Yesterday Matt, Summer, Tasha, David, Byron, Marci, and I flew back out the Dry Valleys for more field work. We're working on a few different projects, and I'm sampling mats at some new spots. The weather has been bad, so our flight was delayed until the evening. We saw more orcas on the way! They were swimming in the channel that the coast guard ice breaker ship created for the cargo vessel. When we arrived, Matt and I realized our sleep kits had been left outside, and they were covered in snow and soaked. Sooo... we got to break into the survival cache for dry gear. It felt pretty silly. During the first part of the day, we flew in the Astar helicopter (the best one with the best view) to Lake Hoare to sample some elevation transects. There are 3 plots at different elevations. Samples get processed for nematodes and various chemistry. We flew in the Astar again to get to the Lake Bonney area. There's a western and eastern lobe of the lake, it's a pretty big area. We saw Blood Falls which was awwwwesome! This is a real popular place for people to take photos. There are bacteria trapped underneath the glacier, and instead of using light for energy like plants that photosynthesize, they are chemoautotophic and extract iron from the rocks below. Iron oxides build up and flow out of the glacier with glacial melt water. Iron when exposed to oxygen creates the red color, like bl00d. Wormherder Creek is uphill from Lake Bonney, and there was a lot of flow this day. It's uncommon for it to be flowing this much apparently. I was able to sample some mats alongside it. We finished field work in the afternoon, and we decided to hike up onto Canada Glacier after getting back to Fryxell Camp. This is the same hike I did for several days with Jeb to sample algal mats around Canada Stream. We never hiked up onto the glacier though, so I was pretty stoked that we had a chance to last night.
0 Comments
Hellllllo, Sorry it’s been a while. Since coming back from the field originally, we’ve practically been living in the lab. Most days we start working around 8 am and finish around 9 or 10 pm. We’re back out in the field now for a couple days. I’ll post some photos and explain what we end up doing a little later. For now… this post is about a night out in McMurdo with Elmo… In my last post, I mentioned the coast guard “coasties”. They arrived, and the first night was coastie-okie at Gallagher’s Bar - karaoke when the coasties are in town! It was… interesting. The strangest part of the night happened after though. Matt and I were heading back to our dorms after coastie-okie, when we see a guy who works in the Galley (where we all eat, basically a cafeteria) that we had met a few weeks prior. He told us to wait for him to go get his costume. “What…?” He comes back dressed up as Elmo, says he’s going down to the coast guard ship to watch the drunk coasties walk back, pass out cookies in exchange for tickles, and that we should come with him. Of course we went. Side note: alcohol may or may not have been involved. You do the math. Anyways, he walks us to some bikes that we ride down the hill to the ship. The majority didn’t have pedals or seats. We find 3 that are good enough, and we start biking down the hill. Elmo and Matt realize they don’t have brakes so they’re just using their feet to slow themselves down. We ~casually~ and ~gracefully~ end up by the ship with a dude dressed as Elmo, cookies and maybe a beverage in hand. The coasties start down the hill, and most are really excited to see Elmo. One guy didn’t know what Elmo was, and said he was not interested in having a cookie from the Big Red Thing (expletives left out). We met a guy who works for the McMurdo fire department, and he yelled time updates to the coasties running down the hill. If they’re late for curfew, apparently they can’t leave the ship the next day. Pretty harsh since they’ve been stuck in the ship for weeks.
We hung out for a while, and I took a series of ridiculous videos. Sorry, they’re definitely not going on YouTube. So, life advice: if anyone says “wait for me while I get my costume”, you should probably wait. McMurdo is weird. Day 6 in the Field This day Matt and others from the wormherder group met Jeb and I at Many Glaciers Pond. It was about an hour and a half hike from our camp. Here, there's a project called P3 that has been happening for a couple years. It's a permafrost thaw experiment, where they're simulating thaw by adding hundreds of gallons of water to the soil. This alters the soil characteristics, which influences the nematode habitat suitability. Permafrost thaw is expected to increase with a changing climate. We sampled soil in set plots, and they will processed in the lab at McMurdo for nematode extraction & identification and also some soil characteristics like pH and conductivity. After sampling, we decided to take some awesome group photos... That afternoon we flew back to McMurdo, while Matt, Jeb, and Marci stayed behind to finish P3. The Coast Guard icebreaker ship comes in to McMurdo, breaking the ice so the cargo vessel can come in. I heard there's about 200 coast guards ("coasties"), so town gets pretty crowded for a week. Since coming back from the field, we've been staying busy with lab work. Not much exciting has happened! ~
|
AuthorSarah Power Categories
Archives
|