Visitors!

Oh boy, I have not done a good job keeping up in the blogging department! Over the past couple weeks, we’ve had several exciting visitors down here at Palmer Station.

First and foremost, we had an amazing opportunity to meet the crew of the Spirit of Sydney, a 60-foot expedition yacht. In celebration of the 100 year anniversary since Roald Amundsen become the first explorer to reach the South Pole, the crew has several things planned. The expedition is led by Jorgen Amundsen, a descent of Roald Amundsen. Beginning in Ushuaia, Argentina the yacht made its way across the Drake Passage (I don’t know about you, but I would NOT want to take a boat that small across the Drake) and on to the Antarctic Peninsula. On their way down the Peninsula, they decided to anchor in our harbor and check out Palmer Station. I was actually able to go over with a few people and set foot on the yacht. It was really neat to learn about where everyone is from and their part in the expedition. That evening, the crew came over to station and gave a more detailed talk about the expedition. On person presenting was Grant Redvers, who is the only person since 1893 to complete the entire Transpolar Drift – which entails spending close to 2 years on a research yacht frozen into sea ice drifting with the current across the North Pole. Yikes. In addition to the celebration of Amundsen’s anniversary, the Sydney is advertising an environmental campaign called SING FOR THE PENGUINS. The campaign focuses on how climate change is affecting the Antartic and its wildlife; overall the point is to have people from all over the world sing a tone for the penguins which will then be put together into a choir (if you’re interested: http://spiritofamundsen.com/singforthepenguins/). For the rest of their journey, the crew is skiing onto the main Antarctic continent and doing some mountaineering in Amundsen’s honor. Such a cool group of people.

The Spirit of Sydney in Arthur Harbor

The Laurence M. Gould came again at the end of November, this time however, to take some scientists with it. Of course, in their honor we completed a polar plunge…check out the video my friend Luke made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaYXDaLoyCA. And yes I know my jump is really lame, but I think my sparkles make up for it. 

To top things off, we had our first cruise ship of the season come to visit! On Thanksgiving Day, the National Geographic Explorer barreled into Arthur Harbor and brought over passengers via zodiacs. Note that these people pay $10,000 - $30,000 for the cruise – crazy! The passengers get a short tour of Palmer Station, swing by the gift shop, and then come into the main galley where we have posters set up and us scientists stand around for questions and conversation. Later in the evening, some of us went over for a question and answer session on the ship. It was neat getting to introduce myself and answer a question, although I was surprised at how few people raised their hands when we asked how many actually believed in climate change. It was about 10 or 15 people out of over 130.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, we celebrated the day after with a large feast. A few of us helped set up the galley by moving all the tables around to make a big family table, and decorated them. During dinner, instead of our normal buffet style, we put all the food in dishes and passed it around the table. We had a multitude of pies - I proudly made a 3 layer cheesecake, pumpkin, and pecan pie that went over well with folks. 

Dinner time!

All the pies

Despite all this excitement however, since we’ve hit late November and early December we have not been able to go out sampling once! As scientists, we’re happy that the sea ice which is good for the krill and ecosystem is still around this late in the season – but dang it, we can’t go study it! We’ve been filling our days fine-tuning personal statements and CV’s, doing some art projects, t-shirt designing, and hair dying. 

RU COOL?

Things are starting to bustle at Palmer Station! The other day I went out with the phytoplankton group from Rutgers University Coastal Ocean Observational Lab (RU COOL, hence the blog title) to release one of their Slocum Gliders. Gliders are released in harsh environments (like Antarctica) to make real-time observations when it is too dangerous to send out a human. They measure things such as dissolved oxygen, temperature, and chlorophylls to measure phytoplankton biomass and productivity over large spatial domains. As the glider travels it dives up and down taking measurements, surfacing to send its coordinates back to the lab.

To release the glider we loaded it into the zodiac and head for Outcast Island, one of the outer-lying islands surrounding Palmer. We then continued on for about a mile to give the glider a wide berth, you have to release them far away from land because they take a very long time to turn (rudder on the tail).  We then attached a buoy and rope to the glider for a dive test run, after it successfully dives (instructions sent via satellite from Rutgers) and comes back to the surface we took off the rope and let it go for good.

The Glider! 

Waiting for the Glider to do a test dive

Sadly, that day the glider didn’t do so well, it was apparently swimming backwards and they had to go retrieve it. However, since then it has been released again and is successfully navigating itself around Palmer Canyon. Here is the lab website if you’re interested: http://rucool.marine.rutgers.edu/

Kim and I have had several full days of sampling, where we go to 26 different GPS points on the sampling grid. Overall, it takes 5 hours or so – but we’ve had great weather the past few days and so it’s awesome to be out on the water. We’re hoping to see some whales, so far there’s been sightings of both humpback and minke whales, but we haven’t seen either. 

A Day In The Life

I decided I never really explained a normal day here at Palmer Station, so here goes. I start my day by waking up around 7:30, and heading down for breakfast. By 8:00 I’m down in my lab, where I work on data, posters, or other miscellaneous tasks. 

Kim and I's lab

My desk

Our white board

If it’s a sampling day, Kim and I will be getting ready, making snacks and hot drinks for the boat and getting all our layers on. Then it’s time to head out to the boat, fully clad in mustang suits. We begin by pulling Ms. Chippy in by her bowline and one of us jumps on to put the engine in, get it started, and then unhook the stern lines (attached to the back of the boat and connect to the spring line at the back of the parking lot, to prevent the boat from going forward and hitting the rocks). 

Ms. Chippy 

From there we untie the bowline and throw it in the boat, and as one keeps the boat steady the other loads equipment. After that we call into Station and let them know we’re departing.

Getting ready to leave station

Whenever you go off station, whether it’s boating or hiking, you write yourself on a chalkboard in the administrative hallway with you destination, departure time, estimated time of return, and a team name. Kim and I are always the 'Psycho Krillers'. When you’re on the boat, you must radio in whenever you arrive somewhere and when you’re moving on to a different place. Kim and I follow a grid of GPS points when we’re sampling, appropriately named Echo 1 – 26, so we call in with what Echo point we are departing/going to.

            The day normally ends here on Station at 5:30pm, when dinner starts. Each meal has a set time each day, breakfast 6:30-8:00am, lunch 12:00-1:00pm, and dinner 5:30-6:30pm. However, you’re always welcome to eat left overs in the fridge or eat later then the meal times. When you’re finished eating, everyone washes his or her own dishes at the ‘baby grinder’ sink. You’re food goes down the grinder, except for poultry which goes in the ‘chicken bucket’ (so we don’t spread bird diseases to the penguins). Then you wash your dishes, put them on a tray, and send them through the sanitizer (basically a big dish washer, that doesn’t wash anything but sanitizes dishes with hot water). Once a week however, you sign yourself up for ‘GASH’, where you and about 5 other people clean dishes, put them away, store food in leftover containers, and wash the whole kitchen and tables. Normally you’ve got some good music going to keep moral up. Also, each Saturday we have 'house-mouse', where everyone on station gets a task (such as cleaning the bathrooms, kitchen, or labs) and we spend some of the afternoon cleaning.

            After dinner people normally watch TV shows or movies, hang out at the bar, play cards, hit up the hot tub, read, or just hang out and have some good conversation in the Galley.

Now onto my updates…

           

At the beginning of this week, I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to eat an apple and peanut butter in my life.  The Laurence M. Gould docked here at station to drop off two scientists who will be studying birds down here in Antarctica and FOOD. The Gould only stayed for a day, as it needed to continue on to conduct a research cruise with scientists on board. It was a busy day here at the Station, several of us formed an assembly line across the ship and gangway to help unload cargo. Everyone was excited to have new ‘freshies’ (fruits and vegetables), and I got a new pair of boots for the boat. Before I was sporting some fireman boots they had given me in Punta Arenas, that did not give me much mobility on the boat – but now I have the official sea boots.

There were a few set backs with our equipment this week. First off after a full day of sampling on Wednesday we came back to find that the program had got shut off by accident on the boat and we had about 1/4 of our data saved. Then on Thursday, in an attempt to repeat the same track as Wednesday, a piece of plastic on the Towfish where a cable connects broke off as I tried to attach it. However, we had the piece on station and thanks to our Instrument Tech (Mark) it was ready to go the next day! That’s one of the great things down here at Palmer Station, the Raytheon staff are always very helpful and work their hardest to get everything ready for us – we’re very thankful. Anyway, so Kim and I then took the Towfish out for a test run and everything was working smoothly again. However, the seas were very rough that day and even I got a little seasick on the zodiac.

Working on the Towfish

This Sunday we had great weather, which allowed for lots of recreational activities on everyone’s day off. Here at Palmer you can go boating, hiking up the glacier, skiing and snowboarding, camping, or just explore around the rocks in the backyard.  This week several groups went out recreation boating. My group went around to different points, getting a good look at the glacier and the Bahia Paraiso (a sunken cruise ship). We hoped to see some leopard seals, but instead were able to see a family of elephant seals on Torgersen Island. In addition to elephant seals, Torgesen Island is home to several penguin colonies. I was lucky enough to see some eggs, which look like a pale yellow tennis ball under the penguin. 

Penguin egg!

We also saw several Skuas, birds that prey on the penguin eggs and young. You have to make sure you give Skuas a wide berth or else they’ll dive-bomb you from the air. I finished my day off with a hike up the glacier, looking out over the ocean and islands, just being glad to be here. 

Body sledding anyone?

Luckily, there was a break in the high winds and sea ice, so Kim and I were able to accomplish several things this past week! We were able to go out sampling a few times, allowing me to learn more about our equipment and earn some boating experience. So far we have seen several krill aggregations on the echo sounder, and yesterday we were lucky enough to see the krill themselves swimming around under the brash ice! At the moment there are only juvenile Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) in the area, but later on in the season we expect to see more of the large adults. Antarctic krill can live for 6-8 years and can grow up to 60 mm in length. A group of scientists from the University of San Francisco, led by Dr. Deneb Karentz, studying phytoplankton actually caught some krill in one of their net tows and much to our appreciation, brought them back for us! We measured the krill lengths, which we then use with the acoustic data to calculate krill biomass and abundance. All of the krill measured were smaller than 20 mm, which means they are most likely a year old. We have also seen a lot of foraging activity from the penguins and seabirds in the area, it looks like it might be a good year for krill.

Antarctic krill

Echogram

Due to some of our sampling destinations being outside the normal 2 mile boating limit, Kim and I were required to participate in additional boating training. We have the boating limit here at Palmer Station because of the amount of time it takes for help to reach you in the event of an emergency. Inside the normal limits, the Ocean Search and Rescue (OSAR) team can reach you within 10 minutes. However that amount of time lengthens the farther out you are, and extended training allows you to know what to do until help arrives. For training, Kim and I took turns putting on an immersion suit and jumping overboard into the water to await rescue. I was a little nervous considering there had been leopard seal (at least we think) sightings the past few days, but I was a big girl and jumped in. For the first jump, the person in the water is conscious and able to help you get them back into the boat. The second time, however, the person in the water pretends to be unconscious and the person rescuing them has to try to get their body as high up out of the water as possible and lash them to the boat with rope or bungee cord. Since it is only Kim and I boating together, we needed to feel prepared to rescue each other and know what to do in that situation. I feel much more comfortable now driving the boat right up to the overboard victim and getting them onboard. We will both be very focused on staying safe and inside the boat.

After a week of work, we celebrated Halloween at Palmer Station last Saturday. Kim and I decided to host a cocktail hour before dinner, and with bad weather at the end of the week preventing sampling we went all out in our planning. We ended up making an alcoholic jello brain with gummi worms, a pumpkin cheese ball, chocolate vodka/orange juice mimosa’s, and vampire blood cocktails with candy-rimmed glasses. And of course we had a large piece of bar ice (see to my left in the photo) from the ocean to put in our cocktails. You have to use an ice pick and hammer to crack off pieces and I thoroughly enjoyed that part. At the party it was fun to have everyone together and to see just how creative they were with their costumes. I ended up wearing a hazardous material suit to complete my polar bear costume.

Cocktail hour

On the actual day of Halloween, it was Kim’s birthday, so a friend and I decided to make her a cookie krill cake – it was a great success and delicious. After dinner a group of us went to a near by island and did some body sledding down the slopes, it was awesomesauce.

Krill cake!

 Body sledding!

Polar plunge

It’s tradition here at Palmer Station that when the boat leaves to give a proper goodbye, you jump in the water after it. Well, since all the other kids were doing it I figured I should as well. After watching the boat pull away, we all stripped down to our bathing suits and jumped from the pier into the freezing Southern Ocean. Really you just go numb, so the water doesn’t feel cold but man, that run to the hot tub was a little chilly going barefoot through the snow…

Everyone in the hot tube post-jump

It turns out that I get my own room here, I moved into the Bio building which is a bit older than the other main building. But it’s nice to have my own space and of course be super close to the Galley! The bottom of the Bio building is also where all the labs are. The other main building, GWR, has the gym, bar, dorm rooms, and a nice lounge.

Bio Building

We were finally able to have our Boating II course this past Friday. It was my first time driving a zodiac so I was really excited. We practiced landing on islands, which is pretty difficult because you have to hold the boat steady pushing the nose onshore while swells come in – it’s a mixture of a little gas and steering the boat in the right direction. Our boating coordinator bravely put on an immersion suit and flung himself into the water several times so that we could practice “man overboard” drills and retrieve him. Most notably as we were about to head into the station he flung himself out as I was driving…but I successfully steered a rescue without running him over. Now that we’ve had the class though, Kim and I can head out and start sampling!

Let me take a little time to explain the type of research I’m doing. The basic idea of Kim’s research is to use an echo sounder to locate and document krill, and plot their location/volume is comparison to tides. We will be going out during diurnal tides (one high and low tide in one day)to collect most of our data, to see if these tides effect where the krill are located and thus have an effect on the foraging behavior of penguins. This means once the diurnal tides come in we’ll go out everyday for almost 2 weeks! We plan to be out each day for 8 hours, so let the work begin…

The actual echo-sounder is a round black object, which connects to a computer via cable. We attach this black object to a piece of board to floats at the surface as we conduct our research. Appropriately the board has dorsal fins, and was in need of a new paint job this year. I took charge with sanding it down, applying primer, and then finally being able to decorate it. The idea is that it is a leopard seal (a ferocious predator down here in the Antarctic) with a fake dorsal fin attached to disguise itself as something less threatening. Science humor? 

Echo-sounder

My work in progress

Completed with spots

and teeth (echo-sounder attached on bottom)!

Well, it takes a long time to get there...

After 9 days of traveling, I finally made it to Palmer Station, Antarctica! I flew from Dulles International Airport down to Santiago, Chile and landed in Punta Arenas, Chile to await my voyage by sea, aboard the Laurence M. Gould research vessel. I am working on a zooplankton acoustics project with a Post-Doctoral student Kim Bernard from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. I will be living at Palmer Station until I return home at the end of December.

Punta Arenas, Chile
My group arrived in Punta Arenas after 2 days of flying, and we were all escorted to the Jose Noguiera hotel where we would stay until we boarded the ship. We went out to a local restaurant, where Alpaca was on the menu – but I went with a local fish instead. I did some exploring in the city, where I learned you are supposed to rub the toes of a statue in the main square for safe passage across the Drake. An observation of mine is that Punta Arenas is a city ruled by dogs. They are everywhere, roaming around in packs, sitting at street corners and occasionally escorting you as you walk through their turf.

Rubbing the toes. 

On the Ship
Well one thing I learned from the ship journey is how to stay on a treadmill while going over some of the roughest seas in the world. A normal day would consist of waking up for breakfast (or not) and then playing games or watching movies with others on the boat. It’s a pretty numb time, but there are good sights if you go outside and opportunities for photos.

While going through the Drake Passage, all of us helped deploy XBT probes which tested water temperature and/or conductivity. A group of scientists is studying the ocean currents in the passage, and hope to release these probes for the next 50 years to obtain data. Some of the ship crew joke that by the end of the project, there will be stepping stones across the Drake where the probes were dropped. Basically the procedure is to shoot the probe out and you let it transmit data for a few minutes and then cut the line, it’s repeated every 30-45 minutes. Here I am in the process – I really was excited to be helping, I must have that face on because I had left my hat inside (note it’s around -13 degrees C with the wind chill).

Our fifth day at sea, we stopped at the Island of Copa to unload people and supplies to the field camp there. I was a ‘sherpa’ which meant I helped load stuff off the zodiacs (large inflatable boats) and onto land. It was a lot of work, but nice to actually be doing something after a few days at sea. We got to be close to some of the penguins, who were all congregated next to the field camp. I nearly did a split between the ship ladder and the zodiac on our way back, but I hung on for dear life and made it up. I think it would have been a bad end to the day to fall in that water. Brrr. Too bad when the boat leaves on Sunday I'll be jumping in voluntarily for the local tradition. 

Penguins!

So far at the station I've hiked up the glacier in our backyard and will soon be learning how to drive and operate Zodiac boats.