We have lobsters on board. Lobsters (aka: Hummer) are delicious and that is their undoing: worldwide, their populations have been sharply decimated (the AWI does its bit against this by keeping stocks in Helgoland). Before lobster tastes good it must, unfortunately, be boiled, something that turns it intensely red. That is the unique feature those pinchers with tails have in common with our seismometers (it not yet being known if lobsters employ their numerous extremities as earthquake sensors). LOBSTER stands here, in geophysical parlance, for "Longterm Ocean Bottom Seismometer for Tsunami and Earthquake Research" and the practiced crossword puzzle solver notes immediately the acronym, "OBS," hiding within the acronym. Conspicuous, the four buoyant segments in red-orange, sometimes also yellow. Beside them a titanium cylinder filled with a tri-axial seismometer. (Every point in, on, and over this Earth is describable in three dimensions). Sunk and set on the seafloor, the seismometers register the airpulse produced and the sound waves reflected by the Earth's crust. Additional cylinders contain electronics and a power supply able to function at low temperatures, and are completed by a hydrophone which listens to what the ocean has to say. And like a little dog on a leash, each lobster pulls a colorful block on a line behind itself, useful for collaring by the lobsterman. One cylinder has a particular responsibility: at a call from us at a frequency only it will respond to, it will drop its iron anchor and surrender itself to the sea. The weight discharged (also some kind of iron fertilization), the lobster rises to the surface and announces its position to the searching eyes on deck via a lilac flag (by day), flashing light (by night), and radio signal (when unspottable), so it can be returned to the safe womb of the ship. On the 330 mile long Profile A, 22 lobsters listen on the bottom and each is watertight to water depths of 4000 meters (and the yellow ones even deeper). 21 are by the end of the week back on board. 22-1=? The chief scientist and the boatswain exchange assurances. (The resolution of this problem follows next week.)

Following the laws that govern the reflection of sound waves, the wave source and listening post must lie as far apart as possible so that one can see broadly through the deep. These 22 lobsters would reach this by themselves but have additional support. The plate boundary-defining profile is a two-ship undertaking. Polarstern pulses, Karpinsky listens. Karpinsky is pure swimming seismics. The microphone cable is nearly 5 km long. There the information comes together- exchange in excellent Russian-German cooperation, not only of data, but also of personnel. We swap two Blue Girls for their chief geophysicist- although only for a couple of days, then they are allowed back to their customary habitats. "Cooperation Sea" is the name of this part of the bigger pond- that fits as if it were tailor-made.

You see Alfred Wegener's "continental drift" become here and now continued. Scarcely a colleague believed him at the time his " Origin of the Continents and Oceans" appeared (1915). He was able to shove whole continents around, but having no magnetometer, and because pillows they knew at that time only on the sofa, not as lava on the ocean floor, he was not able to fully show the driving forces. His theory was essentially correct from the beginning, but in those days, lacking the necessary technical and analytical possibilites, this could not be realized. That is not true today. In support, a quotation from Galileo Galilei: "Nevertheless, she moves!" we identify and refine the parts required for detailed reconstruction of the global puzzle, a four dimensional superpuzzle in time and space. 5000 pieces? Laughable. It is a puzzle that one must study to solve and continental drift has changed to plate tectonics.

And then the helicopter knights clap on their yellow-toned visors, push with a practiced grip the turbines to 40,000 revolutions and let their 800 horses rear. The lance hangs at 30 meters, ordinance white, an armament of hard plastic, one short, blunt-tipped torpedo flying on a wire. For the duration of the trip, the helicopter parallels our course in an unspectacular and constant 80 knot flight, measures with the lance- one can barely believe it- the magnetization of the seafloor below us- and with several kilometers of water in between! Two of the experienced German magneticians on board allow no technical problems and if the lance smacks its nose on the side of the ship, it takes no longer than a day to patch up the innards. Trust is good- control is performed by redundancy. In the crow's nest two additional magnetometers are wired, fixed to the ship. Only Polarstern has that. This ship measures the world around itself simply through its existence. The magnetics and gravity of the earth, the coolness and depth of the sea, the height and blueness of the heavens, and, in addition to the winds force, 100 variables more, precisely geographically referenced in time and space. And all of the numbers archived in a giant database (examinable by all over the Internet) with the name "Pangaea", closing the circle to Alfred Wegener and his supercontinent. And as we travel overhead at a few miles per hour, the plates slide beneath us at a few centimeters per year. Our journey lasts 10 weeks, and that of the continents a few billion years. Everything is relative here.

16 of us ride on the Antarctic plate- they are not forgotten! By the nightly dusk radio tête-à-tête, we exchange weather prognoses against time, distance, and weight considerations: Notwithstanding a two day snowstorm, 22 meters of core have been thrashed out of the lake and the continent lightened of about 6 hundredweight of stones. Back on board they have to explain that in more detail.

Just an other short comment on our chilly milieu: three meter waves are here and now standard, and even four to five are nothing special. The ship slipping in perfect resonance with the sea surface and all cups stay in the cupboard. Such a wave is full of itself, believing that nothing can stop it- and then lies there a mountain, ice in perfection, the immovability of the massive, and only a seventh in the wind. The rest is wall for the waves, steadfast, vertical, smooth, cold, hard, the kinetic energy must go somewhere - where there is room for it - upwards. Unleashed geysers shoot spray heavenwards on the windward sides of the white board, its height exceeded by a factor of three. What a sight, what a waste of energy - interested in this anyone? The great fountain in the Herrenhäuser Gärten would, at the very least, be so struck with envy, never again would it flow. But it does not know - and we will not tell it.

Just a beer - only a word: Bergfest; the half of our greetings is sent. Today they come from the boundary between India and Antarctica. Plate-tectonically speaking.

Prof. Dr. H.-W. Hubberten (Chief Scientist), Dr. Hannes Grobe, and the participants of the expedition

(Translation: Christina de la  Rocha)