So just a quick update, since I have to go eat dinner in a few minutes...
We had almost a solid week of nice weather. It was the first week with an
average temp above freezing. A lot of the snow has finally started to melt,
though there is still plenty on the ground. To help it out, it has been
snowing all day so we have a nice layer of fresh powder.
This morning the weather was actually kind of nice. It was snowing, but
there was no wind and it was actually almost 40F outside. The snow was that
nice, dry, light fluffy stuff that just makes you want to start a battle by
pelting someone in the back of the head with a well crafted snowball (I've
been reading a lot of Calvin and Hobbes at breakfast...).
We also finished our perinatal captures officially the other day, so things
have finally slowed a little. However, we are just starting up our diets
analysis work, which will continue through the rest of the season.
Basically we collect 10 scat (that science for poop) samples each week,
sift through them, figure out what they've been eating, and measure and
analyze it for whatever we need. Often it involves mostly pulling out
carapices (again, science for shell) of krill, which are small shrimp like
creatures that feed pretty much everything in the ocean. They are very
small though, and have already passed through an animals digestive tract.
The common metaphor here is its like trying to find a 1/2 inch piece of
saranwrap that has been rolled up and throw into a pile of crap. You then
have to unroll it to measure it while taking great care not to rip it or
damage it, otherwise you get to start all over. Now do that 20 times per
scat. Basically it ends up taking about and hour to an hour and a half per
scat. Luckily we have 3 people working on them this year, usually its only
2. If you find fish bones, its a whole other level of figuring out the
species and how degraded the bone is (specifically we look for otolith
bones, which are unique to a species and can tell the age of the fish as
well). Its all very cool science once you (literally) sift out the
information.
Our Christmas plans will be similar to Thanksgiving. Smoking some turkeys,
eating lots of food, minimal working, but still working some. We are also
doing a small gift exchange. Unfortunately none of the returning people
remembered to tell us new people this happens so none of us came prepared
with gifts, so we had to get creative. The most common is to give "gift
certificates" for common camp chores, like dishes, slop bucket, etc. My
plan is to have a goody bag with a series of chores and people pick
randomly to see what they get. That way, I dont have to pick favorites and
I dont have to do the same chores over and over. I tried to be creative and
make something, but you (legally) cant take anything from Antarctica so
even if I was awesome and carved a bone I found (original idea), nobody
could take their present home with them. So I'm just being creatively
boring.
Finally, our latest SitRep should be coming out soon if its not out
already (https://swfsc.noaa.gov/contentblock.aspx?
id=13620&ParentMenuId=42). It should feature a photo of yours truely having
just shovelled out a trench halfway through Antarctica to expose our long-
buried path to the shop and generator. We might get to send a photo out for
Christmas, so I will try to post something here, otherwise it will go to my
parents and they can distribute it accordingly (if we even get that
bandwidth increase for a day).
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