14 April, 2003

This morning promptly at 8AM the ship radioed in to say they were a mile from Bonaparte Point and to be on the lookout for her. Sure enough, just a second or two later, you could see the ship rounding the bend. I took a series of photos of the ship arriving and docking. They are attached to today's journal.

Bonaparte Point is on an inlet right across the water from the station on Anvers Island. It is named for Prince Roland Bonaparte, the president of the Geographical Society of Paris during the 1903-1905 Antarctic Expedition.

Team meeting at 8AM. I was assigned to the lab to learn a new procedure using amphipods. They are tiny crustaceans. We are doing similar bioassays with amphipods that we are doing with the sea stars. Algae are divided into 3 sections. The first one is the holdfast, similar to a root system, which fastens or attaches the algae to the substrate. The second part is the primary or main stem. The third part is the lateral branches. We want to determine which section of the algae the amphipods prefer to feed upon.

This afternoon I cleaned the amphipods out of today's seawater backwash.

Chris Vetry is the Network Administrator at Palmer Station. In other words, Chris is the computer tech. Chris got my computer set up and running when I got here. It's a good thing his office is next to mine- I run to him constantly with tech questions and problems! Meet my new best friend!

Here I am at my workstation at Palmer writing journal entries.

The ship has cleared Bonaparte Point.

Straightening up and headed to the dock.

The ship is coming at us.

Getting closer.

The ship backs up to the dock.

The ship is in!

The Laurence M. Gould is coming around Bonaparte Point. The tops of the containers on the station dock are in the foreground.

The ship backs in since the dock is on an inlet. This prevents it from having to back out when it departs.