Icebreaker ship makes rare visit to S.F.’s Pier 17
An icebreaker with the power to crunch through frozen seas and navigate polar storms has docked in the port of San Francisco on its way to Antarctica.
The research vessel, the Nathaniel B. Palmer, is the flagship icebreaker in the U.S. Antarctic Program’s fleet. It is docked outside the Exploratorium at Pier 17 until Thursday afternoon, when it will depart for Chile to refuel before the journey south.
The Palmer’s brief stop in San Francisco to pick up a team of 31 scientists may be the first and last time an icebreaker vessel of its stature passes through the city’s port. Researchers
typically board in Chile or New Zealand, but had to use a domestic port due to restrictions on international travel.
The team of scientists, who have been quarantining in San Francisco, will journey to the bottom of the Earth to study the molecular biodiversity in the Southern Ocean, said Dr. Karla Heidelberg, program director in the Office of Polar Programs at the National Science Foundation, which operates the ship.
Strict quarantine measures are in place to ensure that the crew and scientists do not carry COVID19 to the three U.S. research bases in Antarctica, which have so far remained virusfree.
The team will study oceandwelling invertebrates that populate the waters encircling Antarctica. The Southern Ocean, or Antarctic Ocean as it is also known, has the world’s strongest ocean current, whose centrifugal force forms a biological barrier that prevents it from mixing with other ocean waters.
The 300foot icebreaker, equipped with advanced scientific tools, will travel to different regions of the Southern Ocean to answer the question, “Are the organisms in isolated pockets or is it a wellmixed soup around the continent?” Heidelberg said.
The answer will help researchers better understand the origin and evolution of invertebrates that have adapted to survive in one of the harshest environments on Earth.
But in order to do that, the scientists themselves will have to brave the continent’s fingernumbing, teethchattering cold. Antarctica is heading into summertime, along with the rest of the Southern Hemisphere, but temperatures still regularly drop well below zero.
Despite the deepfreeze temperatures, there are consolations to life at sea. The Palmer has a sauna, a gym and a lounge equipped with a television and more than 150 movies on VHS. The icebreaker’s limited internet is reserved for research purposes and quick email blasts only.
But those small comforts of home pale in comparison to the sight of Antarctica’s starfilled nighttime skies, unadulterated by light pollution, or the lifelong friendships that bond many crew members and scientists, Heidelberg said.
“People who go to sea together remain friends for a very long time,” she said.
The 28year old icebreaker, named for the American sailor who is credited with first seeing Antarctica, anchored in San Francisco on Sunday. The ship’s arrival was “intense,” owing to the logistical challenge of getting a federal research vessel into port on time with the proper paperwork, said port manager Christopher Mourgos.
Visitors to Pier 17 may notice a barge parked alongside the icebreaker. That’s a sewage barge, transporting wastewater from the ship to a disposal site in Alameda. The barge makes daily trips to empty the ship’s 5,000gallon sewage tank, Mourgos said.
Once the icebreaker departs, those on board will not set foot on unfrozen land again until the ship returns to the U.S. in midDecember.