The team was given a range of information including:
• The expedition was to be 3 weeks long
• Distance from Wellington to Antarctica is about 3000km
• The boat travels 20km an hour
• Antarctica is dark all the time in Winter and light all the time in Summer
• In winter there is a lot of ice in the Ross Sea that would make sampling too hard and also make it more dangerous for the boat to travel through.
• Plankton blooms occur in Spring and Autumn
Using this information we had to choose the best time to travel (we decided late Spring: November), work out the travelling time in hours first (150hours each way) and then days (6 ½ each way), and then work out how many days remained for the research work (8 days).
Each group were then given the longitude and latitude co-ordinates of the sampling sites they needed to visit, a map of the Ross Sea area, and information about the amount of time it takes to get samples using the different pieces of equipment.
Using this information the different groups marked their sampling sites on the map and worked out how many hours work they would need to complete their sampling at each site using their equipment, including deploying the equipment and collecting the samples once back on board. Once every team had done this we came back as a group and negotiated when the work would be done in the remaining 8 research days. This was a challenge as we had to make sure everyone was allocated enough time to get all their sampling done!
The sampling sites that had to be visited by the different research groups.
Working as a team to make sure everyone's research was scheduled in!
