First thing this morning, we threw Peter down the dive hole - well.... we let him wear his SCUBA gear! His mission was to check out the condition of the hole to see if we could safely dive through it, and to scout out the immediate area to determine if we may be able to gather samples from this location. He said the hole was a bit "hour glass" shaped, a tad narrower in the center than at either end, but that we could dive through it. Later this morning, Ian suited up and made a dive to see if he could access the part of the algal mat he needs from this site. Because it is so dark in this particular hole (remember, it is 21 feet thick and there is sand and snow on top of the ice to block light from getting through), he had a difficult time navigating. Another issue with this hole is that there is a sulfide layer at the bottom of the lake, but it comes up higher in the water column than was expected. Ian hit sulfide in just over 9 meters of water. It is not good to spend much time in the sulfide layer!
It has been decided that we will move the hole to a new location. There are too many variables getting in the way at this particular hole. Again, one of the challenges of doing research in unexplored areas is that you never know what you might find! We will take some water samples and do some sediment grabs from this hole, but there most likely will not be much diving in this hole. A new hole has been started on the other end of the lake. Everyone is hoping to have better luck there! Stay tuned!
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The deep, dark hole - this ice tube is 21 feet deep!
The water is about 65 feet deep!
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As Peter prepares to jump in the hole, suddenly it looks a whole lot smaller!
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Tight squeeze in the middle.
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Peter assists the back up diver with line tending.
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We had a helo move our fuel over to the other side of the lake so we could start melting over there. There are sling loads being transported all around the region.
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Lowering the sling load to the new location.
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The helo landed on the lake briefly so the helo tech could gather the sling load supplies (net, cables, and shackles) and help us get the fuel up onto storage pads.
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Occasionally, the umbilical cord gets twisted and won't coil nicely. This makes managing the hose as a dive tender difficult. So, Ian and I laid out the hose and recoiled it to get the "kinks" out.
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We have a nice view of Mt. Erebus from Fryxell camp.
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Antarctica 2006 
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