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.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
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.
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