1 November, 1998

I slept in this morning until 9:45! I still had that killer of a headache but gradually got rid of it by drinking tons of water. It's amazing how much water your body needs here.

Nina and I had brunch at 10:15, and then we both went over to Crary Lab to talk to our team about the jobs that need to be done for our hopeful departure to the Dry Valleys on Tuesday.

Nina spent the day cleaning sample bottles with water, then acid. We have to make sure that our samples are not contaminated with something that may have already been in the bottles.

I talked with Chris about my research project and laid out my plan of attack. One of my main responsibilities will be to map out 10 x 10 m sections on the lake surfaces, separate into smaller grids, map out the sediment covers on the ice, collect random sediment samples in each grid, sieve them for different sizes, weigh them, bag them up for CHN (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen) analysis, and send them back to McMurdo for analysis. Another of my responsibilities will be to collect sediment samples from inside the ice and from sediment bottles that I will lower down into the water column beneath the ice. The purpose of this is to get an idea of: 1) the carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen distribution in the sediment, ice, and water column, 2) what might the small microbes be using as they live in and around the sediment, and 3) how microbe life varies with the amount of sediment available. Small microbial life (algae, cyanobacteria) have been found in the ice, parcticularly around sediment clumps. When the ice melts, these organisms can photosynthesize and grow. Why do they do this, and where do they get their sources of energy? This is life in extreme environments...Jupiter has a moon, Europa, with a frozen surface. Could life be found there also? These are all questions we are trying to answer...

My task today was to catch up on e-mail and my journal entries. I spent the majority of the afternoon doing so.

Since I'm not able to put as many pictures on my journal as I was able to in Christchurch, I'm going to give you another web site address to look at. Ben Hasse, a Boy Scout chosen to come down to Antarctica to visit various teams, is a junior at Purdue University and took my pictures of Happy Camper School to use on his web site. Therefore, you can visit his web site and see more of my pictures on his Oct. 30-31 journal (http://expert.cc.purdue.edu/bjhasse/antarctica.htm).

It's 10:00 pm here and still as bright out as this afternoon. It really throws you off...I didn't realize it was so late. Until tomorrow...

Nina spending the day washing sample bottles for the field

Jim Raymond (part of our team), pouring concentrated HCl under a fume hood. Note that he has his eyes covered! If he were not wearing glasses, he could damage his eyes severely with the acid.