Pictured is an ocean organism I imagine marine biologists finding in the icy depths some day. But in addition to continually discovering many new sea floor communities, scientists are also studying ways in which known ones are changing. One such effort is ICE AGED (Investigating Change in Ecology in Antarctica by Gizmologists, Educators and Divers), run by the Benthic Ecology Lab at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, the folks behind SCINI mentioned a couple blog posts ago.

The ICE AGED team has returned to an Antarctic experiment site established in the 1960s, a time considered as the dawn of Antarctic benthic research. Comparing original data with the present state of marine life on abandoned equipment is presenting researchers with a unique opportunity to assess nearly five decades of changes in the local ecosystem. One of those researchers is Paul Dayton, now a 71-year-old professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who will be revisiting the very cages and floats he secured to the seafloor as a youth. Here’s wishing Paul and the team success in their research under the ice, and perhaps the discovery of a new organism or two in the process. Read their journals here.

I’ve been working more fabric into the sketchbook for texture, new color, and to maintain the project’s use of found material. It also works to reference the ubiquity of flags (and shreds thereof) in Antarctica.

The shapes here allude to the discovery of many new sea life species each year. There are more discoveries to come as 99% of the Antarctic seafloor remains to be explored.

This Long View sketchbook page takes Antarctic diving as its theme. At coastal bases around the continent, diving plays a role in underwater scientific research, construction, salvage work, and environmental cleanup.

In McMurdo Sound, science divers have been finding new sea life species for decades. They’re now also studying long term ecological change in seafloor communities by deploying remotely operated vehicles beneath the frozen ocean surface.

One such vehicle is SCINI run by the Benthic Ecology Lab at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. My friend Henry Kaiser, pictured in the sketchbook and photos above, documents the underwater robot in a short but stunning video found here.

Divers at the University of British Columbia recently launched a similar probe to study the accelerated shrinkage of Antarctic ice shelves. Their craft, named UBC-Gavia, navigates unchartered ocean environments to collect data necessary to studying the dynamic between sea water and glacier tongues. Read more about the project here.

Antarctic divers are a hard-working bunch who deal with extreme and challenging conditions. But the rewards are extraordinary. One is clearly scientific discovery. Another is creative inspiration, as Henry aptly demonstrates in this video. Enjoy.

As promised, more artwork about stacks of stuff. This one imagines the stuff and activity in Shackleton’s Cape Royds hut as they worked the letterpress. The press itself was removed from the premises long ago and was said to be returned to England. Whether it was kept as an historic artifact or discarded as obsolete is unclear, but I’m looking into it.

I’m using a quasi-Cubist approach to stylistically describe Scott and Shackleton’s era. Cubism and the heroic age of polar exploration both developed at the same time, made use of found objects, and were groundbreaking exploits in their own ways.

The 1988 Madrid Protocol, as I mentioned yesterday, calls for all Antarctic Treaty countries to remove their old trash as well as their newly generated waste from the continent. Twenty years on, cleaning up the old stuff remains the taller order because of irreversible early waste management practices.

One such practice involved bulldozing rubbish out onto sea ice during winter to have it sink when the ice broke up in spring. “Sea-icing,” as it was called, had its heyday from 1955 (when McMurdo Station was built) to 1981 (when sea-icing was discontinued). During this period, scores of fuel drums, machinery and scrap metal accumulated off McMurdo’s shores. Open burning, untreated sewage, oil and chemical spills, and coastal landfills also contributed high concentrations of hydrocarbons, PCBs, and other toxic chemicals to the water and bottom sediments.

The primary dumping ground during those decades was Winter Quarters Bay, seen here in January ’09 with a view towards McMurdo. Robert Falcon Scott had used this natural harbor to anchor his ship Discovery for two winters during his 1901-04 expedition. During their stay, he and his crew built the historic Discovery Hut seen at left.

Winter Quarters Bay would never be that clean again. By the 1990s, the cove was deemed one of the most polluted spots on Earth. (“Testing Tainted Waters.”)

Despite the clean-ups, contamination still exists and is likely to remain for some time. One reason is that hydrocarbons break down at very slow rates in Antarctic temperatures. Another factor is the cost and logistics of retrieving vast quantities of sunken trash. According to a 2001 New Zealand sponsored study, researchers revealed 15 vehicles, 26 shipping containers, and 603 fuel drums among approximately 1,000 items strewn across the Winter Quarters seabed. In addition, a 2005 survey determined that the act of decontaminating the bay risked creating greater adverse environmental impact than leaving the waste where it is. (“Contaminants Measured Near McMurdo.”)

On a positive note, the bay’s contaminants appear to be localized thanks to a shoal that prevents the toxins from spreading into open water beyond. I imagine Captain Scott cheering for that. And toasting the Madrid Protocol. And flipping over conscientious waste management. And high-fiving Shackleton over the ban on sea-icing.

This could be good sketch material. In the meanwhile, today’s drawing/collage juxtaposes stacks of stuff in Scott’s hut with stacks of stuff submerged outside his door to illuminate the proximity and continuity between them. More artwork to follow on this theme.

This is a fabric map of Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. The airstrip is at top. The
new elevated station is shown in blue. The Xs indicate the ever-migrating geographic
South Pole marker, and the knob at right is the Dark Sector, a research area free of electromagnetic interference. Everything else that goes on is at left.

Accuracy and scale aside, I could have used one of these sewn to my jacket sleeve dur-
ing my visit there. It beats fumbling with paper maps in windy, subfreezing conditions.

That’s the new South Pole Elevated Station on the left, and the Degree Angular Scale Interferometer (DASI) on the right. A la fabric discards.

Continuing with the fabric theme, this week I’m posting sketchbook pieces created
with cloth and thread. I’m new to the medium, so my wife Lili is introducing me to
the varieties of stitching, and the material comes from her sewing leftovers.

It’s exciting to be learning a new craft and once I get the basics down, I’ll work
Antarctic content into these pieces.

I originally expected to fill my sketchbook with technical notes and drawings in figuring
out how to create this project, but it’s not proving necessary. Kind of disappointing
since Leonardo-style notebooks are so utterly cool, but at least my approach fulfills
its aims. Which is to say, I’ve come to formulate the direction of this project more
clearly with every cut-paper composition I create.

How is that possible in the absence of diagrammatical plans? Because the challenge
isn’t in engineering the final structure (I worked that out in my head weeks ago) as
much as in sustaining an improvisational, experimental approach to creating my art-
works from start to finish. That process can’t be planned; however, it can be practiced
and that’s what I’m attempting here.

I’m working on several sketchbook entries at once. I jump around from page to page trying different shapes, experimenting with arrangements, trying to keep it spontaneous. (Or at least spontaneous-looking…) I’m not as concerned with the color palette (yet) as I am with developing the image vocabulary.

So far I’ve posted pieces I like. By the time I get around to showing the duds, I hope to have some nice sculptural pieces to show instead;)

That part should be under way within a couple weeks. I just found the specialty hinges that will string my vignettes together, a necessary step in determining the type of panels I’ll build my assemblages on. I’ll elaborate more on these technical aspects when the time comes. Till then, more cut paper and found Antarctic objects to follow…