23 April, 2003

Winter Wonderland!

It's been snowing constantly for about 4-5 days now. Everything is beginning to get covered in a beautiful white blanket for the winter. I could sit in front of the window all day and just watch it snow. I love my tending times when I actually have to be out in it. I've started adding another layer of clothing when I go out just to be sure I'm protected from the weather. My hands have started to get cold while the divers are down and I'm just sitting in the boat inactive while watching for their bubbles. Since my hands are constantly getting wet, I've started changing gloves several times now, but I think I'll try some of the hot hands packs. They are little packages that fit into the palm of your hand. You break the material inside, not the package, and the substance keeps your hands warm. Some of the divers use them to keep their hands warm underwater. Many people who hunt and enjoy outdoor winter sports use them. I think that will help solve the hands problem.

Boating II

I was informed early yesterday morning that I had had a crash course in Boating II and that I officially needed to take the class. All right with me. I love getting out on the water! Some of the other scientists here at Palmer were also taking the class. We were out for about 3 hours and had a blast! We toured all of the islands. There is a map of the local boating limit area in the April 20 journal entry. The seas were rough, the waves high, the spray fierce, wind, snow, and ice! Whew! What a trip! I told the boating coordinator, Stian, that I wanted to do Boating II again! We each had to start the engine and steer for a while. I did very well. I couldn't see a thing while I was driving! My glasses were all fogged up and covered with snow and ice, but I had two navigators up front, Jeff and Steve, who pointed me in the right direction. Stian kept throwing dry bags over the side and yelling, "Man overboard!" We had to slow the engine down and go pick up our "victim."

Experiment gone awry

I set up one of the amphipod experiments last night and was going to take it down this morning. It seemed like the perfect idea because even setting up the experiment at 4 AM, the amphipods were not eating enough to measure any results until 17 hours later, which made for a long day. So, we decided to experiment with the experiment. Instead of setting it up early in the morning and taking it down overnight, we set it up around 6:30 PM, to take it down around 8 AM the next morning. It didn't work. We had to throw the experiment out because the amphipods had eaten so much, there weren't enough of the pellets to measure any results!

This is a picture of what the pellets look like when the amphipod experiment is taken down. They are much smaller. Some are smaller than others because those are the pellets the amphipods like most and ate more of than the other pellets. The scientists take a picture of the pellets when they take the experiement down in order to compare/contrast the differences in the pellets. This gives them more data to record. They also use these pictures when they are giving lectures as a visual to what the pellets looked like before the experiement began and what they look like when the experienment is taken down.