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It’s a good thing Cindy Pilskaln isn’t fazed by firsts — she has had a lot of them.
This winter, the University of Maine oceanography professor was the first American scientist to collaborate with Chinese researchers in Antarctica.
Pilskaln, who has been at UM since 1993, traveled on a 167-meter Chinese research vessel called the Snow Dragon for a month through the southern Indian Ocean to deploy an elaborate mooring off the coast of Antarctica. The mooring — which is more than 2,000 meters long and consists of more than $130,000 worth of scientific equipment, including sediment traps, a current meter and large glass balls that give it buoyancy — will help scientists quantify the amount of carbon in the southern ocean.
Scientists believe tiny plants in the Antarctic Ocean are responsible for removing large amounts of carbon dioxide, a so-called greenhouse gas, from the Earth’s atmosphere. The myriad microscopic algae that grow in the cold waters rely on carbon dioxide from the air for their survival. As these organisms die, they sink toward the bottom of the ocean where they release carbon into the sediment.
Pilskaln’s mooring, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, will help scientists measure this process in a part of the ocean where such investigations have not been conducted. Similar studies have been done on the Ross Sea on the other side of the continent, and Pilskaln has done similar work in the Black Sea, the Pacific and the Gulf of Maine.
“We need to know how the ocean functions now to understand how the ocean acted in the past and how it will act in the future,” Pilskaln said in late March shortly after her return from Australia, where her ocean-borne journey began and ended.
While the technical data collected are important, the “cultural science” of the mission may have been just as important, Pilskaln said. She and Fei Chai, a marine science professor at UM, decided to work with Chinese researchers because that country controls much of the Indian Ocean side of the Antarctic and because researchers from China were eager to learn new scientific techniques from their American counterparts.
After meetings with officials in Shanghai, the joint research mission was approved by the Chinese government. The work of the UM scientists was funded by a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.
Pilskaln and a friend of hers from graduate school, Vernon Asper of the University of Southern Mississippi, were the only two Americans on the Snow Dragon, which left Freemantle, Australia, on Nov. 22. After a weeklong stop in the ice in Prydz Bay near the Chinese base, which the ship resupplied, the Snow Dragon headed back into open water so Pilskaln could drop her mooring.
Because the location where she originally planned to drop the mooring was still full of ice, she asked the ship’s captain to go farther north. She recalled such a request would have been no big deal on an American research vessel, but the Chinese captain had to ask his government for permission to make the change. After waiting for a full day, permission was granted by officials in Beijing and the ship headed farther north a few days before Christmas.
About 28 nautical miles north, a suitable spot was found and the mooring was dropped into place by a crane after about four hours of work. Pilskaln said the mission went remarkably well considering 99 percent of the people who were helping her did not speak English.
In addition to Pilskaln and Asper, there were 77 Chinese on the ship. Most were graduate students conducting experiments. These young scientists were surprised that American professors with doctoral degrees would be on a ship getting their hands dirty. In China, senior scientists teach and write, but leave on-site research to younger graduate students. Pilskaln and Asper helped many of the Chinese researchers gather samples from the ocean and shared their scientific techniques.
Only one of the Chinese researchers was a woman, but Pilskaln said she did not have the opportunity to interact with her.
While some of those on board the ship at first were skeptical that the tall, blond woman was a primary reason for their cruise, Pilskaln said they soon respected her.
“I knew what I needed to do,” said Pilskaln, who has often been the only woman on a research vessel at sea. “I felt comfortable.”
To help their American counterparts celebrate Christmas and New Year, the Chinese made dumplings and sang karaoke. Pilskaln said the ship’s captain spoke impeccable English and enjoyed talking with his American passengers about politics and science while drinking green tea.
After deploying the mooring, the Snow Dragon headed back to the Chinese base, Zhongshan Station, to drop off fuel there. Although it was summer in the Southern Hemisphere, the ice was still too thick for the ship to reach shore so it began ramming through the ice. When it became clear that it was going to take too long to reach the mainland, a helicopter was dispatched to fetch Pilskaln and Asper and take them to the base. From there, the duo was ferried to a nearby Russian base.
Upon hearing that Pilskaln would be visiting the base, the station leader began carving a ring for her out of walrus tusk. Pilskaln was so honored because she was the first American woman to visit the base.
Next the two were taken to an Australian base where they caught a tourist ship back to Tasmania. On the way, the ship stopped at a penguin rookery where chicks had recently hatched.
On Jan. 3, the duo was finally back on land.
Pilskaln plans to travel on the Snow Dragon again next year to collect readings from the mooring before deploying it again for another year. Next year’s itinerary will take her from Chile to the Antarctic Peninsula, where she will catch the Chinese ship that will sail halfway around the continent to the mooring position in the Indian Ocean.
She hopes to document the journey on an interactive Web site and through a documentary film that will be shot by an Australian filmmaker.
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