The last week has been spent in Pine Island Bay. We are the first British ship to ever make it to this area after numerous previous attempts were hampered by sea ice.
We made it south of 71° and managed to chart new parts of the sea floor along the coast and land some scientists on one of the small islands. This area is of great interest because flowing into Pine Island Bay are the large Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers, which drain a large part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet along this short stretch of coast line.
In recent years it has been shown that these glaciers have started to speed up as well as thin significantly. Yesterday we passed B22a, an iceberg so large it has its own name, fills the entire horizon and is almost the size of Wales I'm told. It broke off the Thwaites glacier ice tongue and has been grounded here in the bay for several years.
I am now well settled into life aboard ship, I work a 12 hour shift from 4am to 4pm. Going to bed at 8pm takes a bit of getting used to, but I do not recommend "all nighters" followed by a 12 hour shift!
If there are no sediment cores being recovered I help the biologists emptying their nets, which they trawl along the sea floor.
You get to see all kinds of weird and wonderful creatures, including devil fish with strange tentacles on their head; large purple octopus; sponges; jelly like worms several feet long, and ones that have bioluminescence that flashes down their sides (I call them disco worms); fish with huge jaws and translucent teeth; sea spiders; and lots and lots of foul smelling mud, which covers you from head to toe.
Many of these areas have never been trawled or studied and no one is quite sure what lives down there!
When not working, there is enough to keep oneself entertained. There is table tennis in the ship’s hold, a gym, sauna, circuit training three times a week and then there is an extensive collection of DVD's.
I also spend a great deal of time disturbing people’s sleep with my rather special "acquired" taste in music.
Obviously, most of the ship’s social life revolves around the bar and because people are working shifts, it’s quite normal to walk in at 7am and people are just starting their evening with a few beers.
I am rather partial to the occasional whiskey and Iron Brew at the end of my shift!
We have had quite a few summer snow showers, the snowflakes are normally tiny because it’s so cold, but the other day we got caught in a blizzard and the whole ship has been covered in several inches of snow.
We occasionally have snowball fights out on the back deck of the ship, which I find is a great way to properly wake up at 4am. We have also constructed a rather impressive "snow penguin" and large snowman.
When the weather is good we are treated to the most amazing sunrises. The whole sky goes orange and the icebergs turn golden on the horizon and everything is reflected in the water, which is totally still here amongst the sea ice. The temperature also rises to a relatively comfortable minus 5° C.
The sea has been calm for the last week, we are now heading north back into the unforgiving Southern Ocean towards the Polar Front. Similar to the Drake Passage, it’s an area notorious for big storms and when I say big storms I don't mean that stiff breeze all of you have been experiencing recently back in the UK.
Ah well, better get the sea legs out and start tying the furniture down again!
Benedict Reinardy, 27, from Aberdeen, is a marine geologist, currently in the third year of his PhD. He obtained a BSc Hons in Geography at St Andrews University and an MSc in Quaternary Science at Royal Holloway, University of London before coming to join the Swansea Glaciology Group in the School of Environment and Society. Benedict’s research involves the analysis of the detailed glacial record within marine sediments around the Antarctic Peninsula. His data will contribute to research into whether the past changes within the Antarctic ice sheet can be used as modern analogues for the changes that are currently being observed.