Glacier's Cruise In Shallows

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30641, 6 January 1965, Page 1

Glacier's Cruise In Shallows

One of this season’s most interesting Antarctic projects will begin on Sunday when the icebreaker U.S.S. Glacier leaves McMurdo Sound for a cruise along a line of islands and underwater ridges stretching to New Zealand.

The joint New ZealandAmerican project will last two months, ending at Lyttelton on March 7. Aboard the Glacier will be 13 New Zealand scientists, seven American scientists, and one guest Australian scientist.

Beginning at Ross Island, McMurdo Sound, the Glacier will take them along the line of islands in the western Ross Sea, around Cape Adare to

the Balleny Islands, and then along the undersea Macquarie ridge past Macquarie Island and Auckland Island to New Zealand. The Glacier will meet the New Zealand Antarctic supply ship, H.M.N.Z.S. Endeavour, on February 17, to transfer six American scientists. Two of them will be wintering at McMurdo Station and the others have to return to the United States. The co-ordinator of the intensive scientific studies will be Mr W. R. Seelig, from the National Science Foundation’s office of Antarctic programmes. The biologists, geophysicists, and oceanographers aboard the Glacier plan first of all to explore the islands and coast in the western Ross Sea, examine the five Balleny Islands, and then make a series of exploratory

I runs across the Macquarie ; ridge at short intervals along | its whole length. Mr Seelig said yesterday that the scientists would visit the seal colonies and penguin rookeries on those islands which had them, and dive off the beaches to investigate the distribution of algae. All the islands were covered with ice, but a New Zealand geologist would take rock samples wherever he could, and the Glacier’s helicopters would be used to land surveyors.

The Glacier would trawl for fish, and two magneticians would tow a device to measure the effect of the earth’s magnetism. When they reached the Balleny group, two New Zealand surveyors would fix the astronomical positions of the islands. The Ballenys com-

prise three large and two small islands about 150 miles north-east of Cape Kinsey, in Oates Land. They form a north-west to south-east chain of about 100 miles. The Islands are volcanic and thickly covered with ice, and the gap between them and the mainland is usually full of heavy pack ice. Tongues of ice licking through gaps in the cliffs on the islands extend up to a mile out to sea. During the traverses across the Macquarie ridge, the scientists will study the formation more intensively than it has ever been studied before. Mr Seelig said it had been proved that the most value was obtained by having every possible scientific discipline represented on such a project