Sampling and Finishing Up Experiments

So, as I’m sure you gathered from later posts, our sampling adventure was successful.  We had no trouble with the CTD this go-round – but we did have some rough weather out at our farthest station.  The wind really picked up as we left, which has no effect when the water is covered in sea ice, but as it starts to break up…well…let’s just say the boat was a rockin’.

Somehow I survived the turbulence and didn’t get sick, though I felt pretty rough from not sleeping so much.  The most impressive feat of the trip was watching Dan avoid getting washed out of the ship while guarding the CTD and making sure none of the ice snapped the cable.  I have a nice video of the action that I’ll have to post later…

It started to snow on the way back in last night, and someone even got down on deck to make a snow angel!  No idea who the culprit was…but it was pretty neat to see.

If I didn’t mention it already, we sampled all through the night.  We arrived at the first station at about 10 PM, then the next at 3:30 AM, and then the next at around 9 AM.  This last station was one of my big experiments, so I worked basically nonstop until 9 PM, when I got the captain to meander a bit before arriving at the final station at midnight.  We headed straight into Palmer after sampling this last one so we’d make it by morning and the people on board could get some more rest.  I did the basic preliminary experiments but held off on some others because I was too tired to function.  I know this sounds awful – but this is pretty standard for a research cruise.  Sleep comes later.

I took the night off and planned out my experiments for tomorrow.  Hopefully we’ll be done in time for Palmer Station Trivia and a last evening at the bar, although tonight’s celebration was a lot of fun.  I’m definitely enjoying my time with the people here…it’s a shame it’s such a short visit.

Oh.  We also got a nice little sunset and a view of the mountains on the peninsula tonight.  :)