Palmer Station - A new adventure

As our friends and colleagues head back to Punta Arenas, four of us remain at Palmer Station.  It has been a very busy 3 days since we arrived.  We spent the first day and a half being oriented to the facility…safety concerns, meal hours, cleaning, boating, etc.  We are about as isolated from the world as you can imagine…so, safety is f the utmost concern.  If you hurt yourself here, you are a long way from a hospital…so that should always be in the back of one's mind while working here.

 

So, with some great training by the staff here, we started our first sampling near Palmer Station yesterday afternoon.  We continued that this morning…working out some problems with sampling gear and space in the relatively small Zodiacs.

 

Over the next several posts I hope to "orient" you to Palmer Station…sort of a day in the life, so stay tuned…

 

I thought I would share with you a few photos from our field day today…beyond the scientific samples we took today; it was quite a day to snap a few pictures of the local wildlife. We saw humpback whales feeding on krill, seals lazing around on the shore, penguins swimming swiftly through the water, and birds everywhere…what a day for the animal enthusiast.

 

DRCorbett