Nothing new has really happened down here. Nathalie and I are still doing a lot of dissections. We're trying to get rid of a lot of fish so that way we'll be prepared when more scientists arrive and take most of the tanks. Only real update I can give is that the days are getting significantly shorter. We lose about 6 minutes of daylight everyday. Soon it will be mid-winter (June 21st). We'll get a two day weekend then and an amazing banquet-like dinner. Should be exciting!
If we get snow this weekend, Jason, the lead power plant mechanic on station, said he'd help teach me how to ski. Jon, the head of the maintenance department, said he could help with snowboarding lessons as well. Should be exciting. I've never done either in my life, so it will be another experience to add to the list. So far Jason taught me how to drive an ATV, a snowmobile on a glacier, and how to change oil and hydraulic fluid on heavy machinery. Tonight I may even learn how to weld from Chuck, but that's going to be dependent on wind speeds and timing. I'm honestly not really feeling up for standing outside in the dark cold tonight even if I do appreciate having the opportunity to learn something cool. Maybe another week?
Today's been a slow day. Nathalie's been focusing on preparing a powerpoint for her presentation tonight to the station. She'll be talking about her work at home and how it could tie into what we're doing down here. As a result, I've just been hanging around all day. We had a fire drill at 1:30, giving me the opportunity to learn my new role during emergencies: alternate emergency support supervisor. Cool title, but really don't have too much responsibility. I just listen on my radio as people call in and say they're present. If they aren't, then I have to let them know who is and isn't accounted for so that way they can go on a search. I only do this if the primary emergency support supervisor is unable to be present during muster.
Dinner's in 27 minutes (not that I'm counting...), so I guess I have some time to fill until then. Perhaps I'll get started on this current season of Game of Thrones.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Winter's Coming
Well, the other researchers and most of the personnel on station left on the ship this morning. We're now down to 19 people here including me. Nathalie and I are the only research scientists on station and therefore in the Antarctic peninsula. Some people on station even claim that we may be the only ones on the continent as there isn't much science going on during the winter season at most stations.
It's been quiet today since everybody left. I'm used to people buzzing around in the labs downstairs and the galley. Right now there are a couple of people in the galley, but it's only because lunch will be served in 30 minutes. In the labs though, I'm the only one. It's eerily quiet. The other research team never made much noise, but at least there was equipment present and at least one body or the soft humming of somebody's iTunes. I don't think it helps much either that most of the people on station have the day off today. They put in so much overtime trying to help everybody pack cargo and move off of the island so ASC (Antarctic Support Contractor) told them to just take some time for themselves.
The goal for today between Nathalie and me was to dissect some fish and look at some of the fish females. She decided that we should take the morning off, so we'll see what we end up doing after lunch. Tomorrow she would like to go boating again to drop some traps. We lost the only MT (marine tech) we had on station, so now the lab manager here will be going out with us...or anybody else with boating two certifications. Our fishing expeditions is a nice excuse for them to leave the station for a few hours.
Soon we should be getting our fish to spawn. It's now or never. Right now and within a few weeks is C. aceratus' breeding period. Nathalie and I have unfortunately had to dissect a few females who were near full maturity. Had they been alive for just a few more days we would have been able to get some eggs. If we do manage to obtain some eggs, the next difficulty will be finding a male. Not many of our male fish are "milking males." In terms of our rock-cods though, we should be okay. We have so many of them so we're bound to get some ready males and females for our experiments.
As an aside, I'm not writing blog posts for Northeastern's research blog. Eventually I'll be contributing to a co-op blog if it is up and running in time. The research blog is fun, but I'm always so tempted to get too detailed with the science. I'm supposed to keep it conversational and fun. The next post that should be up at some point this week is about my fishing trip. It was a bit too scientific, and I think that I spent more time recounting events than describing things. While the trip was just a month ago, I've been so busy doing other things here that it's difficult for me to remember some of the finer details (i.e. date I left, fish count, etc.). A lot of edits were made, so hopefully now it'll be a lot more fun to read and not so filled with scientific terms and step-by-step recounts.
It's been quiet today since everybody left. I'm used to people buzzing around in the labs downstairs and the galley. Right now there are a couple of people in the galley, but it's only because lunch will be served in 30 minutes. In the labs though, I'm the only one. It's eerily quiet. The other research team never made much noise, but at least there was equipment present and at least one body or the soft humming of somebody's iTunes. I don't think it helps much either that most of the people on station have the day off today. They put in so much overtime trying to help everybody pack cargo and move off of the island so ASC (Antarctic Support Contractor) told them to just take some time for themselves.
The goal for today between Nathalie and me was to dissect some fish and look at some of the fish females. She decided that we should take the morning off, so we'll see what we end up doing after lunch. Tomorrow she would like to go boating again to drop some traps. We lost the only MT (marine tech) we had on station, so now the lab manager here will be going out with us...or anybody else with boating two certifications. Our fishing expeditions is a nice excuse for them to leave the station for a few hours.
Soon we should be getting our fish to spawn. It's now or never. Right now and within a few weeks is C. aceratus' breeding period. Nathalie and I have unfortunately had to dissect a few females who were near full maturity. Had they been alive for just a few more days we would have been able to get some eggs. If we do manage to obtain some eggs, the next difficulty will be finding a male. Not many of our male fish are "milking males." In terms of our rock-cods though, we should be okay. We have so many of them so we're bound to get some ready males and females for our experiments.
As an aside, I'm not writing blog posts for Northeastern's research blog. Eventually I'll be contributing to a co-op blog if it is up and running in time. The research blog is fun, but I'm always so tempted to get too detailed with the science. I'm supposed to keep it conversational and fun. The next post that should be up at some point this week is about my fishing trip. It was a bit too scientific, and I think that I spent more time recounting events than describing things. While the trip was just a month ago, I've been so busy doing other things here that it's difficult for me to remember some of the finer details (i.e. date I left, fish count, etc.). A lot of edits were made, so hopefully now it'll be a lot more fun to read and not so filled with scientific terms and step-by-step recounts.
Saturday, May 10, 2014
Flood in the Aquarium Room
Zane and I both selected a Free House Mouse, so we get to take some time to ourselves now. Since she's been helping Nathalie and me dissect some of the red-blooded fish we have outside, I suggested that we spend our free house mouse time doing a dissection. We walked into the aquarium room, and everything is flooded. The main drain is clogged in some manner. We're not allowed back there because there may be an electrical hazard at some point. I feel bad for all of the people working in there though since we have our fish waste out on the counter top with our fish waste buckets on the floor. Hopefully nobody tries to open one of those or else they'll certainly lose their appetites.
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Great Day So Far
This morning the ship departed around 9 A.M. as scheduled. I was up at 7:30 to go and open up our fish tanks and take the morning measurements. We had a beautiful sunrise; the sky was lit up with pink and orange hues. After taking some photos and going back inside, I reluctantly prepared for my polar plunge. I did it, but it did take me some time to work up the nerve to let go of the rails on the pier. I decided to just suck it up and do it when I noticed a crowd was forming and started singing "Come on Eileen." Guess I'll go to some pretty far extents to avoid hearing people serenade me with that one hit wonder. Anyway, the polar plunge is not exactly something that I'd look forward to repeating. It wasn't the most awful experience I've had, but it's by no means comfortable. You stand around outside in shorts or whatever you're wearing waiting in line freezing. Then, you go and you jump (or in my case, whine by the ladder saying that you don't want to do it as everybody else sings you a song). Your first instinct when you hit the icy water is to inhale. I didn't inhale, but I did get a mouth full of water. As I had expected, it was salty. Of course, that may seem silly to other people who don't know this little detail about Antarctica: the seawater down here has a higher salt content than that of the waters near Boston. So as soon as you hit the water, you feel pins and needles everywhere. I immediately swam to the ladder and attempted to climb out. You can't really feel your extremities so climbing that slippery metal was no easy feat. It was even difficult attempting to put on my flip flops since I couldn't feel my toes. I began to put my Big Red on as I headed towards the hot tub, but something strange happened. I didn't feel cold. I felt anything but cold. It was like I just stepped out of the ocean in the Caribbean. Everything was so warm. Granted, this was more than likely my body's response to hypothermia. When I reached the hot tub water, it felt incredibly hot. It was almost like it was burning. Once I dunked my head though I was okay. Urjeet, Yinan, Zane, Kris, Jason, and I were the ones who jumped, and we spent an hour or so in the morning in the hot tub.
I finally got out and showered and whatnot. Urjeet made Yinan and I some curried eggs and toast for a mid-morning breakfast. I've been told that your body uses up an insane amount of calories during that one jump. Guess I found my new workout regimen!
After lunch, Jason took me out on the ATVs and snowmobiles in the backyard and the glacier. We almost didn't go because of the high winds, but we figured that we'd try our luck. He actually let me drive the ATV until we got near the glacier. We switched because of all of the rocks in the backyard. It was getting too tricky for me, and he leads the search and rescue team so it sounded more sane to let him handle the four wheeler. On the glacier, we started up one of the emergency snowmobiles and he let me drive all the way down, turn around, and then back up. It was quite the experience with an even more amazing view. If you ever find yourself on a glacier with a snowmobile nearby, I highly recommend taking it for a drive. Jason signed me off on an ATV and snowmobile license, so now I'm all set to drive around the station with them if I so please. If I want to drive the snowmobile on the glacier, he would prefer that I take him with me just in case anything does happen. It's eerily quiet when the wind isn't blowing up there, so it would be nice to have a friend nearby to talk with.
Now I'm just defrosting myself a bit before I head downstairs to see if Urjeet and Yinan are doing dissections and need any help. Once again, I was placed in charge of our team. It's a neat position to be in, but it also means that I don't necessarily get to do a lot of the hands-on science and dissections. I'm just monitoring things. I'll probably go check on the two female fish that we manhandled yesterday to make sure that they're doing okay. We named them Dimples and Popeye, with Dimples having a pink zip-tie connected to her first dorsal fine to tag her. Popeye got her name because she's missing an eye, and Dimples got hers because her belly had all sorts of markings and dimples on them. We just want to monitor these fish until the LMG returns on Tuesday morning. We aren't prepared to have these fish spawn, but they're also pretty close to the completion of their reproductive maturation so we want to try our best to keep them alive. In the event that they do spawn or they die, I have to try my best to capture the eggs and take care of them. They can last for 12 hours without fertilization if I put them in the 4˚C freezer. During those 12 hours, I'll have to figure out what I want to do with the eggs. Hopefully I'd be able to find a milking male so that I can go ahead and complete the fertilization, but so far all of our males seem to be immature (figures...).
I finally got out and showered and whatnot. Urjeet made Yinan and I some curried eggs and toast for a mid-morning breakfast. I've been told that your body uses up an insane amount of calories during that one jump. Guess I found my new workout regimen!
After lunch, Jason took me out on the ATVs and snowmobiles in the backyard and the glacier. We almost didn't go because of the high winds, but we figured that we'd try our luck. He actually let me drive the ATV until we got near the glacier. We switched because of all of the rocks in the backyard. It was getting too tricky for me, and he leads the search and rescue team so it sounded more sane to let him handle the four wheeler. On the glacier, we started up one of the emergency snowmobiles and he let me drive all the way down, turn around, and then back up. It was quite the experience with an even more amazing view. If you ever find yourself on a glacier with a snowmobile nearby, I highly recommend taking it for a drive. Jason signed me off on an ATV and snowmobile license, so now I'm all set to drive around the station with them if I so please. If I want to drive the snowmobile on the glacier, he would prefer that I take him with me just in case anything does happen. It's eerily quiet when the wind isn't blowing up there, so it would be nice to have a friend nearby to talk with.
Now I'm just defrosting myself a bit before I head downstairs to see if Urjeet and Yinan are doing dissections and need any help. Once again, I was placed in charge of our team. It's a neat position to be in, but it also means that I don't necessarily get to do a lot of the hands-on science and dissections. I'm just monitoring things. I'll probably go check on the two female fish that we manhandled yesterday to make sure that they're doing okay. We named them Dimples and Popeye, with Dimples having a pink zip-tie connected to her first dorsal fine to tag her. Popeye got her name because she's missing an eye, and Dimples got hers because her belly had all sorts of markings and dimples on them. We just want to monitor these fish until the LMG returns on Tuesday morning. We aren't prepared to have these fish spawn, but they're also pretty close to the completion of their reproductive maturation so we want to try our best to keep them alive. In the event that they do spawn or they die, I have to try my best to capture the eggs and take care of them. They can last for 12 hours without fertilization if I put them in the 4˚C freezer. During those 12 hours, I'll have to figure out what I want to do with the eggs. Hopefully I'd be able to find a milking male so that I can go ahead and complete the fertilization, but so far all of our males seem to be immature (figures...).
Friday, May 2, 2014
Sorry for not posting
I've been reminded that I've been slacking on my posts. It's because things have been busy around here what with all of these fishing trips I've been conducting on zodiacs, running the entire aquarium/lab facility for our group while those with doctorates are off fishing, video-conferencing with the NSF for take your child to work day, and managing fish that are getting sick and becoming reproductively mature. Today Nathalie and I attempted to sex the fish in our tanks. We removed two large female C. aceratus fish to inspect them (weight, length, physical attributes) and check their bellies by gently rubbing/squeezing the belly. They were clearly full of eggs, but unfortunately they were not ready to actually spawn. Nathalie, Thomas, and Dr. Detrich will be going on another fishing trip tomorrow to the Banana Trench down south, so I suppose it's a good thing that we didn't get the fish to spawn.
Right now I just finished "House Mouse" and am sitting in my room. House Mouse is when we all get together as a station to clean everything. We draw from a bucket to see what duty we'll be assigned, and on our sheets of paper have bulleted lists of tasks that need to be completed. Last week I pulled Bar & Lounge. This week I got Bio Top Floor Hallway. Both are really simple house mouse duties. The bar and lounge just needs to be tidied up here and there, and the Bio (my building) top floor hallway really only needs to be vacuumed. Since we have a station meeting at 3:30 today, I was able to find some time to write. Normally when I have free time I'm elsewhere on station or reading up on something that I need to know for my work this Antarctic winter.
Tonight in the bar we'll be having swing dancing lessons apparently. Yesterday was a science lecture from one of the researchers on station, Bouvard Hosticka. Bo is a research scientist from University of Virginia, and he's here to run tests on the atmosphere to see if anybody in the world is setting off (testing) nuclear weapons. Pretty cool stuff. There's a lot of physics behind it that he's explained to me a number of times, but I won't get into the details of germanium crystals and electron excitations. He also gets to observe a matter-antimatter reaction. I actually got to see the data results of said reaction. Essentially, with a matter-antimatter reaction you go from a photon of light (a photon is to light as cell is to life) to mass (although energy and mass are essentially the same) to finally kinetic energy. Neat. The data isn't as cool though as it's just a spectrum with a peak in it.
Tomorrow since the ship is leaving, I'm probably going to do what's called the Polar Plunge. When the ship departs from our little pier, I'll be jumping off of the pier with a number of other people on station. I convinced a few newbies to do it with me since this will be my first time. My thought is that if I go around telling people that I'm doing it, I won't chicken out and will actually follow through with it. I want to do it now if I'm going to do it at all since the water is near 32˚F (0˚C...really at 0.4˚C though). On mid-winter's day, the water will be near 27˚F. Too chilly for my taste. I guess now I have to find the bathing suit that I reluctantly packed. Maybe I'll throw on some water-repellant shorts in the hopes that it could manage to wick even a little bit of water away from my body.
Right now I just finished "House Mouse" and am sitting in my room. House Mouse is when we all get together as a station to clean everything. We draw from a bucket to see what duty we'll be assigned, and on our sheets of paper have bulleted lists of tasks that need to be completed. Last week I pulled Bar & Lounge. This week I got Bio Top Floor Hallway. Both are really simple house mouse duties. The bar and lounge just needs to be tidied up here and there, and the Bio (my building) top floor hallway really only needs to be vacuumed. Since we have a station meeting at 3:30 today, I was able to find some time to write. Normally when I have free time I'm elsewhere on station or reading up on something that I need to know for my work this Antarctic winter.
Tonight in the bar we'll be having swing dancing lessons apparently. Yesterday was a science lecture from one of the researchers on station, Bouvard Hosticka. Bo is a research scientist from University of Virginia, and he's here to run tests on the atmosphere to see if anybody in the world is setting off (testing) nuclear weapons. Pretty cool stuff. There's a lot of physics behind it that he's explained to me a number of times, but I won't get into the details of germanium crystals and electron excitations. He also gets to observe a matter-antimatter reaction. I actually got to see the data results of said reaction. Essentially, with a matter-antimatter reaction you go from a photon of light (a photon is to light as cell is to life) to mass (although energy and mass are essentially the same) to finally kinetic energy. Neat. The data isn't as cool though as it's just a spectrum with a peak in it.
Tomorrow since the ship is leaving, I'm probably going to do what's called the Polar Plunge. When the ship departs from our little pier, I'll be jumping off of the pier with a number of other people on station. I convinced a few newbies to do it with me since this will be my first time. My thought is that if I go around telling people that I'm doing it, I won't chicken out and will actually follow through with it. I want to do it now if I'm going to do it at all since the water is near 32˚F (0˚C...really at 0.4˚C though). On mid-winter's day, the water will be near 27˚F. Too chilly for my taste. I guess now I have to find the bathing suit that I reluctantly packed. Maybe I'll throw on some water-repellant shorts in the hopes that it could manage to wick even a little bit of water away from my body.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Stormy Weather and Talking to the NSF
Today's really quite an interesting day. Winds are howling at 50 to 60 knots, picking up speed as the day goes on. Rain and huge waves abound. The pressure keeps sinking, which is to be expected with a storm. Around 11:30 A.M. our time (10:30 A.M. Boston time), Dr. Detrich, Urjeet, and I had a teleconference with the NSF. It was bring your child to work day at the NSF, and they were having a few Antarctica presentations for the elementary, middle school, and high school students present. I got to speak to each of these groups via a video conference. I basically told them about how I got here, my day to day work, our project, and general life in Antarctica. I got some cool questions from the middle schoolers. The high schoolers were typical high schoolers - trying to be cool by being uninterested in the presentation in front of them. Oh well....
After lunch today (1:30/2:00 for us three today due to our conference running late), we had an unexpected fire drill. Normally we would muster in the boat house, but since it isn't heated right now due to boating for the day being cancelled because of the storm, the boat house is freezing cold. We instead mustered in the garage in the other building (GWR - garage, warehouse, recreation). This meant that I had to grab my red windbreaker/raincoat that the ASC provided me and venture off into the cold windy rain to get to the muster location. From there, we came back to take our mid-day temperature readings in the fish tanks. Everything is looking great for our fish. No mortalities today! While this is awesome for our research purposes (getting them to breed....you need live fish for that!), it makes our days a bit boring and lazy. Normally when we have mortalities we do dissections and collect tissue samples. With no mortalities, we can't dissect them. I suppose we could euthanize a few fish that are in our outdoor tanks, but let's be real here: nobody wants to go outside today. Even taking our O2 and temperature measurements was difficult enough with this weather.
We also fed N. coriiceps a dead octopus from our touch tank. The poor fellow jumped out of the tank, probably trying to escape from our captivity. We found him on the floor this morning, and we put him in a bucket in preparation for chopping into bits for coriiceps. Instead, we just threw him into their tank whole. It took some lighting and nudging to get them to notice it, but once they saw it, it was really cool to witness. They counter-rotate the food, unknowingly helping each other as they battle for the flesh. They ended up rotating the octopus' body so much that it formed a spiral rope-like structure. Then the other fish took notice of what was happening and joined in by trying to rip off the legs of the octopus. Finally it became a bit of a feeding frenzy, and within a matter of a minute or less, the entire organism was gone. They're certainly quite the animal. Whenever I stick my O2 or temperature probe into the tank, they try to go after it and pull it in.
Today we also have two birthdays: Urjeet and Craig. Urjeet turns 21 today. Mike the chef is making sangria per Urjeet's request. A girl from the other research group and a few from ours are planning to prank Urjeet too. I'm not totally sure what the prank is, but I saw them sifting through the buckets of fish bits so I'm going to go ahead and guess that it involves that. Urjeet's supposed to move over to the ship tonight to prepare for fishing tomorrow, but if the weather continues like this then I doubt the ship will be able to make it out tomorrow. They'd probably have to leave on Saturday.
Well, now I'm off to go and see if anybody would like some help. Our incubators are all set up. Now we're just waiting for the plumbers to make the connections and start the flow. Everything seems to be coming together nicely now. It's great for the research, but bad for keeping us busy.
After lunch today (1:30/2:00 for us three today due to our conference running late), we had an unexpected fire drill. Normally we would muster in the boat house, but since it isn't heated right now due to boating for the day being cancelled because of the storm, the boat house is freezing cold. We instead mustered in the garage in the other building (GWR - garage, warehouse, recreation). This meant that I had to grab my red windbreaker/raincoat that the ASC provided me and venture off into the cold windy rain to get to the muster location. From there, we came back to take our mid-day temperature readings in the fish tanks. Everything is looking great for our fish. No mortalities today! While this is awesome for our research purposes (getting them to breed....you need live fish for that!), it makes our days a bit boring and lazy. Normally when we have mortalities we do dissections and collect tissue samples. With no mortalities, we can't dissect them. I suppose we could euthanize a few fish that are in our outdoor tanks, but let's be real here: nobody wants to go outside today. Even taking our O2 and temperature measurements was difficult enough with this weather.
We also fed N. coriiceps a dead octopus from our touch tank. The poor fellow jumped out of the tank, probably trying to escape from our captivity. We found him on the floor this morning, and we put him in a bucket in preparation for chopping into bits for coriiceps. Instead, we just threw him into their tank whole. It took some lighting and nudging to get them to notice it, but once they saw it, it was really cool to witness. They counter-rotate the food, unknowingly helping each other as they battle for the flesh. They ended up rotating the octopus' body so much that it formed a spiral rope-like structure. Then the other fish took notice of what was happening and joined in by trying to rip off the legs of the octopus. Finally it became a bit of a feeding frenzy, and within a matter of a minute or less, the entire organism was gone. They're certainly quite the animal. Whenever I stick my O2 or temperature probe into the tank, they try to go after it and pull it in.
Today we also have two birthdays: Urjeet and Craig. Urjeet turns 21 today. Mike the chef is making sangria per Urjeet's request. A girl from the other research group and a few from ours are planning to prank Urjeet too. I'm not totally sure what the prank is, but I saw them sifting through the buckets of fish bits so I'm going to go ahead and guess that it involves that. Urjeet's supposed to move over to the ship tonight to prepare for fishing tomorrow, but if the weather continues like this then I doubt the ship will be able to make it out tomorrow. They'd probably have to leave on Saturday.
Well, now I'm off to go and see if anybody would like some help. Our incubators are all set up. Now we're just waiting for the plumbers to make the connections and start the flow. Everything seems to be coming together nicely now. It's great for the research, but bad for keeping us busy.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Promoted
Yesterday and today have been about organizing and redoing some of the paperwork/information dispersal methods that we have (spreadsheets, charts, whiteboards, etc.). Nathalie told me that I'm in charge of the aquarium and the rest of the lab for the rest of the week, so I guess I'm promoted? She's busy with the incubation setup so that leaves me to do all of the managerial work she would normally do. Today I've just been logging temperatures, fixing machines, learning how different programs work, and typing up Excel spreadsheets to organize the data. Yinan's been doing dissections, and Urjeet's been finding tubing for the incubation room.
We also had a team meeting at 1:30. I will not be going on the next fishing trip. They saw that they really don't need more than three people at a time to go, and Urjeet loves to fish so he offered to come. I'll remain behind and help out with the aquarium and if the dissolved oxygen probe goes haywire again.
Right now I hear some cracking behind me. It's more than likely the glacier in the back calving. It's been breaking off large chunks of ice a lot lately. There's also a ridiculous amount of wind, so it could be that too. We're supposed to get a storm tomorrow. Wind speeds should reach 40 knots (46mph).
Well, back to organizing stuff and making sure everything's in working order. I signed out ("issued") two waterproof lab notebooks to myself today. I need something to document everything. They had labels on them asking for people to please be careful with them and only use them for proper lab reasons since they each cost about $45. Also, got plenty of Sharpies to make the world go 'round.
At sunset (close to 5:40), I'll be closing the tanks and taking the temp and O2 measurements again. Hopefully our rockcod, N. coriiceps, won't try to eat my temperature and O2 probes like they tried earlier today.
We also had a team meeting at 1:30. I will not be going on the next fishing trip. They saw that they really don't need more than three people at a time to go, and Urjeet loves to fish so he offered to come. I'll remain behind and help out with the aquarium and if the dissolved oxygen probe goes haywire again.
Right now I hear some cracking behind me. It's more than likely the glacier in the back calving. It's been breaking off large chunks of ice a lot lately. There's also a ridiculous amount of wind, so it could be that too. We're supposed to get a storm tomorrow. Wind speeds should reach 40 knots (46mph).
Well, back to organizing stuff and making sure everything's in working order. I signed out ("issued") two waterproof lab notebooks to myself today. I need something to document everything. They had labels on them asking for people to please be careful with them and only use them for proper lab reasons since they each cost about $45. Also, got plenty of Sharpies to make the world go 'round.
At sunset (close to 5:40), I'll be closing the tanks and taking the temp and O2 measurements again. Hopefully our rockcod, N. coriiceps, won't try to eat my temperature and O2 probes like they tried earlier today.
Monday, April 21, 2014
Finished for the Day
After transferring the fish earlier today, we just sat around until lunch time. After lunch, at around 1:30ish, we began our dissections. I joined Yinan and Urjeet in the aquarium room with dissecting some dead aceratus and some living juveniles. Since we only have so much counter space and so many knives, I was in charge of note-taking and prepping the cryopreservation vials (labeling, adding Bouin's solution to the vials that would receive a gonad sample, and adding ethanol to all other tissue samples). Doing it this way made everything happen at a much faster pace. In under two and a half hours we were able to dissect about 10 C. aceratus fish. We sampled the gonads, spleen, skeletal muscle, gill, and fin. We also filleted the fish, peeling off the skin so that they could be used for other biochemistry experiments further down the line. For our living juveniles, we first had to euthanize them in an MS-222 bath. It takes about five minutes for the fish to be ready to be processed. For those who are concerned, this is a humane/ethical way of killing the fish for scientific research purposes. It essentially gives them too much anesthesia. They aren't huge fans of the solution since it is a bit acidic, but it's a lot kinder than having them asphyxiate or just chopping off the head. Besides, we may need the head in tact.
After our dissections, I just went upstairs to upload a few more pictures to my Facebook album. I've been reading different news articles and whatnot too. It's a bit boring not having the option to stream movies through Netflix here. Since it's finals week, and more than likely nice outside back in Boston, my friends aren't online to chat either. Maybe I'll ask Urjeet and Yinan if they would like to go for a walk in the backyard of the station to see if we can spot any seals or penguins. Dinner isn't until 5:30 anyway.
As an aside about just living in Antarctica, the air here is extremely dry. Urjeet says that it's actually super humid and the humidity just sucks all the moisture out of our skin, but I don't know if I buy that. During the humid summer months in Boston, my skin doesn't become drier. In fact, if anything does happen at all, my skin becomes oilier. The only time I have dry skin is in the winter when we've gone weeks without significant precipitation. Anyway, the air here seems to just suck all moisture out of my body and skin. I'm drinking my normal amount of water (about 4-6L a day), but I'm still finding myself thirsty. My hands are also painfully chapped. At this point I'm thinking of just carrying around this 20% shea butter hand lotion I received before leaving the country. I could just apply it after every hand washing, every time I go outside, and every glove change. Maybe slap some vaseline on top of it too to trap the moisture on top of my skin, preventing it from evaporating into the air around me. Chapstick isn't helping me either. Just have to suck it up and try to do the best that I can I guess.
After our dissections, I just went upstairs to upload a few more pictures to my Facebook album. I've been reading different news articles and whatnot too. It's a bit boring not having the option to stream movies through Netflix here. Since it's finals week, and more than likely nice outside back in Boston, my friends aren't online to chat either. Maybe I'll ask Urjeet and Yinan if they would like to go for a walk in the backyard of the station to see if we can spot any seals or penguins. Dinner isn't until 5:30 anyway.
As an aside about just living in Antarctica, the air here is extremely dry. Urjeet says that it's actually super humid and the humidity just sucks all the moisture out of our skin, but I don't know if I buy that. During the humid summer months in Boston, my skin doesn't become drier. In fact, if anything does happen at all, my skin becomes oilier. The only time I have dry skin is in the winter when we've gone weeks without significant precipitation. Anyway, the air here seems to just suck all moisture out of my body and skin. I'm drinking my normal amount of water (about 4-6L a day), but I'm still finding myself thirsty. My hands are also painfully chapped. At this point I'm thinking of just carrying around this 20% shea butter hand lotion I received before leaving the country. I could just apply it after every hand washing, every time I go outside, and every glove change. Maybe slap some vaseline on top of it too to trap the moisture on top of my skin, preventing it from evaporating into the air around me. Chapstick isn't helping me either. Just have to suck it up and try to do the best that I can I guess.
Back at the Station
Well, it was a successful fishing trip. I think we caught over 51 fish. Unfortunately, though, one of our rock cod species, Notothenia coriiceps, ate some of the other fish in its tank, making our total count shrink. When we were transporting and opened the tank that was mixed with coriiceps and gibi, we saw a lot of red fleshy bits floating in the water with a decrease in biomass of gibi. In science when we euthanize our fish we call it "processing." Looks like coriiceps did the processing already for us.
The seas were really calm, and we had beautiful weather. It made for an extremely peaceful voyage. Around 3 P.M. on Friday we set the pots/traps at Dallmann Bay. We steamed our way to Low Island, and we began dropping the nets at around 10 P.M. The marine techs on board were actually the ones to drop the nets. We just stood back and observed; our job was to collect and sort the fish. It takes about 15 minutes for the net to go down, 20 minutes for trawling, and another 10-15 minutes to bring it back up. I stayed up until about 4:30 A.M. to help collect and sort the fish, but then at that time Dr. Detrich joined us. Since the other two members in my group decided they want to stay up all night, I chose to go to bed. We didn't need four people digging through the nets to find our fish. In fact, we really didn't need three either. Anyway, the nets came up a lot more different from what I expected. When they come up and hit the deck, we open them up and begin digging. The nets just drag and collect everything that's on the ocean floor, including seaweed, starfish, small octopuses, smaller fish, and many very strange looking Antarctic species. Of course, we also get our fish. Each trawl that night was catching close to 10 fish. We actually started running out of room in our tanks so we ended up doing dissections. I was asleep for those unfortunately.
The next day on Saturday, we made our way back to Dallmann Bay to recover our traps. We had some other people on the ship assist us with coiling the ropes so that my research team could focus on getting the fish (coriiceps in this case; aceratus and other ice fish were in the trawls) and transporting them to the temporary tanks. We also had to remove the bait bags (filled with chopped up herring and we threw a rotten orange in a few of them to see if they'd attract more fish) and break down the traps. All in all, we managed to obtain over twenty coriiceps.
Since we didn't really have more room in our temporary tanks, we chose not to go trawling again last night. This meant that I got to sleep at a regular time :)! We arrived on station at about 8:30 A.M., and soon after the crane on the ship began offloading our tanks. From there, we took each fish out of the tanks individually, dipping them in a special bath (diluted VidaLife) that repairs their mucous layer as well as injecting them with hormones (OvaPrim) to finalize their sexual development. Some of our aceratus females have orange bellies because they're swollen with eggs. We still need to advance their development a bit to make sure that they're ready to actually spawn the eggs. I guess you could say that the Easter bunny visited us yesterday, if you catch my drift.
All in all, we have close to or above 80 fish in our tanks. Unfortunately for gibi and some of the smaller aceratus fish, they're all going to be killed today and tomorrow for dissections and tissue sampling. We'll be keeping coriiceps and aceratus for breeding purposes. Hopefully we got some males in the group. The males are significantly smaller than the females, so it's hard to tell if we just have a bunch of juvenile females or if they're actually reproductively developed males.
Now I'm just doing some laundry and typing this up. Soon I'll try to join Yinan and Urjeet downstairs to do some dissections. They said that they don't need my help, but it would be nice if they could save me a fish or two. If not, then I suppose I could always go back to reading. I both started and finished Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest (which was hilarious if I may add) while on the ship waiting to trawl in the night. In the lounge we have walls filled with books, so it shouldn't be difficult to find something else to read.
The seas were really calm, and we had beautiful weather. It made for an extremely peaceful voyage. Around 3 P.M. on Friday we set the pots/traps at Dallmann Bay. We steamed our way to Low Island, and we began dropping the nets at around 10 P.M. The marine techs on board were actually the ones to drop the nets. We just stood back and observed; our job was to collect and sort the fish. It takes about 15 minutes for the net to go down, 20 minutes for trawling, and another 10-15 minutes to bring it back up. I stayed up until about 4:30 A.M. to help collect and sort the fish, but then at that time Dr. Detrich joined us. Since the other two members in my group decided they want to stay up all night, I chose to go to bed. We didn't need four people digging through the nets to find our fish. In fact, we really didn't need three either. Anyway, the nets came up a lot more different from what I expected. When they come up and hit the deck, we open them up and begin digging. The nets just drag and collect everything that's on the ocean floor, including seaweed, starfish, small octopuses, smaller fish, and many very strange looking Antarctic species. Of course, we also get our fish. Each trawl that night was catching close to 10 fish. We actually started running out of room in our tanks so we ended up doing dissections. I was asleep for those unfortunately.
The next day on Saturday, we made our way back to Dallmann Bay to recover our traps. We had some other people on the ship assist us with coiling the ropes so that my research team could focus on getting the fish (coriiceps in this case; aceratus and other ice fish were in the trawls) and transporting them to the temporary tanks. We also had to remove the bait bags (filled with chopped up herring and we threw a rotten orange in a few of them to see if they'd attract more fish) and break down the traps. All in all, we managed to obtain over twenty coriiceps.
Since we didn't really have more room in our temporary tanks, we chose not to go trawling again last night. This meant that I got to sleep at a regular time :)! We arrived on station at about 8:30 A.M., and soon after the crane on the ship began offloading our tanks. From there, we took each fish out of the tanks individually, dipping them in a special bath (diluted VidaLife) that repairs their mucous layer as well as injecting them with hormones (OvaPrim) to finalize their sexual development. Some of our aceratus females have orange bellies because they're swollen with eggs. We still need to advance their development a bit to make sure that they're ready to actually spawn the eggs. I guess you could say that the Easter bunny visited us yesterday, if you catch my drift.
All in all, we have close to or above 80 fish in our tanks. Unfortunately for gibi and some of the smaller aceratus fish, they're all going to be killed today and tomorrow for dissections and tissue sampling. We'll be keeping coriiceps and aceratus for breeding purposes. Hopefully we got some males in the group. The males are significantly smaller than the females, so it's hard to tell if we just have a bunch of juvenile females or if they're actually reproductively developed males.
Now I'm just doing some laundry and typing this up. Soon I'll try to join Yinan and Urjeet downstairs to do some dissections. They said that they don't need my help, but it would be nice if they could save me a fish or two. If not, then I suppose I could always go back to reading. I both started and finished Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest (which was hilarious if I may add) while on the ship waiting to trawl in the night. In the lounge we have walls filled with books, so it shouldn't be difficult to find something else to read.
Friday, April 18, 2014
Ice, Water, and Boats
I got my boating II certification today. Now I get to drive the zodiac boats and go explore the islands. Turns out though that I kinda suck at it. I could have told you that though considering that this was the first time I've ever driven a boat in my life. It was also the first time that I learned about setting up tents, starting fires, and tying certain knots. I guess my lack of skill in outdoors-y things may be catching up to me. Funnily enough, I was the only person in my group who had never set up a tent before. Why make a tent when they have hotels?
Tomorrow morning I have to go fishing. 8 A.M. the ship leaves. I need to be on it at 7:30 A.M. We'll be gone for two nights. We trawl through the night, so I won't be getting much sleep. I'm hoping that I won't get sea sick. Urjeet said that we should talk to the doctor on station to see if he'd give me some scopolamine patches for the trip. I know that I'll end up getting sick without them since the one day that I didn't have it on I started to feel off...and that was during smooth seas. We aren't looking at smooth seas. Maybe I should drop my medical school hopes to become a fisherman if I end up making it through this trip without feeling nauseous and getting vertigo.
Tomorrow morning I have to go fishing. 8 A.M. the ship leaves. I need to be on it at 7:30 A.M. We'll be gone for two nights. We trawl through the night, so I won't be getting much sleep. I'm hoping that I won't get sea sick. Urjeet said that we should talk to the doctor on station to see if he'd give me some scopolamine patches for the trip. I know that I'll end up getting sick without them since the one day that I didn't have it on I started to feel off...and that was during smooth seas. We aren't looking at smooth seas. Maybe I should drop my medical school hopes to become a fisherman if I end up making it through this trip without feeling nauseous and getting vertigo.
Waiting for the Next Step
As of late, things have been a bit slow around here. Our fish arrived safe and sound. I took both of my exams yesterday. Today we're just hanging around until we can get together as a group to talk about the next fishing trip.
The exams were okay. My physics exam was certainly no walk in the park, but that was to be expected. I'm pretty sure that I just made up an integration rule to force one of my equations to work. Lots of proportions/ratios too. Ecology was kinder, albeit a bit short. Luckily my professor isn't going to count one of the questions that I completely messed up since I wasn't there for the lecture.
The LMG went out again for the other research group. They had to try to catch some tetrapods to do their work. Unfortunately, it appears that they were unable to catch any. Since Dr. Detrich and Thomas are living on the ship, they had to leave too. We need them on station though to discuss our own plans, i.e. fishing plans. I think that I'll be going out on the next fishing trip, but until I receive confirmation it's unknown.
Today I've just been doing some organizing and stuff. I had to help our science administrator/advisor on station to move all of our extra lab equipment out of our lab. When we got here, she just pulled every box that had our name on it and placed it into the lab. We needed maybe in total one box of supplies. Apparently there's no room for all of our boxes. I'm not sure where she found them all, but I'm under the assumption that it's not where we put them back. They just don't all fit in our one little cubby. Just before that, I made a log to track our fish. We want to record the temperature of the water, the oxygen saturation, and the photoperiod. Our goal is to reduce all noise in the aquarium as much as possible and to have the lights off too. If we do have to turn on the lights for whatever reason, we prefer it happens when there is natural daylight. We just began doing this today, but I'm already noticing a difference. If you peer into the open tanks, you can see the fish swimming around a bit. Before we began following the natural photoperiod, they would just sit at the bottom of the tank. Essentially, we were screwing up what they perceived to be day and night and as a result, we messed up their biological clocks. Nathalie has some publications that she wrote that actually document why noise and light reduction is so important when holding fish in captivity. They're less aggressive and overall healthier. Hopefully now we can get the other group in the aquarium to try their best to follow the photoperiod we requested.
The LMG just pulled up to the dock, so I'm going to finish my coffee and head downstairs. Lunch is in about a half hour too. I have to take a boating class later today since I'll be here all winter. It's really the only way to gain at least a little bit of independence and freedom around here.
The exams were okay. My physics exam was certainly no walk in the park, but that was to be expected. I'm pretty sure that I just made up an integration rule to force one of my equations to work. Lots of proportions/ratios too. Ecology was kinder, albeit a bit short. Luckily my professor isn't going to count one of the questions that I completely messed up since I wasn't there for the lecture.
The LMG went out again for the other research group. They had to try to catch some tetrapods to do their work. Unfortunately, it appears that they were unable to catch any. Since Dr. Detrich and Thomas are living on the ship, they had to leave too. We need them on station though to discuss our own plans, i.e. fishing plans. I think that I'll be going out on the next fishing trip, but until I receive confirmation it's unknown.
Today I've just been doing some organizing and stuff. I had to help our science administrator/advisor on station to move all of our extra lab equipment out of our lab. When we got here, she just pulled every box that had our name on it and placed it into the lab. We needed maybe in total one box of supplies. Apparently there's no room for all of our boxes. I'm not sure where she found them all, but I'm under the assumption that it's not where we put them back. They just don't all fit in our one little cubby. Just before that, I made a log to track our fish. We want to record the temperature of the water, the oxygen saturation, and the photoperiod. Our goal is to reduce all noise in the aquarium as much as possible and to have the lights off too. If we do have to turn on the lights for whatever reason, we prefer it happens when there is natural daylight. We just began doing this today, but I'm already noticing a difference. If you peer into the open tanks, you can see the fish swimming around a bit. Before we began following the natural photoperiod, they would just sit at the bottom of the tank. Essentially, we were screwing up what they perceived to be day and night and as a result, we messed up their biological clocks. Nathalie has some publications that she wrote that actually document why noise and light reduction is so important when holding fish in captivity. They're less aggressive and overall healthier. Hopefully now we can get the other group in the aquarium to try their best to follow the photoperiod we requested.
The LMG just pulled up to the dock, so I'm going to finish my coffee and head downstairs. Lunch is in about a half hour too. I have to take a boating class later today since I'll be here all winter. It's really the only way to gain at least a little bit of independence and freedom around here.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Waiting for the Fish
The fish are coming today. They were scheduled to come either at 8 A.M. or 1 P.M. We woke up early to prepare for their arrival, but we've recently learned that they'll be delayed until the later time slot. In the meantime, we have to meet with one of the men working on the water flow on station to ensure that our tanks are still getting enough water. We want to be able to cycle the water so that every hour the tanks have been completely filled with new water. It's healthier for the fish to have clean water, even though we won't be feeding them so they won't be producing much waste. After we talk to the flow guy/plumber, we want to try to set up the incubators in the environmental room. We were going to do that yesterday, but everybody else on station had a day off so it messed up our schedule. We need these incubators up and running in the event that my PI (principal investigator) comes back with gravid females for the white-blooded icefish C. aceratus. Gravid females are fish that are ready to spawn their eggs. The incubators would ensure that the eggs are well oxygenated and remaining at a stable temperature, keeping them healthy and within the parameters of our experiments.
As for non-science things, I'll be studying some more tonight in preparation for any exam that I take tomorrow. It'll be a busy day, but I should get a couple of hours in the evening to prepare. For food, this morning's breakfast was prepared for us for the first time since getting here. I ended up just sticking to my bread, peanut butter, and, because I found them somewhere, banana. I tried the other stuff that was made like eggs, bacon, and sausages, but they just tasted a bit off. Nathalie agreed. One point of annoyance is that the chef keeps baking the bread so that it's sweet. I don't understand why he's putting so much sugar in bread so that the sweetness is noticeable. It's not a dessert. It's our only option for bread though, so Nathalie and I just have to suck it up.
As for non-science things, I'll be studying some more tonight in preparation for any exam that I take tomorrow. It'll be a busy day, but I should get a couple of hours in the evening to prepare. For food, this morning's breakfast was prepared for us for the first time since getting here. I ended up just sticking to my bread, peanut butter, and, because I found them somewhere, banana. I tried the other stuff that was made like eggs, bacon, and sausages, but they just tasted a bit off. Nathalie agreed. One point of annoyance is that the chef keeps baking the bread so that it's sweet. I don't understand why he's putting so much sugar in bread so that the sweetness is noticeable. It's not a dessert. It's our only option for bread though, so Nathalie and I just have to suck it up.
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Day 3 in Antarctica
Still no sign of green vegetation. Guess I should get used to that. Maybe I'll forget what green trees look like since when I get back to Boston in October all of the leaves will be orange or have already fallen.
Nathalie and Urjeet went out exploring the other islands nearby on zodiaks. There wasn't enough room for me to join too so I've just been in the room relaxing and studying. While physics 2 material may be interesting, I'll be glad when I don't have to worry if the magnetic field is coming out of the page or into the page and how it'll affect my calculations for flux and current. I should be taking my exams all this week so that's something to look forward to. I guess it'll mean that I have officially moved away from the middler stage and into the junior stage of my undergraduate career. Next up: biochemistry, physical chemistry, and cellular and molecular biology!
I went down to the grantee office in the labs today and looked at their bookcase. If anybody is interested in reading the Antarctic Conservation Treaty, they have a couple of copies down there. I also learned that our nearest neighbor is the Russian Antarctic station just about 70 kilometers away. Estimated to be about 2-3 hours of boating away. In the case of an enormous emergency, we have to evacuate to their base.
Now I'll go see if Nathalie and Urjeet are back. Maybe they'll have interesting stories of penguins and elephant seals.
Nathalie and Urjeet went out exploring the other islands nearby on zodiaks. There wasn't enough room for me to join too so I've just been in the room relaxing and studying. While physics 2 material may be interesting, I'll be glad when I don't have to worry if the magnetic field is coming out of the page or into the page and how it'll affect my calculations for flux and current. I should be taking my exams all this week so that's something to look forward to. I guess it'll mean that I have officially moved away from the middler stage and into the junior stage of my undergraduate career. Next up: biochemistry, physical chemistry, and cellular and molecular biology!
I went down to the grantee office in the labs today and looked at their bookcase. If anybody is interested in reading the Antarctic Conservation Treaty, they have a couple of copies down there. I also learned that our nearest neighbor is the Russian Antarctic station just about 70 kilometers away. Estimated to be about 2-3 hours of boating away. In the case of an enormous emergency, we have to evacuate to their base.
Now I'll go see if Nathalie and Urjeet are back. Maybe they'll have interesting stories of penguins and elephant seals.
First Day Off...Sort Of
Nathalie is letting us take a day off....sort of. We got to sleep in, so I actually woke up with a little bit of sun outside. It's pretty overcast as always, but off in the distance you can see some sun behind the mountains. We were supposed to go out on the zodiacs today to explore the surrounding islands, but unfortunately there's a lot of brash ice outside so it's unknown if we'll be going out there. Right now Nathalie is at the gym on station and Urjeet is setting up the environmental room. I'm typing this, but soon I'll be yet again studying.
We're pretty set up for the arrival of our fish on Thursday. The tanks are cleaned and filled with water, they're almost done with 48 hours of water cycling, and the environmental room is scrubbed. All that is left is to set up the incubators for our embryos. Right now is the peak of C. aceratus' mating season, from what I understand, so we should be able to get them to breed. Our rock cod N. coriiceps won't be ready until mid-May/June.
In other news, your voice can really carry around here. Outside my window and down by the pier are a couple of divers in their diving equipment. I can hear their conversation from my room because it's so quiet around here. It's eery. There aren't any machines or trucks going since it's the staff's day off. All you can hear is the wind and the divers outside.
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| View from my bed |
In other news, your voice can really carry around here. Outside my window and down by the pier are a couple of divers in their diving equipment. I can hear their conversation from my room because it's so quiet around here. It's eery. There aren't any machines or trucks going since it's the staff's day off. All you can hear is the wind and the divers outside.
Monday, April 14, 2014
More Preparations for Fish
Today, as always, started out in total darkness at 7:30 A.M. The wind was still howling throughout the morning. In fact, the wind was so strong that it pushed the icebergs in the inlet even closer to the ship. The ship's departure for our first fishing trip was delayed until 1:30 P.M. when the winds were to die down. Had they tried to leave with the high speed winds, the ship likely would have been pushed into the ice. Had that happened, we would have ended up with a sinking boat. You would think that they'd make these boats iceberg-proof after the Titanic.
Until near noon I got some time to study for my ecology and physics finals. I made a lot of progress, but I still would like a few more hours to go through everything again. I'm scheduled to sit for my physics final some time when the ship comes back to the station. My professor would like the exam back by Friday at 3 P.M., so I guess I'll have completed physics 2 by then. The winds started to end as we approached lunch time, and the sun came out. I saw on my weather app on my phone that Wakefield reached 77˚ today. Palmer Station must have hit above freezing, so there's our warm front.
After noon, Urjeet and I suited up in our lovely rubber outfits to go clean the fish tanks outside. We hopped in them and started off with a saltwater rinse, followed by scrubbing with 0.5% bleach in water solution, finally ending with a freshwater rinse. We had to do a final rinse with freshwater to avoid any kind of reaction between the saltwater and the bleach. The bleach is in low concentrations, but it's very strong and can react easily. After scrubbing down one tank, we stopped so that he and a few others from another research team could go and jump in the water. I didn't participate. Even with long underwear, regular clothing, fleece clothing, and an extra fleece sweatshirt under my yellow suit, I felt chilly. It was because, even though I was dry, I was wading in ice cold seawater. Everybody wanted me to join in because, you know, how many people can say they swam in Antarctica? I think that just being able to say that I spent nearly seven months in Antarctica is enough for me. Plus one time in a past there was a diver in the water who was taken by a leopard seal. Also, not too far from the jumping site they dump all of the human waste. It may be separated, but just knowing that is reason enough for me to say no. Nevertheless, they did it and thought it was a lot of fun. After you jump in the water, you have to head to the hot tub to warm up. The doctor on station actually followed us all as we left the jump site to head towards the hot tub. I decided to remain on the side and just take pictures with my waterproof camera. Not worth damaging my DSLR camera, especially since I was already covered in that bleach solution.
When everybody had enough, we all went back to work. Urjeet and I cleaned another two outdoor tanks, and then we headed inside to clean the environmental room. That room is where we plan to house our fish embryos when we get some. Everything has to be spotless and scrubbed with bleach to prevent any germs from getting into our tanks. We want to avoid ill fish as much as possible. We're in an isolated location for human medical assistance as well as fish medical assistance after all.
Eventually it came close to dinner time, and we all stopped working. Dinner was meatloaf, so I just ate a salad and then some ice cream. I had to participate in GASH, meaning that I had to help clean up the kitchen for an hour after dinner. I wasn't too thrilled to be doing that since I was tired and had a lot of other things to do both for my finals and pertaining to the project, but at 7:30 I could finally call it quits. Now I'm trying to alternate studying for my exams and reading through old inventories to see if we have any more of a specific chemical at the station. Tomorrow is a day off for all of the personnel on station, but that absolutely doesn't apply to us scientists/grantees on station. We have too much to do before our fish arrive. We'll be back to cleaning and setting up the environmental room, and then I have to go and try to start a new inventory of all of our supplies on station, hopefully figuring out why we have 4 large boxes of 200uL pipette tips as I do so.
Until near noon I got some time to study for my ecology and physics finals. I made a lot of progress, but I still would like a few more hours to go through everything again. I'm scheduled to sit for my physics final some time when the ship comes back to the station. My professor would like the exam back by Friday at 3 P.M., so I guess I'll have completed physics 2 by then. The winds started to end as we approached lunch time, and the sun came out. I saw on my weather app on my phone that Wakefield reached 77˚ today. Palmer Station must have hit above freezing, so there's our warm front.
After noon, Urjeet and I suited up in our lovely rubber outfits to go clean the fish tanks outside. We hopped in them and started off with a saltwater rinse, followed by scrubbing with 0.5% bleach in water solution, finally ending with a freshwater rinse. We had to do a final rinse with freshwater to avoid any kind of reaction between the saltwater and the bleach. The bleach is in low concentrations, but it's very strong and can react easily. After scrubbing down one tank, we stopped so that he and a few others from another research team could go and jump in the water. I didn't participate. Even with long underwear, regular clothing, fleece clothing, and an extra fleece sweatshirt under my yellow suit, I felt chilly. It was because, even though I was dry, I was wading in ice cold seawater. Everybody wanted me to join in because, you know, how many people can say they swam in Antarctica? I think that just being able to say that I spent nearly seven months in Antarctica is enough for me. Plus one time in a past there was a diver in the water who was taken by a leopard seal. Also, not too far from the jumping site they dump all of the human waste. It may be separated, but just knowing that is reason enough for me to say no. Nevertheless, they did it and thought it was a lot of fun. After you jump in the water, you have to head to the hot tub to warm up. The doctor on station actually followed us all as we left the jump site to head towards the hot tub. I decided to remain on the side and just take pictures with my waterproof camera. Not worth damaging my DSLR camera, especially since I was already covered in that bleach solution.
When everybody had enough, we all went back to work. Urjeet and I cleaned another two outdoor tanks, and then we headed inside to clean the environmental room. That room is where we plan to house our fish embryos when we get some. Everything has to be spotless and scrubbed with bleach to prevent any germs from getting into our tanks. We want to avoid ill fish as much as possible. We're in an isolated location for human medical assistance as well as fish medical assistance after all.
Eventually it came close to dinner time, and we all stopped working. Dinner was meatloaf, so I just ate a salad and then some ice cream. I had to participate in GASH, meaning that I had to help clean up the kitchen for an hour after dinner. I wasn't too thrilled to be doing that since I was tired and had a lot of other things to do both for my finals and pertaining to the project, but at 7:30 I could finally call it quits. Now I'm trying to alternate studying for my exams and reading through old inventories to see if we have any more of a specific chemical at the station. Tomorrow is a day off for all of the personnel on station, but that absolutely doesn't apply to us scientists/grantees on station. We have too much to do before our fish arrive. We'll be back to cleaning and setting up the environmental room, and then I have to go and try to start a new inventory of all of our supplies on station, hopefully figuring out why we have 4 large boxes of 200uL pipette tips as I do so.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Smaller Details
I forgot in my last post to include something that I learned last night. Nathalie and I will actually be at the station longer than the winter crew will. We'll see the summer crew arrive and prepare for the upcoming season. I guess learning that helped let it sink in that I'm stuck on an icy island in the middle of nowhere for close to seven months.
I also wanted to talk a little bit about my ECW gear since I never made a post about it due to the lack of wifi on the ship and in Chile. Because I'm staying for the winter season, I was issued more gear than some of the other grantees. I get my giant red parka for starts, called a "Big Red" around here. It's nearing the warmest coat that I have ever worn, something that you definitely need when facing the Antarctic winter winds. I also got some stylish rubber yellow pants and matching button-up coat. Think of the Gorton's Fisherman. That's what I look like when wearing them. They come complete with lovely matching yellow and green colored suspenders. For my hands, I was issued a pair of fleece-lined orange latex gloves. All of these together with some tan/brown latex steel-toed boots and you have a waterproof outfit. I also have a pair of black overall snow pants, just like the ones I used to wear when I was seven. To stick with the black theme, I was also issued a pair of fleece pants and zip up sweatshirt and black long johns. In my duffel bag is also a few different pairs of gloves and mittens, all fleecy to keep me warm. I got some heavy duty wool socks too. There's also a pair of giant black goggles in case I decide that I want to try to teach myself to ski for the first time on the glacier in the backyard. We'll take this one adventure at a time. My snow boots seem like they could be fairly indestructible. They aren't steel-toed, but they are warm and keep you dry. I'll probably be wearing those the most when working at the lab benches in the basement. I'll wear the waterproof rubber outfit and boots when working in the aquarium or fishing on the ship. The most important thing down here when working out in the field is to stay dry and avoid wearing cotton. You don't want to feel any colder than you need to.
I also wanted to talk a little bit about my ECW gear since I never made a post about it due to the lack of wifi on the ship and in Chile. Because I'm staying for the winter season, I was issued more gear than some of the other grantees. I get my giant red parka for starts, called a "Big Red" around here. It's nearing the warmest coat that I have ever worn, something that you definitely need when facing the Antarctic winter winds. I also got some stylish rubber yellow pants and matching button-up coat. Think of the Gorton's Fisherman. That's what I look like when wearing them. They come complete with lovely matching yellow and green colored suspenders. For my hands, I was issued a pair of fleece-lined orange latex gloves. All of these together with some tan/brown latex steel-toed boots and you have a waterproof outfit. I also have a pair of black overall snow pants, just like the ones I used to wear when I was seven. To stick with the black theme, I was also issued a pair of fleece pants and zip up sweatshirt and black long johns. In my duffel bag is also a few different pairs of gloves and mittens, all fleecy to keep me warm. I got some heavy duty wool socks too. There's also a pair of giant black goggles in case I decide that I want to try to teach myself to ski for the first time on the glacier in the backyard. We'll take this one adventure at a time. My snow boots seem like they could be fairly indestructible. They aren't steel-toed, but they are warm and keep you dry. I'll probably be wearing those the most when working at the lab benches in the basement. I'll wear the waterproof rubber outfit and boots when working in the aquarium or fishing on the ship. The most important thing down here when working out in the field is to stay dry and avoid wearing cotton. You don't want to feel any colder than you need to.
Day 2 - Beginning of Science
I woke up at 7:00 A.M. our time, which is about 6:00 A.M. EST. The station is based off of Chilean time, and Chile hasn't switched their clocks for daylight savings yet. Seven o'clock in Antarctica means total darkness. The sun doesn't rise until after 8. It's a bit odd trying to wake up when it's still total darkness. Every time I open my eyes in the morning, including when I was on the ship, I expect it to be four in the morning. Alas, it never is, so I never get to fall back asleep.
We won't be served traditional breakfast until Wednesday when the new cook is trained. He came to the station on the same ship as me. Until then, we're all fending for ourselves with whatever's available. We can't use the stove or anything else to cook until we undergo a training course with the chef. At least there's peanut butter here, albeit not the best. I'm learning to make do without my bananas and green tea. There's always espresso I suppose.
After breakfast, we went down to the basement of the Bio building to check out our labs and aquariums again. We just wanted to get a general understanding of where everything is and what has to be done. As a team, we met on the LMG with Dr. Detrich to review the plans for the upcoming fishing trip. Tomorrow at 8 A.M. two of my team members and my PI will be off to Low Island to trawl for icefish (the white/clear blooded fish). They'll be setting pots/traps for the rock cods (the red blooded fish) just before they reach Low Island. At the trawling site, they're expecting to fish throughout the night, meaning a 12-14 hour shift. We should expect the ship to be back some time on Wednesday or Thursday, hopefully full of fish and embryos.
When our meeting finished, we went back to the labs to try to find supplies. I went with Nathalie, the other woman wintering over with me, to check out our chemical supplies. We had to find a specific liquid that helps repair the mucous membrane of the fish's skin. When they're in the nets during trawling, the mucous gets wiped off, causing them a lot of stress. The extra stress on top of the stress of just being caught in a net may be leading to their premature deaths. We're hoping that by using this liquid we'll be able to prevent such a high mortality rate. We also found some anesthetics for our fish. Unfortunately though, we have a limited amount. We have to be careful when it comes time to kill the fish (the humane way to kill fish is to overdose them on anesthetics); we have to try our best to preserve the powder for when we actually want them to just fall asleep.
Our group had another meeting at 1:30, this time with all of the PIs and their team members who will be on the LMG for fishing. After thirty minutes of outlining our fishing plans, we could go back to the labs and the marine aquarium to prepare for the ship's departure. I luckily was assigned a job that didn't require me to put on my rubber wetsuit and steel-toed boots. I just had to organize and set up one of our labs as well as dilute some of the mucous repairing liquid to a concentration that won't harm the fish. Two other team members were in the aquarium bleaching (0.5% concentration since we don't want to be dumping a lot of bleach out into the ocean) the tanks. They're pretty large baths that require you to get inside of them to scrub around, making it a wet and messy job. Needless to say, I was fine with being a little chilly from my drafty lab while organizing supplies.
Around 5/5:30 P.M. we managed to complete the majority of our work for the day. Dinner included pork tenderloin, flavorless broccoli, saffron split garbanzo beans, and other items that I didn't touch. Most people here rave about the food. Dinner wasn't bad, but I certainly wasn't a fan of lunch. Who fries vegetable spring rolls anyway? Plus the zucchini was way overcooked. Oh well, maybe it was the new chef learning to cook with these stoves.
In terms of weather around here, it's quite erratic. I should be used to crazy weather changes from an entire lifetime in the Boston area, but Antarctica is a whole other story. Right now it remains around 30˚F, but the winds are crazy. This morning it started snowing. When I looked out the window, the snow in front of the LMG was blowing completely horizontally. Just slightly to the left through the other window, it was falling vertically. About 10 minutes after snowing pretty hard, it completely came to a stop. Then it started to hail. Then the winds stopped. Then it started to snow again. You get the picture. The weather is crazy here. Everything's also slicked over with a thin coating of ice. It's because during the day the snow can melt or be washed away from any rain storms, but at night it just freezes back up again.
In terms of scenery, two large icebergs blew into the inlet by the LMG and the station last night. They've stuck around and are still there today. Hopefully they'll get out of the way of the LMG so we can get our ship out there to fish. In terms of terrestrial, we're on a rocky surface, but, as I said earlier, it's slicked over with a thin layer of ice. There's also an inch of snow everywhere. We have a large glacier in the "backyard" of the station too. It's a nice sky blue color when there isn't any snow covering it. I also saw some fur seals through a window yesterday. They hopped out of the water in Hero Inlet to lie down on some rocks. Somebody else on station said that they saw a penguin waddling around outside the station, but I missed that.
Another thing before I go back to studying for my upcoming ecology and physics finals, I ate a piece of glacial ice last night. Well, it was put in my glass of water. It's the clearest ice you will ever see - not a single impurity present. It's because, over thousands of years, all of the impurities have been essentially pushed out due to the immense pressure of the glacier. Sometimes we see this ice floating around (we call it bar ice here), and we'll scoop it out of the water and bring it to a bucket outside of the bar. To me, it just tastes like any other form of ice. Apparently thinking that way is insulting to the glaciers though. I guess it's cool to say that I drank water from 2,000 years ago, so that's reason enough to choose bar ice scooped out of the Antarctic waters over regular ice you get from a fridge.
After breakfast, we went down to the basement of the Bio building to check out our labs and aquariums again. We just wanted to get a general understanding of where everything is and what has to be done. As a team, we met on the LMG with Dr. Detrich to review the plans for the upcoming fishing trip. Tomorrow at 8 A.M. two of my team members and my PI will be off to Low Island to trawl for icefish (the white/clear blooded fish). They'll be setting pots/traps for the rock cods (the red blooded fish) just before they reach Low Island. At the trawling site, they're expecting to fish throughout the night, meaning a 12-14 hour shift. We should expect the ship to be back some time on Wednesday or Thursday, hopefully full of fish and embryos.
When our meeting finished, we went back to the labs to try to find supplies. I went with Nathalie, the other woman wintering over with me, to check out our chemical supplies. We had to find a specific liquid that helps repair the mucous membrane of the fish's skin. When they're in the nets during trawling, the mucous gets wiped off, causing them a lot of stress. The extra stress on top of the stress of just being caught in a net may be leading to their premature deaths. We're hoping that by using this liquid we'll be able to prevent such a high mortality rate. We also found some anesthetics for our fish. Unfortunately though, we have a limited amount. We have to be careful when it comes time to kill the fish (the humane way to kill fish is to overdose them on anesthetics); we have to try our best to preserve the powder for when we actually want them to just fall asleep.
Our group had another meeting at 1:30, this time with all of the PIs and their team members who will be on the LMG for fishing. After thirty minutes of outlining our fishing plans, we could go back to the labs and the marine aquarium to prepare for the ship's departure. I luckily was assigned a job that didn't require me to put on my rubber wetsuit and steel-toed boots. I just had to organize and set up one of our labs as well as dilute some of the mucous repairing liquid to a concentration that won't harm the fish. Two other team members were in the aquarium bleaching (0.5% concentration since we don't want to be dumping a lot of bleach out into the ocean) the tanks. They're pretty large baths that require you to get inside of them to scrub around, making it a wet and messy job. Needless to say, I was fine with being a little chilly from my drafty lab while organizing supplies.
Around 5/5:30 P.M. we managed to complete the majority of our work for the day. Dinner included pork tenderloin, flavorless broccoli, saffron split garbanzo beans, and other items that I didn't touch. Most people here rave about the food. Dinner wasn't bad, but I certainly wasn't a fan of lunch. Who fries vegetable spring rolls anyway? Plus the zucchini was way overcooked. Oh well, maybe it was the new chef learning to cook with these stoves.
In terms of weather around here, it's quite erratic. I should be used to crazy weather changes from an entire lifetime in the Boston area, but Antarctica is a whole other story. Right now it remains around 30˚F, but the winds are crazy. This morning it started snowing. When I looked out the window, the snow in front of the LMG was blowing completely horizontally. Just slightly to the left through the other window, it was falling vertically. About 10 minutes after snowing pretty hard, it completely came to a stop. Then it started to hail. Then the winds stopped. Then it started to snow again. You get the picture. The weather is crazy here. Everything's also slicked over with a thin coating of ice. It's because during the day the snow can melt or be washed away from any rain storms, but at night it just freezes back up again.
In terms of scenery, two large icebergs blew into the inlet by the LMG and the station last night. They've stuck around and are still there today. Hopefully they'll get out of the way of the LMG so we can get our ship out there to fish. In terms of terrestrial, we're on a rocky surface, but, as I said earlier, it's slicked over with a thin layer of ice. There's also an inch of snow everywhere. We have a large glacier in the "backyard" of the station too. It's a nice sky blue color when there isn't any snow covering it. I also saw some fur seals through a window yesterday. They hopped out of the water in Hero Inlet to lie down on some rocks. Somebody else on station said that they saw a penguin waddling around outside the station, but I missed that.
Another thing before I go back to studying for my upcoming ecology and physics finals, I ate a piece of glacial ice last night. Well, it was put in my glass of water. It's the clearest ice you will ever see - not a single impurity present. It's because, over thousands of years, all of the impurities have been essentially pushed out due to the immense pressure of the glacier. Sometimes we see this ice floating around (we call it bar ice here), and we'll scoop it out of the water and bring it to a bucket outside of the bar. To me, it just tastes like any other form of ice. Apparently thinking that way is insulting to the glaciers though. I guess it's cool to say that I drank water from 2,000 years ago, so that's reason enough to choose bar ice scooped out of the Antarctic waters over regular ice you get from a fridge.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
First Day on Station
This morning we finally arrived at the station. Luckily, the past few days aboard the LMG have been pretty smooth. No sea sickness for me, but that could also be due to using some scopolamine patches throughout the trip. Apparently the smoothness of the Drake's seas were unusual. Today we've been doing back to back orientations and moving our things into our rooms. Because the woman I'm rooming with is also staying over for the winter season, we get to have the lead scientist room. It's significantly bigger than the other rooms around here, with the bottom bunk even being a double bed. For the first month I'm sleeping in the double bed so that I don't have to hit my head on the ceiling every morning. After majority of the station departs in mid-May, I'll try my best to get a single so that way we can both get bottom bunks. If not, top bunk it is.
I was supposed to go on a 36 hour fishing expedition starting Monday morning, but Urjeet spoke up for us and reminded our PI that we have to study for our finals that we are taking at station. New plan is to help set up our lab stations in the basement of my building (I'm birthing in the Bio building instead of the GWR building - GWR is the recreation building and Bio has labs and the galley) and study for my physics and ecology finals. I tried my best to study while on the ship, but unfortunately the Internet was so limited that I wasn't able to access Blackboard and truly study. I did learn to play some strategy board game called Catan, and I came close to winning once! Can't say I'm exactly great at that game though when compared to everybody else who was playing.
Tonight we had people who are staying on the LMG ship come over to the main station for dinner. Our chef made quite a few pizzas and bundt cakes for us all. Clean up is the responsibility of all people at the dinner. We each wash our own plates, and each week we have to sign up for "Gash." Gash is our post-dinner cleaning session where we help the cook clean up the entire kitchen. On top of Gash, every Saturday we draw from a bucket to see what we're cleaning. We also do mid-week cleanups for the labs, bathrooms, and labs.
Now I'm going to go with my roommate over to the GWR building to hang out at the theatre/bar with everybody else on station. Today's a pretty relaxed day since we all just got here. Tomorrow things should pick up with some work to be done. The real work won't happen until my PI and another group member comes back with some icefish and, hopefully, embryos. If no embryos then we're going to have to try to coax them into breeding.
I was supposed to go on a 36 hour fishing expedition starting Monday morning, but Urjeet spoke up for us and reminded our PI that we have to study for our finals that we are taking at station. New plan is to help set up our lab stations in the basement of my building (I'm birthing in the Bio building instead of the GWR building - GWR is the recreation building and Bio has labs and the galley) and study for my physics and ecology finals. I tried my best to study while on the ship, but unfortunately the Internet was so limited that I wasn't able to access Blackboard and truly study. I did learn to play some strategy board game called Catan, and I came close to winning once! Can't say I'm exactly great at that game though when compared to everybody else who was playing.
Tonight we had people who are staying on the LMG ship come over to the main station for dinner. Our chef made quite a few pizzas and bundt cakes for us all. Clean up is the responsibility of all people at the dinner. We each wash our own plates, and each week we have to sign up for "Gash." Gash is our post-dinner cleaning session where we help the cook clean up the entire kitchen. On top of Gash, every Saturday we draw from a bucket to see what we're cleaning. We also do mid-week cleanups for the labs, bathrooms, and labs.
Now I'm going to go with my roommate over to the GWR building to hang out at the theatre/bar with everybody else on station. Today's a pretty relaxed day since we all just got here. Tomorrow things should pick up with some work to be done. The real work won't happen until my PI and another group member comes back with some icefish and, hopefully, embryos. If no embryos then we're going to have to try to coax them into breeding.
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Layover in Santiago
After some stuffy and turbulent plane rides, I arrived in Santiago. Right now all of the different teams are meeting in the Palmer Agency office to get through customs with assistance from one of the agents. I met one person who is staying the winter with me (aside from the other researcher); everybody else is leaving after six weeks. He's the IT guy. He's going to check to see if Skype is permissible to use now, but he says Google+ hangouts are still okay. In about 20 minutes we have to go and check our luggage with LAN airlines. From there, we can go get lunch somewhere in the airport. Then I'm off for another 5 hour plane ride to Punta Arenas, with a short stop in Puerto Montt to refuel the aircraft. I don't have a converter, and my laptop's dying. Hopefully there will be stuff to do in Punta Arenas aside from Internet-related shenanigans. Or maybe I can find a converter somewhere.
Friday, April 4, 2014
Waiting at Miami Airport
Just recently arrived in Miami from Logan. Luckily my layover here isn't too long. Boarding should start in around 45 minutes. Even though I've now flown one of three flights with Dr. Detrich and Urjeet, it still really hasn't hit me yet that I'm leaving the United States for such a long period of time. It's been an interesting day though, to say the least. From being squished in a sweltering hot airplane to being tagged in a tweet by the president of Northeastern. Next stop is Santiago. There, we should be able to meet up with some of the other researchers who are going to Palmer for the first six months.
Deploying Today
Well, today's the day I leave. It still hasn't totally set in yet that I'm going to be on the other side of the globe for 6.5 months. Maybe when I'm boarding the plane it will start to feel more real. Last night I got to experience the joys of packing and charging electronics. Now I just have to keep running a list through my mind to make sure I got everything. Not exactly easy to get what you forgot when you're down there. I've also been trying to decide if I want to take my physics textbook with me. It's big and bulky, making it inconvenient to hold or put in a carry on. I have the online e-text, but I will be without any Internet connection until around this time next week. Maybe I should leave behind a few A Song of Ice and Fire books in favor of reading about magnetic flux and Ampere's law on the plane.
In terms of last minute preparations for today (aside from packing and deciding on if I really want to read about physical phenomena on a plane), I only have a couple of things left to do. Right now I'm running system scans on my laptop to make sure it's virus-free and safe to join a government network. After, I have to make sure that I have all of the PowerPoints from my classes downloaded to their folders so that I'll have access. Who knows how long it would take to download each one at the station. Better to be safe than sorry. Of course the most important of all is to enjoy my peanut butter while I still have it. I'm sure (or hoping?) that the station will have some jars down there, but who's to guarantee it's the kind I like? Peanut butter is serious business, you know.
In terms of last minute preparations for today (aside from packing and deciding on if I really want to read about physical phenomena on a plane), I only have a couple of things left to do. Right now I'm running system scans on my laptop to make sure it's virus-free and safe to join a government network. After, I have to make sure that I have all of the PowerPoints from my classes downloaded to their folders so that I'll have access. Who knows how long it would take to download each one at the station. Better to be safe than sorry. Of course the most important of all is to enjoy my peanut butter while I still have it. I'm sure (or hoping?) that the station will have some jars down there, but who's to guarantee it's the kind I like? Peanut butter is serious business, you know.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
FAQ
So over the months that I've been planning and preparing to leave I've gotten some repeat questions from people. I'm going to try to outline the ones that I remember best with my typical responses here so that everybody reading can be on the same page.
How cold is it down there? Isn't it -70˚F a lot?
Actually, since I'm going to be on an island in the peninsula, it shouldn't be that cold for me. I've been told by people in my lab that it often feels like a brutal Boston winter. Think this year's polar vortex days, just a little bit colder. If you go to the United State Antarctic Program (USAP)'s website, you can see the current conditions on Anvers Island (where Palmer Station is located). In recent days it's been about 34˚F. Keep in mind though that right now in the southern hemisphere they're in fall. It's only going to get colder from here.
How many people are usually down there at once?
During the summer seasons (Boston's winter months), Palmer station hosts about 40 people. In the winter though, that number is cut in half. When I'm at the station, I will be only one of two researchers. The rest of the people there will be personnel such as the station's chef and doctor.
What about polar bears?
Polar bears are at the North Pole, not the south. I'll see some penguins though! My friend/colleague who was at the station for last year's winter season told me that he really only saw 8 on the island though. He did get to see a seal give birth towards the end of winter when he was preparing to head back to Boston.
What do you do about laundry?
They have washers and dryers at the station. We're provided with a lot of our necessities such as detergent and bed sheets. It makes my packing a lot lighter this way :)
What happens if you run out of shampoo or toothpaste?
Believe it or not, there is a small gift shop/convenience store at the station. We can buy toiletries there if we run out of anything.
Well, at least you'll have Netflix to entertain yourself, right?
Unfortunately, no. Due to the limited bandwidth, we're not allowed to stream videos. It would probably take a few hours to buffer anyway.
So then what do you do for fun down there?
Lots of things considering the location! There's a wall full of DVDs, and there are plenty of books lying around. There's also a pool table/ping pong table and a bar. We have a gym, sauna, and hot tub. We can also go outside and do stuff too. I know my friend that I mentioned earlier liked to explore the island (within the, if I remember correctly, 1 mile radius we're allowed to explore with a buddy). You can go swimming in the ocean too...but not for long. Dive in, get out, and sprint to the hot tub.
How many hours a week do you think you'd be working?
At the very beginning of the season when we have more people at the station I'll probably be working 40-50 hours a week including weekends, or so I've been told. After that things should die down and just be more about maintaining what I already have been doing.
Why would you ever want to go to Antarctica?
Believe it or not, I thought that way freshman year when the topic was first brought up with me. Who would ever willingly go and live in the freezing cold where most of your days are darkness (due to the latitude of the location, the sun's rays won't be able to hit us for most hours of the day during winter)? They must be crazy! Well, maybe I'm a little bit crazy. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity (or in two Northeastern students' cases, twice in a lifetime) that I felt I would regret passing up later on in life. Besides the whole life experience bit, it will be an awesome learning experience. I've been with the Detrich lab since October of my freshman year of college. That's about 3 years of bench work. I think it would be fantastic to learn what it's like to work in the field. Our field experiments in our basic lab courses at NEU don't count. Right now I'm not planning to pursue a PhD, but this is still a valuable learning experience, and the skills that I'll acquire for this co-op will transfer to all sorts of different fields.
How long is the flight?
I've heard it to be estimated at about 24-26 hours including stops. My flight takes off from Logan airport at 5:45 on the 4th, and I arrive in Punta Arenas around 6:15-6:45 on the 5th.
When do you come back?
Obviously it's going to be dependent on the ship's schedule, but right now the Antarctic Support Contractor (ASC) booked my flights so that I would land at Logan at 10:45 A.M. on October 22nd. That means that I should be traveling and in Antarctica for about 6.5 months.
What about your finals and classes? How does leaving the semester early affect you?
I've worked it out with my professors to complete the assignments before I leave. I'm taking two finals (ecology and physics 2) at the station or on the ship. My developmental psychology final was a take home essay, so I just completed that early. All in all, I had to complete 2-3 physics homeworks early, take a quiz early, complete a physics lab early, turn in an ecology lab early, write the final draft of my grant proposal for ecology lab and turn that in before I leave, take a final early, and complete my ecology homeworks early. I also had to do some group projects in physics early, like designing a generator. Luckily I have an amazing group for ILS (interactive learning seminar; I'm in the engineering physics so it's where we do engineering problems and take weekly quizzes), and they were willing to get started on our simple magnet generator earlier than the other groups. The professors at Northeastern are really great and accommodating when it comes to these things. They're used to us students having all sorts of changes in our schedules. Since I planned out my weekends and homework schedules pretty well, I'm not anticipating that turning things in early will severely hinder my grades from being where I want them to be.
Can you Skype with people?
Nope. Skype does not meet the USAP's guidelines for privacy. Since I'll be at a government base and on a government network, we need higher security services. I'm not allowed to use Skype and risk the projects' goals. Some of the students in my lab told me that Google+ hangouts are allowed though. There's also Facebook messaging, iMessage, AIM (or maybe not since that's pretty much good as dead), and the phone. There's a satellite phone at the station, and we can use the station's regular line if need be. The research missions take precedent over personal calls though, so that's something to keep in mind. There's also email! And snail mail, but the ship will only come with mail once during my six months. That happens around June.
How cold is it down there? Isn't it -70˚F a lot?
Actually, since I'm going to be on an island in the peninsula, it shouldn't be that cold for me. I've been told by people in my lab that it often feels like a brutal Boston winter. Think this year's polar vortex days, just a little bit colder. If you go to the United State Antarctic Program (USAP)'s website, you can see the current conditions on Anvers Island (where Palmer Station is located). In recent days it's been about 34˚F. Keep in mind though that right now in the southern hemisphere they're in fall. It's only going to get colder from here.
How many people are usually down there at once?
During the summer seasons (Boston's winter months), Palmer station hosts about 40 people. In the winter though, that number is cut in half. When I'm at the station, I will be only one of two researchers. The rest of the people there will be personnel such as the station's chef and doctor.
What about polar bears?
Polar bears are at the North Pole, not the south. I'll see some penguins though! My friend/colleague who was at the station for last year's winter season told me that he really only saw 8 on the island though. He did get to see a seal give birth towards the end of winter when he was preparing to head back to Boston.
What do you do about laundry?
They have washers and dryers at the station. We're provided with a lot of our necessities such as detergent and bed sheets. It makes my packing a lot lighter this way :)
What happens if you run out of shampoo or toothpaste?
Believe it or not, there is a small gift shop/convenience store at the station. We can buy toiletries there if we run out of anything.
Well, at least you'll have Netflix to entertain yourself, right?
Unfortunately, no. Due to the limited bandwidth, we're not allowed to stream videos. It would probably take a few hours to buffer anyway.
So then what do you do for fun down there?
Lots of things considering the location! There's a wall full of DVDs, and there are plenty of books lying around. There's also a pool table/ping pong table and a bar. We have a gym, sauna, and hot tub. We can also go outside and do stuff too. I know my friend that I mentioned earlier liked to explore the island (within the, if I remember correctly, 1 mile radius we're allowed to explore with a buddy). You can go swimming in the ocean too...but not for long. Dive in, get out, and sprint to the hot tub.
How many hours a week do you think you'd be working?
At the very beginning of the season when we have more people at the station I'll probably be working 40-50 hours a week including weekends, or so I've been told. After that things should die down and just be more about maintaining what I already have been doing.
Why would you ever want to go to Antarctica?
Believe it or not, I thought that way freshman year when the topic was first brought up with me. Who would ever willingly go and live in the freezing cold where most of your days are darkness (due to the latitude of the location, the sun's rays won't be able to hit us for most hours of the day during winter)? They must be crazy! Well, maybe I'm a little bit crazy. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity (or in two Northeastern students' cases, twice in a lifetime) that I felt I would regret passing up later on in life. Besides the whole life experience bit, it will be an awesome learning experience. I've been with the Detrich lab since October of my freshman year of college. That's about 3 years of bench work. I think it would be fantastic to learn what it's like to work in the field. Our field experiments in our basic lab courses at NEU don't count. Right now I'm not planning to pursue a PhD, but this is still a valuable learning experience, and the skills that I'll acquire for this co-op will transfer to all sorts of different fields.
How long is the flight?
I've heard it to be estimated at about 24-26 hours including stops. My flight takes off from Logan airport at 5:45 on the 4th, and I arrive in Punta Arenas around 6:15-6:45 on the 5th.
When do you come back?
Obviously it's going to be dependent on the ship's schedule, but right now the Antarctic Support Contractor (ASC) booked my flights so that I would land at Logan at 10:45 A.M. on October 22nd. That means that I should be traveling and in Antarctica for about 6.5 months.
What about your finals and classes? How does leaving the semester early affect you?
I've worked it out with my professors to complete the assignments before I leave. I'm taking two finals (ecology and physics 2) at the station or on the ship. My developmental psychology final was a take home essay, so I just completed that early. All in all, I had to complete 2-3 physics homeworks early, take a quiz early, complete a physics lab early, turn in an ecology lab early, write the final draft of my grant proposal for ecology lab and turn that in before I leave, take a final early, and complete my ecology homeworks early. I also had to do some group projects in physics early, like designing a generator. Luckily I have an amazing group for ILS (interactive learning seminar; I'm in the engineering physics so it's where we do engineering problems and take weekly quizzes), and they were willing to get started on our simple magnet generator earlier than the other groups. The professors at Northeastern are really great and accommodating when it comes to these things. They're used to us students having all sorts of changes in our schedules. Since I planned out my weekends and homework schedules pretty well, I'm not anticipating that turning things in early will severely hinder my grades from being where I want them to be.
Can you Skype with people?
Nope. Skype does not meet the USAP's guidelines for privacy. Since I'll be at a government base and on a government network, we need higher security services. I'm not allowed to use Skype and risk the projects' goals. Some of the students in my lab told me that Google+ hangouts are allowed though. There's also Facebook messaging, iMessage, AIM (or maybe not since that's pretty much good as dead), and the phone. There's a satellite phone at the station, and we can use the station's regular line if need be. The research missions take precedent over personal calls though, so that's something to keep in mind. There's also email! And snail mail, but the ship will only come with mail once during my six months. That happens around June.
Just a few days before deployment! Here's an overview
I'm scheduled to leave the US on Friday, April 4th at 5:45 P.M. From Logan airport, I will fly to Miami, then to Santiago, Chile, then to Puerto Montt, Chile, and finally to Punta Arenas, Chile. I get to spend one evening (April 5th) in a hotel in Punta Arenas before I have to board the Laurence M. Gould research vessel the night of the 6th. On the 6th I'll be given all of my extreme cold weather (ECW) gear. From there, I set forth on a 4-7 day (depending on the weather) cruise across the Drake Passage to one of Antarctica's smaller bases, Palmer Station. Here are some cool links to see where the ship is located in its journey and the weather conditions at Palmer.
I've had a couple of people ask me today if the recent earthquake and tsunami warning in Chile will affect my flight plan. So far it appears that everything is still running with American Airlines for the 4th. Obviously, things can change as time goes on. Who knows what will happen with aftershocks and what not. In the meantime, I have to finish up all of my assignments before departure and make sure that I pack. American Airlines allots us each two checked bags, a carry on, and some kind of personal item like a purse. Here's hoping that I can make ~7 months of supplies and clothing plus the suitcases themselves be under 100lbs!
Next post I'll try to address to the best of my ability a lot of common questions that I've gotten since I first accepted the offer to co-op in Antarctica :)
I've had a couple of people ask me today if the recent earthquake and tsunami warning in Chile will affect my flight plan. So far it appears that everything is still running with American Airlines for the 4th. Obviously, things can change as time goes on. Who knows what will happen with aftershocks and what not. In the meantime, I have to finish up all of my assignments before departure and make sure that I pack. American Airlines allots us each two checked bags, a carry on, and some kind of personal item like a purse. Here's hoping that I can make ~7 months of supplies and clothing plus the suitcases themselves be under 100lbs!
Next post I'll try to address to the best of my ability a lot of common questions that I've gotten since I first accepted the offer to co-op in Antarctica :)
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