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Oden Antarctic Expedition 08

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Meet the Team

Teacher - Jeff Peneston

Jeff Peneston's picture
Liverpool High School
Liverpool , New York
United States

Jeff Peneston can walk or snowshoe out his back door into the forest and lakes of Camp Talooli, a children’s camp that he has helped his wife direct for 24 years. Each school day he leaves his forested home to teach Earth Science at Liverpool High School, just North of Syracuse, New York. Mr. Peneston has been teaching for 22 years and his passion has been to find ways to bring his students out into the natural world where they can learn to solve authentic problems. In 2000 he helped create the Expedition Earth Science program and each year he leads groups of students to locations around Upstate New York where they can act as field scientists for a day or a weekend. Mr. Peneston believes what one of his students once told him, “Real science begins where the classroom ends!” Mr. Peneston will be joining a team of international scientists on the Oden icebreaker.

Researcher - Tish Yager

Tish Yager's picture
University of Georgia
Athens , Georgia
United States

Dr. Patricia (Tish) Yager is an associate professor in marine sciences at the University of Georgia. Her research interests include biological and and chemical oceanography, with a particular interest in the relationship between the changing climate and the marine ecosystem. She has spent several seasons woking in Antarctica, and also studies microbial communities in the Amazon River. To learn more about Dr. Yager, please visit her faculty biography page (http://www.marsci.uga.edu/directory/pyager.htm).

Journals

1/20/2009: The CTD, An Inner Space Probe to the Ocean Depths

  The CTD is the workhorse of most of the oceanographic research that happens on the Oden or any other research vessel.  CTD stands for Conductivity, Temperature and Depth and the heart of this “inner space probe” is a package of instruments that sends a stream of data back to computers aboard...

1/21/09 Honey, I’m Home!

  Honey, I’m Home! The trip home started with the check in and pre-flight weigh-in to make sure that my luggage did not exceed 75 pounds.  We all were required to wear our special ECW (extreme cold weather) clothing on the military flight from McMurdo Station to New Zealand and we then crammed...

1/13/09 Two Days in McMurdo Station, Ross Island

Exploring McMurdo For me, the reoccurring theme of this 2 month adventure has been, “Just when you thought it could not get better….”.  As we walked off the Oden on Jan 12 we were told that our flight home would be delayed for one more day and we would not leave until the 14th.  This meant that we...

1/12/2009 Are We There Yet??

Are We There Yet? As much as I have enjoyed every minute of this expedition and I am already starting to miss some of the great people I have become friends with on the Oden, the last mile to McMurdo has taken us over 24 hours. The Oden has been cutting a channel through 3-meter thick sea ice and...

1/9/2009 Flying Penguins Video

I Discovered That Adelie Penguins Can Fly!! The Oden was parked at an ice station in McMurdo Sound, about 6 miles off the coast of Cape Bird on the North end of Ross Island. The icebreaker had created the only pool of open water as far as the eye could see and about 100 Adelie penguins were happy...

Project Information

International Expedition to Antarctica aboard the Icebreaker Oden ‘08
Southern Oceans, Antarctica
25 November 2008
12 January 2009

Where are They?

Mr. Peneston boarded the Swedish Icebreaker Oden in Montevideo, Uruguay. From there, the team traveled south down the eastern shoreline of South America. After rounding the tip of South America, the Oden crossed the Southern Ocean to McMurdo Station, Antarctica, the largest research station in Antarctica.

For additional maps and information about the 2008 Oden Antarctic Expedition, download slides here.

What are they Doing?

The scientific objectives of the cruise aboard the Swedish icebreaker Oden included collecting a range of data in rarely traveled areas of the Antarctic seas and coastline, including the Amundsen and eastern Ross Seas. An international research team studied the oceanography and biogeochemistry of the region while in transit to Antarctica, with a particular emphasis on the processes that control the production and destruction of greenhouse gases and on the role of sea ice microorganisms in this process. These studies will add to our limited knowledge of these remote corners of the Antarctic Seas and allow future researchers to expand their monitoring efforts in these regions.

Vocabulary

Icebreaker

An icebreaker is a special purpose ship or boat designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters.