17 October, 1998

Gosh is the weather gorgeous here. Everyone is talking about what a nice day we have had here today. You can see Mt. Discovery bright and clear and it is 45 miles across the bay from where I am now sitting. You can even clearly see the Koettlietz glacier flowing out of the mountains. The sun is shining and there is no wind. The temperature got up to a whopping 30F. That is a beautiful McMurdo day. It seems funny to talk of 30 degree weather as being beautiful. It is however mid-Spring in Antarctica.

I don't have much exciting news to talk about today. I have worked all day in the lab on my research. What I did was anesthetize 15 fish and extracted 2 microliters of blood from each fish. Tomorrow I will do the same for 24 fish. I also injected thiourea a hormone that makes the fish hypothyroid (causes the fish to become low in the thyroid hormones). It is suspected that the thyroid hormones play a role in the regulation of salt in the fishes blood. I am trying to find out what that role is. Mixing the different required chemical mixtures, the blood extractions and the injections pretty much took all day. Tomorrow is more of the same. The is the drudge part of research but it has to be done. I will get more chances to head outdoors on Tuesday or Wednesday so stay tuned.

Bye for now.