there and back again

I intentionally haven't been religious of updating our position and
our day-to-day progress with this blog, which I think may have been a
little repetitive, but I feel like I haven't given an update on our
general direction recently. So here's a brief summary of where we
are in the cruise.

After the Ross Ice Shelf transect, we moved into the Amundsen and
have continued on a roughly west to east path. Our main goal was/is
to look at the pathways and characteristics of a type of water which
drives the melting of glacial ice in the Amundsen Sea -- circumpolar
deep water (CDW). There are two important barriers for the CDW --
the continental shelf break, where the continental shelf slopes
steeply into the deep ocean, and the ice shelf front, where the ice
shelf front forms a vertical barrier for the inflow. This divides
the analysis into 3 parts -- the deep ocean, the continental shelf,
and the sub-ice shelf cavity. Although we have surveyed and sampled
some of the continental shelf, most of the work we've done has been
close to the ice shelves, which allows us to characterize both the
heat available to melt glaciers near the ice shelf, and find evidence
of meltwater in the physical and chemical characteristics of the
water column. Unfortunately, we can't get beneath the ice shelves
themselves (that's why we need models and modelers!).

On our way to Pine Island Bay, we've spent time near the East and
central getz, dotson, crosson, thwaites, and pine island glaciers/ice
shelves. After moving as far east as possible along the coast, we
turned around and filled in some gaps on our way to the western getz
ice shelves, where we are now. After 6 or so more CTD casts around
here, we're reversing directions once more, heading northeast along
the continental shelf break, which is currently looking icy...

The remainder of the cruise will be focused on trying to get an idea
of where the warm water enters the continental shelf to help
understand what might be driving it's transport and variability. So
now we'll be moving offshore from the ice shelves (and N/S gradients
in meltwater) to the shelf break (and E/W gradients in bathymetry and
CDW).

The trip odometer, by my count, is right around 6500 km. I don't
know how far it is to Punta Arenas, but we are currently at 74.5S,
133.8W. I bet we'll be safely over 10000 km by the end of the trip.

ps I'm in the ping-pong semifinals!