutinho (tape): Did you see that? There’s like 100 of them!Whitmore: The penguins are coming! Oh, my gosh!Other researchers: Oh, my gosh!Moutinho (tape): It’s the March of the Penguins!Moutinho: They went around the ship and straight to the spot where the researchers were sampling. They were so close to us that we could touch them if we were allowed to. The scientists had no choice but to stop their work and admire the visitors, who boldly walked all around their equipment.[CLIP: Penguins make noise while researchers look on and take photographs]Moutinho: The gang of penguins squawked, honked, waved their wings and inspected every hole on the ice. The animals had a special admiration for the scientists’ shovels. Some looked like they wanted to mate with the tools. One of them jumped into a plastic slide that the scientists use to carry equipment and just wouldn’t leave it.Whitmore: We’re not supposed to interfere with the penguins, right? So if they come, we kind of have to just let them be there.Moutinho: That’s Laura Whitmore, a chemical oceanographer at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and leader of ice operations on the Palmer. Because of that her colleagues nicknamed her “the Ice Queen.”Whitmore: While we’re doing the work, I would rather them not be right in our sampling area. We’re trying to get clean samples, and penguins are pretty dirty [laughs].Moutinho: While we had never seen so many penguins on the ice before, this was not our only encounter with them. These birds greeted us practically every time we stopped to collect samples during our journey in West Antarctica.This was Laura’s first trip to Antarctica. She usually studies ice in the Arctic, where there are no penguins, and she was surprised by how curious these birds are.Whitmore: The first floe we were on, they came right up to us, and I just think their behavior—coming close to people—was the first surprising thing. And then they did it again. It’s like, “This is just their behavior. They’re going to come up to us.”Moutinho: Just before our penguin encounter, I asked Laura about her expectations for our time on the ice that night. She couldn’t have known what was about to happen, but what she said proved prophetic.Whitmore: I have a friend who always says, “Another day on the ice is another day in paradise,” which is pretty true.Moutinho: But even in this icy paradise, it’s easy to break a sweat. Sampling on ice is physically demanding, in part because it’s super hard to walk across the surface, especially wearing three layers of thick clothes. I kept sinking into the snow and falling down. So did the scientists.Bellitto: I fell in a nice little snow patch there—like, a deep hole—on my way here. And I was like, “You know, I thought I was going to be so graceful.”Whitmore: You thought that?Bellitto: Yeah, I like to be optimistic.Moutinho: The whole process of finding ice to sample is also hard.While it was easy for the penguins to find us on the ice every time we left the ship, finding the right sea ice was much more difficult for the humans.Thick ice floes often surrounded the ship. Thousands of them were spread across the ocean surface like gigantic pieces of an incoherent puzzle. As the ship moved, their huge masses hit the hull, making thunderlike sounds.[CLIP: Ice floes knock against the hull of the ship]Moutinho: The researchers needed to find an ice floe that was sturdy enough for us to step on but not so thick that the top was out of reach from the small inflatable boat we used to navigate around the floating ice. The floe also had to be positioned in a spot where the wind would not blow it against the hull or throw the ship’s smoke into the ice, contaminating the samples.The brightness was another challenge. Light reflecting off ice floes makes them look flat, even if they aren’t. It was difficult to see if there were ridges, cracks or areas of uneven ground.Every time we went on an ice hunt, Laura and the marine technicians onboard spent up to six hours on the bridge looking through the big windows for a good piece of sea ice. They were armed with binoculars and patience.Whitmore: We’re just going to kind of keep on going to the next bits of ice and keep looking.Heather Jackson: To find a better favorite.Moutinho (tape): Window-shopping for ice.Whitmore: Yeah [laughs], literally, through the windows.[CLIP: Jackson hums the music playing on the bridge]Moutinho: Heather Jackson is the person humming with Laura. She is a marine technician with the U.S. Antarctic Program. Her job is to help the researchers onboard the Palmer find a good piece of ice and keep them safe once they land on it.Jackson: Sea-ice work is a slow process, and it moves at a glacial pace sometimes.Moutinho: Heather, Laura and another marine technician, Stuart Siddons, often had long discussions before choosing which ice floe to inspect more closely.Stuart Siddons: That one’s a good option.Moutinho: When the researchers found a good candidate, they put on orange flotation suits that covered their whole body. The suits are thick enough to protect against the cold and will float if someone falls in the water.Then we went down from the Palmer using a Jacob’s ladder—a rustic ladder made out of ropes and planks—hanging on the side of the hull.Siddons: Okay, come on down!Henry Thoreen: You’re the next contestant. Two more steps. One—okay.[CLIP: Something hits the floor of a boat]Moutinho: We jumped into a Zodiac, a small inflatable motorboat.Siddons (on the radio): Bridge, bridge, Zodiac Two away at nine.Whitmore: To good science!Technician (on the radio): Roger that, Zodiac Two away at nine.[CLIP: The boat’s motor revs, and waves splash]Mollie Passacantando: This is awesome!Moutinho: Sitting on the edge of the boat, we approached the candidate ice floe for an initial inspection. We drove around the floe while the researchers checked if the ice was stable. When the team found a promising spot, the pilot inched the Zodiac up onto the ice.[CLIP: The boat’s motor stops, and waves splash]Siddons: I’m thinking it’ll sluff a little bit, but I can get my nose up pretty far.[CLIP: The boat’s motor revs as Siddons accelerates, and people laugh]Moutinho: Henry Thoreen, a marine tech, was the first to get out.Siddons: You want to grab the poker?Whitmore: People are watching on the bridge, Henry [laughs]!Moutinho: Using a long metal stick, Henry poked the icy ground in several spots to ensure it was stable.Siddons: Poke a bit back towards us, Henry, just to get an idea if there is a range on the bow that we need to worry about.[CLIP: Thoreen continues to poke the ground]Moutinho: The snow can be misleading. Sometimes it is too fluffy to walk on. Other times it hides a layer of unstable, slushy ice.Thoreen: Oh, this is nice and stable.Moutinho and researchers (tape): Woo-hoo!Moutinho: The researchers carried their heavy equipment onto the ice.Whitmore: The tubes, the shovels, the buckets.[CLIP: People walk through the snow]Moutinho: Everyone also brought a personal dry bag with food, water, extra pairs of winter clothes and a bottle to pee in if necessary. We would be on the ice for up to six hours, so nature just might call. But tinkling on an ice floe in Antarctica isn’t exactly straightforward. Diane Hutt, a U.S. Antarctic Program field supervisor, explained why during a safety training onboard.Diane Hutt: You can pee into the water, but here’s the problem with that...[full transcript]
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