Welcome!

Hi friends, hello strangers, and welcome to Danparktica, the official blog of my travels to the Southern Ocean and the Ice Continent... it's of me, by me, and for you!

Today I'll introduce you to the cruise--the purpose, the vessel, the people--and a few other tidbits. But first, an itinerary... think of this as a table of contents:

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Itinerary
25 Jan 2007 -- Fly out of Los Angeles.
27 Jan 2007 -- Arrive in Auckland, New Zealand. Immediately fly to Queenstown, NZ.
27-31 Jan 2007 -- Explore Queenstown, Te Anau, and Milford Sound.
31 Jan 2007 -- Arrive in Dunedin, NZ, and begin loading operations.
4 Feb 2007 -- The R/V Roger Revelle sets sail!
18 Mar 2007 -- The R/V Roger Revelle docks at Fremantle, Australia.
19 Mar 2007 -- Fly back to Los Angeles via Sydney.

The meat of the blog, of course, will be cooked during the 6-week cruise from Dunedin to Fremantle (which is near Perth). The ship will steam south to Antarctica before looping around and heading north to the west coast of Australia. I'll be updating via satellite.

The cruise is a part of the United States' contribution to the World Climate Research Program CLIVAR (Climate Variability) Repeat Hydrography Program (http://www.clivar.org/carbon_hydro) and the UNESCO International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project (http://ushydro.ucsd.edu). This particular cruise, called I8S/I9N, will perform a "repeat hydrography" transect from Antarctica to Bangladesh along 95 degrees east longitude. I'll be participating in the first leg of the cruise, I8S, which docks in Fremantle before continuing on to Bangladesh.

I8S is organized by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (http://sio.ucsd.edu) at UC San Diego, and is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (http://www.noaa.gov) and the National Science Foundation (http://www.nsf.gov).

This program is called "repeat hydrography" because it is performed regularly to determine patterns of change over time of the physical properties of water. I8S concerns one part of the Southern Ocean; every year, a different section of the ocean is studied. My cruise is repeating measurements made about a decade ago.

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There are 36 scientists, grad students, and Dan Parks on this cruise, along with 20 additional crew. My job will be to observe, assist, and document (video, still photography, illustrations) the scientists for a public outreach program; I will be working with Pien Huang and Cassandra Lopez, who are concerned with writing articles for journals. I'm just there for a good time! Actually, here:

Dan Park's Mission Statement
1. To put on a few pounds of muscle
2. Convince a few scientists and crew to act in a murder mystery
3. What if a polar bear somehow got lost in Antarctica? I'm going to turn this into a children's book which ends in a penguin-feast
4. Alert the world to the dangers of global warming!!!!!!!!!!!

Check back soon for another update. :) :)