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.