Stephen Pekar's blog

Well, I am back on the JOIDES Resolution, with about half of the science party from the expedition taking samples from the cores we took from just a couple of months ago.  I feel so fortunate that these cores were left on the ship so we could sample them on the JR.   Last week, a large number of us took samples from the cores that were already shipped to the repository in Te

I have just arrived home after thirty plus hours of traveling.  I return with mixed emotions (as many of my colleagues also feel), as it is good to be home, but there is a heavy heart and an emotional drain as the great adventure has ended for all. 

We are less than 24 hours from Hobart and the end of this most amazing expedition. 

So, while the Wilkes Land Antarctic Expedition may have come to end,

It was a frosty morning during this time of an ever weakening light from the Antarctic sun.  The spirits of this cold frozen land can now feel its withering rays as she fights to get above the horizon.  And even after she wins that battle, she struggles to rise and can only manage to hang low in the sky even when she's at her most powerful at the noon. 

We tried and tried, but the spirits of the ice world would not let us through their door and to where we wanted to drill on the shelf.  It was here in the shallow environs that we hoped to be able to recover proximal records of the evolution of the ice sheet during the transition from the greenhouse world to icehouse world. 

For the last few days, we have been at the whims of the spirits of Antarctica.  We first had to flee from an approaching storm our most desired drilling site, the shelf site that will recover the Greenhouse sediments deposited in shallow waters.

A Valentine’s Day blog:

It is not often that one can gaze into the golden rays of heaven.  But on two successive morns, The spirits of Antarctica gave us a spectacular light show, the likes I have never seen. 

02 08 10 A tree ring record from the deep sea

During our two days at the Adellie Site, the spirits of Antarctica granted us the glory of seeing the magnificence of this most remote continent.