Successful sampling and Boats galore!

After yesterdays failed sampling trip we were determined to succeed in sampling today.  We were so lucky for the weather that we had today.  It was so clear and beautiful that we were able to see the Mountains in all of their glory.  Better than that our sampling went smoothly letting us soak up the sun and take in the sights.  While we were sampling at station E we saw the Clipper Adventurer entering the area from the Lemaire Channel.  The Clipper was due for tours of the station earlier today but had some better sights to see on their way.  We left E and while sampling at station B the 338 foot cruiser came by us with only three people out on deck watching their entrance to the harbor.  I don’t know, but they must have been serving drinks or lunch inside for so few to be out in the beautiful weather.  If I had paid $10,000 to get on a boat in Antarctica I would be stapled to the bow.  This makes four boats in the harbor right now, Amazing!  I had no idea that we would ever see anybody down here except for the scientists and staff.  I have to say that it is not bad to have people coming around asking questions about what we are doing and being truly interested in hearing about science that we are conducting.  It is also nice to see new faces and hear about the outside world.  The New York Times is not always the way to get information.

Our other guests are the Canadian vessel Sedna IV, the Chicago Vessel of two Onora and the Spirit of Sydney from Australia.  These boats are all sailboats.  The Onora and the Spirit of Sydney are family owned boats that are on fun trips while the Sedna’s trip may be fun their goal is to complete a documentary about climate change in Antarctica.  The crew that will be on this boat for the next year, during a winter over deployment, is the very same crew that filmed a documentary on climate change in the Arctic.  They have very kindly given the station a copy of the series; it is five DVD’s filmed in HD.  This series was on the Discovery channel.  Last night they visited us and gave us a wonderful overview of their early filming and a nice little talk from a scientist on board studying cold tolerance in Antarctic birds.  This was very nice and educational.  

The Onora crew joined us for this presentation making this gathering even more special.  Jim and Jean Foley have been circumnavigating the globe throughout their retired lives.  This is their second long trip lasting 1 year.  But 10 years ago they went on a 3 year tour of the world and traveled around the entire globe.  They are documenting their trips on a web site at www.foleysail.com .  We are all looking forward to seeing more of all of these people, we are talking about having them over for dinner tomorrow.  

Slammin Seas

At 7 o’clock this morning I thought I had had my great experience of the day when I stepped out of the bio lab front door and almost fell over an elephant seal.  He was very playful and cute but this very cool sight was greatly lessened by the awesome seas that we experienced today.  We could see this morning that the winds were going to make going out and sampling station E very interesting but we really had no idea what was really happening out there.  Let me explain this a little better.  The southern side of Anvers Island is where we are located.  We have no protection from the raw ocean.  There are some rocks here and there that help a little, but not enough to call protection.  So when we get a northerly wind it brings us open ocean built waves, we saw what this really means today.  So after two days of a steady wind and a low pressure system quickly approaching, we should have known better.  But the wind measured at the home station was only 13knots, so we headed out for our Thursday morning samples.  Just after we had made it out of hero bay the waves picked up to 3-4 feet and they were tight spaced.  By the time we made it out to the tip of Bonaparte pt. we were pretty well shaken.  We had determined that we would make it out to station E and determine the feasibility of sampling out there.  We motored on rising up and down in the swells which had grown to 5-6 feet.  The waves would twist the boat allowing waves to plow over the side of the boat burying Maria in water.  Every time we twisted I would correct to stop the flooding, eventually we were heading the wrong direction.  I looked down to check the GPS, not 2 seconds later the boats’ nose was in the air and we were falling off the backside of a huge wave.  We landed hard and the boat momentarily bent in half.  All of our equipment made an attempt to evacuate the boat, and we almost lost Ron and Maria over the side.  This was the turning point.  We were still more than a mile away from station E and we had been motoring along for 20 minutes.  Turning around in the waves that had built to 7-8 feet was a little hairy but we made it fine and we were on our way home, with the waves.  Lots of Fun!

RAD VAN

So it is the running joke here that “I live in a RAD VAN down by the Ocean”.  For those who don’t know why this is funny it is from a line in Chris Farley’s sketch about the “Inspirational Speaker”.  He tells kids how it is so important to be good and finish school or “You Will Be LIVING In a Van DOWN BY THE RIVER”. This is applied to me because I am always down in my radioisotope lab that is a cargo van converted into mobile lab space usually found on a Research Vessel but used here due to the lack of space available in the lab.  My Van is located at the end of the pier away from all personal interaction, and a place that is viewed as the place no one wants to be.  I have to tell you that I am so happy to finally have the chance to run some real experiments here, but I will be totally burned out soon.  

Today was extra boring, no sampling and no boating due to strong winds.  Boating is prohibited when winds reach above 25 knots and a good portion of today we had a steady 30 knots with gusts into the 40’s.  That is ok I had plenty of other tasks to tend to.  We are investigating a possible contaminant in our samples here.  In analyzing samples for DMS we are seeing production in the vials while they wait to be analyzed.  We still have yet to discover what is going on in these waters, and this is much more complicated now that we are having a heavy bloom period of phytoplankton.  

We have visitors staying here in Arthur Harbor for the next week or so.  They are a Canadian film crew here to film the daily happenings around the station and they will be trailing some of the science crews around here that are involved in animals and plant research.  No love for the chemists.  I can understand that it can be difficult but chemistry has the ability to define many things in great detail.  I will write more about this later.

The Photolysis Experiment

The photolysis experiment that I talked about the other day is used to measure photolysis of DMS while determining what bandwidth of solar radiation is causing the breakdown of DMS. What I mean by bandwidth is what range of sunlight is responsible for this. I built a black PVC box with separate cells within it that hold samples in continuously flowing fresh seawater under a cutoff filter. The cutoff filter only allows wavelengths of light above its cutoff through. We have cutoff filters at 290, 300, 320, 340, 360, 380, 400nm. From this array of filters we can determine which portion of the solar spectrum is causing photolysis. We are able to determine the strongest degradation by reaction tracing with 35S isotope. DMS labeled with a 35S isotope is added to the samples to determine what percentage of the sample is photolyzed.

I have not finished the analysis but when I am done I will give an idea on what we are observing here.