Zodiacin'

Today we had the chance to get out in the water with one of the zodiacs.  This was an attempt to see if we could get some viable samples while the ice was still packed in the bay.  Hugh, Fen, Niki, and I ventured out in the bacteria zodiac, carrying the call sign “this ice sucks”, to try and get a couple depth samples and a surface sample.  We pushed through the pancake ice moving huge sheets from side to side until we finally made it into a clear section to dip our sample tubes.  I took a video of exactly how everything works to give an idea to you at home what it is that we are actually doing here.  After sampling we started pushing our way back starting to realize that we could not see the path that we took to get ourselves out here.  Hugh said slowly in his low tone voice “This is not goooood…”.  Not a minute later he had us stuck on top of a huge piece of pancake ice.  See, Hugh has this slow way of going through the ice, getting stuck periodically and then just gunning it to get free.  Not this time!  We did everything we could from chopping ice with ores to pushing with one leg out on the ice and the other trying to keep us safe.  That is when the girl in the boat took control and gunned the motor back and forth until we were free.  Goes to show that these men have no game over the young girls here.  Shame shame shame….  Why didn’t I step in?  It’s not my boat baby.

Today started quite crazy like. We came into Palmer on the Friday of last week that was seven days ago and the ice was still here (check out photos at my gallery). That evening while the Gould was at the dock, and we were still staying on the boat, the wind picked up from the north and started blowing the ice out to sea. The next morning started to show more water and sparse ice, by the end of the day the ice had almost fully retreated, and by the next day all was clear. Now the bay remained clear for two days and yesterday all was calm and the ice rolled back in slowly but surely. This is not a good sign. Our science relies on cleared ice so we can traverse out to our stations, some of which are two miles away. So I woke up this morning and saw the ice is packed in even tighter. Now we are all hoping for a good sized storm. Today is my brothers birthday. Happy Birthday Geoff!

We have been setting up all of our equipment, organizing the lab and checking our methods to smooth out any issues over the last six days. This was all in preparation for gathering samples from two predetermined stations here outside of Anvers Island. After all of this preparation we are still not ready to go. Working 14hrs a day should be plenty of time to get things running, right? Well not when you are setting up for 10 primary investigators (PI's). Ya, there are 10 head scientists in on this project. Well there are only three of us here, Two SUNY-ESFer's Kerry McElroy and My self. And one other PI, Paty Matrai from Bigalow Labs in Boothbay Harbor ME. Just the three of us and too much work to be done by ten PI's and all of their workers (three a peice). This means that the three of us are going to be doing the work of 30-40 scientists. In this case we will be doing all of the experiments that all 40 scientists would have been doing, had they been here, but we will not collect samples everyday. We are setting up to sample twice a week, still too much for the amount of studies to be done, and we will be spreading the analysis out over the week. We will see how it goes. I will be keeping up on this from now on. Chat later.

Well, We are here and things are starting to finally get set up. Palmer station is one of the coolest places I have ever been. I don't have enough time to fill you in completely but I also didn't want anyone to think I had forgotten this Blog. I will be getting everyone up to speed in the next couple days. Mean time I have taken some mental break time to hike the glacier and even snowboard down it. Cheers!