7 April, 2003

Slow Day On Diomede

A slow day can be a welcome, although rare, time for researchers in the field. Today was one of those days for us here on Diomede. I woke up to a chilly 6 degrees F, sunny morning with low-level fog which lifted by noon.

Our team has shrunk to three members with only Lee, Jim and I remaining. Lou left on Saturday and Vince departed from the island today. With most of the heavy work completed Lee decided that there was no need for five people to stay. Another member of the team, Gay Sheffield of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, will arrive this Friday.

This morning we were able to get our live TEA broadcast out. Last weeks broadcast was postponed due to an ice storm in Wisconsin, the home of our server. After a thirty-minute delay due to technical difficulties at my school we were able conduct the broadcast without incident. I want to express a sincere thank you to Arlyn, our facilitator and organizer of the broadcast, to Steve for setting up the connections and to Sally for coordinating the broadcast from my school. Our next broadcast is tentatively scheduled for April 15 at 2:00 CDT.

After the broadcast and lunch we traveled out on the ice about 450 feet from the science shack in order to pull up the water pump and check on it. We were also curious to see if ice was beginning to close up the hole. Upon removing the pump we inadvertently allowed too much air into the line and the air bubble caused the pump to stall and reverse flow. This caused a valve to blow pressurized air through the line causing the water to boil and bubble through the hole in the ice.

The pump was quickly shut down and restarted to correct the problem.

It looks as though it is go to be a relatively slow couple of days until Gay Sheffield arrives and I will be working with her on another component of the project. At some point this week I will be working with the students and teachers explaining our project and introducing them to Project WILD, Project Learning Tree and Project WET.

For the remainder of the week I will be posting journals very other day (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) instead of daily.

Checking on the seawater pump.