Heading South…way South

Our science has continued down south. As I write, I am steaming south,
away from Palmer Station and the rest of my crew. Seems strange to be
on the ship without them, but I wasn't able to transfer to Station
with the rest of my group. So, I am heading south with the LMG to
Stonington Island and a couple other islands for sample
collection…just not samples for us, but rather some other groups on
the ship.

More on this later, for now let's get you caught up…

We completed our five days of science on the LMG on February 25th. The
previous blog post summarized our first ~2.5 days on the ship. Lucky
for us, the final 2.5 days were a bit more smooth…no, not the swells,
but the equipment failures and frustrations. The ETs (electrical
technicians) on the ship worked hard to get the rosette working
again…and that they did. We were back in business. We sampled all
the sites we had planned and a couple extra. We had hoped to get back
into Flandres Bay at the end of the cruise for some additional high
spatial resolution sampling, but the weather didn't allow it…fog,
snow, and ice prevented us from going.

After a very successful cruise on the Gould, we headed back to Palmer
Station. The Gould would stay at Palmer for 4 days, giving our group
another chance to work together nearshore and the other science group
(Dr. Yu, LeHigh University) an opportunity to complete what they came
down to do…sampling peat from some of the nearby islands to better
understand the change in climate along the WAP.

Our group used this time to get a better handle on the end members of
our tracers…the source of water we hope to quantify. If we are to
quantify the amount of meltwater entering the coastal waters around
Anvers Island using natural tracers (radium isotopes, radon, etc.) we
need to know what the concentration of these tracers are in the
meltwater. So, we spent the last several days collecting glacial ice
from the toe of the glacier and water from streams draining out of the
bottom of the glacier (see pictures). It was cold work…the weather
seems to have taken a turn toward the 'winter'…check out the
picture of the group coming back to base on the zodiac. Seriously, we
had 20 knot winds, below freezing temperatures, snow, and sleet. It's
been quite a couple days…

So, the group will spend the next couple days doing another couple
surveys nearshore and clean and pack all the gear…we have A LOT of
gear that needs to be shipped back home. As I said, while they finish
up at Palmer, I am heading south on the Gould (see map; star represents
our first destination). Until then…