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...).
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