28 October, 1998

Hi again. After last night I thought I would be zonked. I was up and started the day at 9:00 am. I was a little slow getting started after getting in so late last night but it did not take me long to get into the routine. Today was lab day. I extracted blood from the fish and injected hormones back into them. That took up most of the day. I am getting faster at getting things accomplished.

This evening I went to a lecture by Dr. Art DeVries. He is considered the guru of Antarctic fish. He has been here studying them since the 1970's. According to Dr. DeVries the fish here are unlike any other fish in the world in that the concentration of salts and anti-freeze like chemicals in the blood is twice the concentration of fish anywhere else in the world. I do not know if I wrote this earlier but Antarctic fish can live in waters as cold as -2 Celcius and as warm as 6 Celcius. They cannot live anywhere else in the world because of this. There is an area around Antarctica called the Antarctic Convergence Zone that marks the limit of these fish. The lecture was extremely interesting. Something else I found out about the research going on here. The National Science Foundation funds research that is none medical related. The research NSF funds is basically to gather science for science sake. What others do with the results of the research is where the benefit comes to mankind. Pure research simply for knowledge is as important as research that is looking for some immediate benefit. Most of what goes on in Antarctica is knowledge for knowledge sake. That does not mean it will not benefit mankind in some way because it will. That will come by others applying what is learned down here.

Another day has come to a close. Tomorrow we head out on a helicopter quest looking for fish so I hope to have more adventures tomorrow. See you then.