Declining sea ice in the West Antarctic Peninsula

Adelie penguins depend on sea ice for their breeding grounds. Their numbers are now declining due to warming of the West Antarctic Peninsula and receding sea ice.

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/the_warming_of_antarctica_a_citadel_of_ice_begins_to_melt/2342/

Departing Soon!

Quick update:

- I am Physically Qualified for Antarctica (blood tests, physical, dental, etc)

- We have our dogs tags for our luggage (see picture)

- I got my plane ticket!

- All our science gear has already arrived in Punta Arenas, Chile.

We will be on our way at the end of December. I will post as many updates as I can while I am down there so keep following this blog and share with your friends :)

King crabs in Palmer Deep, Antarctica

Dr. Craig Smith, a scientist I met during my May 2011 trip to Palmer, talks about the movement of crabs to Palmer, Antarctica. Warmer waters have carried the crabs to habitats normally too cold for them. The polar ecosystem is changing very quickly and soon species from warmer climates may be commonplace...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14803840

Next date for Palmer

We have our new date set for Palmer Station! We leave December 30 2011, tentatively.

I already got my dental exam done, next the medical and blood tests need to be done- once per year or 6 months for most things. Fun, fun.

Astrobiology: Wearing Academic Beer Goggles

By Mrina Nikrad

“I am interested in Astrobiology”. When they hear that phrase, some people look amused, like I was trying to be funny. Others look at me like I’m crazy, a poor misled student with big goals and a disturbed mind (soon to become an even more disturbed scientist using tax dollars). Sure, astrobiology sounds as far out as E.T., more like science fiction than science progress. However, scientists in universities all over the world are working on some aspect of astrobiology. The words some aspect are the keys in that sentence. Before we get any further, let me define what astrobiology is and what all it encompasses.

Astrobiology is also known as exobiology. The main goal of this discipline is to explore the possibility of life on other planets, how life evolved on our planet or other space bodies, whether humans might be able to reach and colonize other planets, and whether terrestrial life can be sustained on other planets. If you think about it, this is a really involved field that requires knowledge about astronomy, chemistry, biology, evolution, statistics, genetics, mathematics, engineering, space flight, and… the list could go on forever. So really, most scientists are studying something that could be applied to the field of astrobiology.

I can almost see most people’s eyes gloss over at the mention of things like “chemistry” and “statistics”. In fact I think my eyes glossed over a little, so maybe I’m just projecting. The thing is, taken separately, these fields are not all that interesting to me. I don’t really care about chemistry… but when I think of astrobiology, the likelihood that statistically there has got to be life on some other planets, suddenly all these disciplines (even chemistry) seem a lot more interesting. Suddenly, I want to know what kind of biology could possibly survive in the nooks and crannies of space, what kind of space ship would I need to get to it, how did it evolve? It’s the equivalent of wearing academic beer goggles. Everything looks a lot more exciting to me when viewed through the lens of astrobiology.

Speculating further about life on other planets, astrobiologists admit that it probably won’t be little green men. We are most likely to find microbial life hidden in subterranean permafrost or thriving near hot vents of a vast alien ocean. Mars has plenty of permafrost and used to be like Earth once. No reason it couldn’t harbor life. Europa is known to have a vast ocean covered with ice; it even has thermal energy to keep that water in liquid form. Not a bad start for a planetoid. Titan has geysers and pools of liquid organic materials, prime environment for a primordial soup. Saturn and Jupiter are massive, who is to say that life couldn’t exist in a small pocket somewhere? The appeal of astrobiology is not in finding E.T. (although that is pretty sexy), but in just being open to the possibilities and allowing the mind to stretch far and be adventurous.

Sunset in the Neumayer channel

Beautiful!!

Farewell Palmer

We said goodbye to all the wonderful people on station today. About 15 people are staying behind to maintain and fix up the station over winter. There won't be another boat coming to the station until August, that will bring more people. However, the winter people won't be leaving until September. We are on the ship saying goodbye in this picture.

We are currently on the ship and we just left the Neumayer channel and entered the Gerlache strait. I have lots of GREAT pictures - they can only begin to touch the beauty I've seen going through this area. We got to experience a sunrise and a sunset a few hours apart. I will be adding more pictures when I can.
A lovely picture of the mountains. Too bad the color of my laptop screen is screwed up (it's completely green) and I can't see the pretty colors right now. So I don't really know which pictures to upload.

Sampling and crabs

On our Monday sampling trip we dodged sea/brash ice. In a little rubber boat even the littlest bit of solid ice hit at slow speed can puncture the boat so Mindy drove very slowly. It was a great day!
On Monday, Mindy (the science coordinator) and I went sampling water together. She drove the boat through very low visibility and snow stormy weather. The surface of the water was relatively calm though and we even saw a leopard seal! They are graceful lovely animals that glide through the water, but they do freak me out a little since they are powerful predators. It lost interest in us before I could get a picture.
CRABS! Spider crabs that one of the groups caught on their way through the fjords. Don't they look... spidery? They certainly are not for eating...
They have a wood stove in the dining room/lounge area in the Bio building and on cold(er) days the fire is blazing all day. On the left is a very good friend of mine, Diane Curran. She is one of the chef's here and I met her in summer (January 2011). I described her in more detail in my previous blog. On the right are Jeff and Paula, two people studying icefish. Yes, they are holding up raunchy magazines which Palmer station sadly subscribes to. Argh.

It's been an interesting week here at Palmer! I took a picture of our lab here all set up with sampling bottles and filtering equipment.

Daily Life at Palmer Station

I decided to do a more general blog about life at Palmer. I uploaded a few more pictures but they are all organized messily and out of order- just a warning. It's been interesting being at Palmer when the weather is bad. It's been raining or wildly windy (35+ knots) nearly everyday. The days are also shorter and boating hours are even shorter.




Since Palmer is on an island, scientists use Zodiac rubber boats to get around (see the pic). The big orange boat is the Gould which brings us down here, the little rubber boats are what we use for sampling. Since it's fall/winter the boating hours are only during the few hours of light we get- now that is from 10:45 am to 1:45 pm. Very short amount of time to do science and collect samples. In one of the pictures you can see the fish people catching fish they are studying from tanks.

We also had trivia night in the bar one night. It was fun! The whole station joined in. I didn't know a single answer but boy was it a good time.

We also have a ping pong table which is often used for recreation. See the above pics. Today was a windy day outside, so very loud. Inside it's nice and cozy by the wood stove which has been stoked all day by various people. I did a water color painting of a fairy with some watercolor paints and paper that I found on the station. They have a place called SKUA which has a ton of recreational and art/craft equipment. Anybody on station is allowed to use it and replace it when they are done. Glad I found those paints! I am going to leave the painting here for the winter over crew.

Palmer Update

So I admit it's really hard to update this blog on a normal basis, but it's even harder when I have had so many health issues! When I got to Palmer I had an annoying cough that refused to go away. Then a week in, I got a cold before my cough had healed. It's gotten in the way of me sampling, of 5 or 6 samplings I have only been out 3 times.

Also when I got to Palmer I was on antibiotics for a lymph node infection in my neck. Yeah, in my NECK. Well that went away but I got another infection under my arm. Not sure how, but it happened. So when I got here I asked the doc what I could do. He prescribed another round of a different antibiotic but even after 10 days of those, twice a day, the infection was bigger not smaller. He took one look at it and said we need to cut it out. So I had surgery in Antarctica!

Good thing the physician here is actually a capable surgeon unlike the physician in the summer who was a general practitioner. I am so glad he was here but it was painful. He had to keep the wound open so the infection could drain completely and it could heal from the inside out. Everyday for 3 days he had to clean the wound out with H2O2 and stuff (yes, stuff) dressing into the opening. It's been painful, bloody, and kinda gory. But it's healing :) It's amazing how quickly the human body heals.

I have a picture of the wound but it's pretty gory so I won't post it.

Although I have not been able to use my arm much for a few days (and therefore couldn't go sampling) I've still done my experiments in the lab. Right now we have a bit of a break since the third person from our team is gone on the boat for 3 days into the fjords and I am still unable to sample, which I feel guilty about. But what can I do except heal and not rip the healing flesh? I am sure in a couple of days I will be good to go.

The science has been going relatively well despite all this. We have sampled one of our sites 5 times and then other one 4 times. If we can get both one more time that would be great. I also want to do a brash ice experiment but who knows when that will happen...

In other news, I have also helped cook some Indian food at Palmer. Every Tuesday is Indian food night because people love Indian food! Curry is one of the most demanded things here. I love being in the kitchen, it's therapeutic and rewarding.

Let's get the science on

After 7 miserable unstable days lying mostly supine on the boat, we finally reached Palmer station today. Technically this boat ride should only be 4 days, but there was a massive storm in the already treacherous Drake passage, and we ended up waiting for two full days at the tip of South America for the storm to subside. Having the top bunk while the ship was rocking was a bit of an adventure, but we made it.

Time to get the science on! We got well underway setting up the lab and will be emptying 10 more boxes tomorrow. The weather here is great, people are great, food is brilliant, and even better than I can eat it again :D It's going to be a productive month!

Anxious rambling the day of

The morning of our departure is upon us. Palmer is going to be totally new and exciting in fall, can't wait to see what it will be like. Sure the winds are higher and may inhibit some of our sampling trips, but I think in all we have 5 weeks down there and should be able to do some good science.

I always get anxious before big trips and can't sleep once I wake. Got this nagging feeling that I might forget to pack something! Judging from my one large not-so-full suitcase and a smaller carryon- I feel like I have packed light for this trip... Oh well, it's not like I ever remember what I forgot until it's too late.

Luckily Raytheon is always very civilized and doesn't schedule our flights for 6 am, in which case we would have to be at the airport at 4, and wake at 1-2am to make it. Our flight out of Philly will be 4:30pm. Very civilized. Hopefully our transition through Atlanta won't be stormy!

We also have a 6 hr layover once we get to Santiago. Normally that would annoy me, twiddling my thumbs in an airport instead of reaching my destination, but Raytheon has a link with the Chilean government to facilitate all the needs of their USAP (United States Antarctic Program) participants. This link is a company called Agunsa. They have a very nice office in the Santiago airport and after we clear customs, there are a couple of couches to crash on. Which after 24 hrs of no sleep will be welcome!

There is yet a more important reason why we have a 6hr layover- there is only one flight a day from Santiago to Punta Arenas. After all, who would be crazy enough to go to Punta Arenas in winter?! Oh... I am going to take a good look at the scientists crashed around me in the Agunsa office...

There and back again, a grad student's tale!

It is time to go back to Palmer Station!

In January 2011 I had my very first trip to Palmer Station, Antarctica. We collected samples for summer season during that month. We have only been home for 2.5 months and now it's time for our second trip. This time it will be fall/winter! Last time it was continuous sunlight (twilight after 11:30pm). This time it will be dark most hours of the day and twilight during the day. However, Palmer is not as far south as the South Pole by any means. As the title of this blog states, it's the lowest latitude station, meaning it's farther noth, than any of the other US Antarctic bases. Thus, making it not quite as cold or dark in winter. I guess we'll see when I get there!

We are leaving in 2 weeks... theoretically. Raytheon still hasn't gotten us our plane tickets, though I am certain they have everything under control. They do this all the time after all!

I will be a lot busier this time (I still have to complete all the work for my ongoing Microbial Physiology class, which I am loving btw) as well as continue writing a paper. However, this time a friend of mine, Jill, currently an assistant professor at Dartmouth College, is coming with us. It'll be a blast! I will try to keep it all up to date...

A bigger picture perspective- explained

I learned several things from my experience at Palmer Station.

The first is regarding "big picture perspective".

Let me explain what this means. Before my trip, I had studied for my comprehensive exam quite comprehensively. I had proposed to do research in the west Antarctic Peninsula region and I understood that the climate was changing rapidly in that area. I knew ice cover every winter was less on the ocean's surface due to warming of air temperature, I knew that glaciers were receding, I knew that the Adelie penguin numbers were declining (they need sea ice to raise young), and that Chinstrap and Gentoo penguins were taking over.

I knew all of this, from 2-dimensional images in a textbook.

At Palmer I saw the receding glacier first hand. The start of the glacier is now well behind (500 meters) where it used to be in 1990. That is a huge melt down! Not to mention some of the older researchers who have been coming to Palmer every year for more than a decade, showed us pictures of the islands around Palmer in the late 90's. The islands are completely covered in snow and ice and when I visited, were only rock! To see that kind of decline in a decade is crazy.

There was also another group studying penguins, all 3 types found in the region. They would go out everyday at 6am, bag and weigh and tag the penguins, sometimes returning at midnight to end their day. Over the course of several years, their research has shown how much the Adelie population has decreased.

I was also very close with the Buggers, a group of wonderful people from Ohio who were studying Antarctica's largest year-round land animal. The Belgica antarctica, a wingless fly, at a whopping 5mm long, it lives, breeds, eats and died on land. The changes in seasons, longer warmer summers and slightly warmer winters have changed the lifecycle (larvae, adult, hibernation) stages of this fly.

The virus group, some of the first scientists to ever study viruses in cold marine ecosystems. They hadn't been there decades, but I can't wait to see what the next decade of their research is going to tell us!

Not only was all this great research going on, but I learned how intimately the entire ecosystem is tied together through these various organisms. To study the penguin activities, the REMUS and glider (autonomous underwater vehicles) scientists followed the penguins and gathered environmental data. They could see where the krill populations were and how the penguins were swimming in those areas (penguins eat krill).

The REMUS could see high levels of chlorophyll or particulate matter and tie that into the marine ecology. Where there are high levels of chlorophyll, there is usually higher heterotrophic bacterial activity (the bacteria we study)! High chlorophyll could also lead to higher zooplankton and higher krill, and thus more food for penguins.

This "big picture perspective" was awesome. We were able to discuss all our ideas in a much larger context than normal. We were also able to set up some future collaborations so that we could all benefit from a larger picture. All in all it's been a great trip and I have come home much more intellectually revived than after studying textbooks for my exam! It's nice to have a first-hand refreshed context of my work :)

Late Update

I accidentally posted this update to the wrong blog. I wrote it before leaving Palmer and now I'm already home. Nonetheless here it is:

I haven't been very good at updating this blog! But I am not too sorry about that. It's been a great time here at Palmer and it's already time to leave. I'm pretty sad because I've loved being down here. The people are great, the experiences wonderful, the opportunities once-in-a-lifetime. We have sampled 7 times and gotten tons of work done. We've also had time to hang out with the people and I think (I hope) that I have made friends for life in the short time I have been here. Here are some parting pics.

Quality time in the radiation lab

So the radiation lab (or rad-lab as we fondly call it), is where I spend most of my time doing experiments. I incubate seawater with different radioactive organic carbon compounds for 4 hours in either light or dark conditions. Then I filter all the water onto filters designed to capture bacteria. I can then take these home to do microscopy later. See picture of me looking official...

Today is a slow day. The morning was busy with Indian food, however the wind has picked up to 25 knots outside. When the wind reaches 20 knots, the Zodiacs are not allowed to go out sampling and any groups out sampling must return to station. Just walking from building to building has become difficult (though not impossible yet). But the birds are definitely having trouble flying against the wind.

1 knot = 1.15 mph so 25 knots is 28.75 mph. It doesn't sound like a lot until you're on a tiny rubber boat on the ocean and it's tossing about on all the white waves. It's getting worse, but hopefully it won't last more than a day more!

A respite from science... to Indian cuisine!

So one of the chefs and I had a great idea of doing Indian food for one meal at Palmer station. We planned a menu (wait till you hear what it is) and I have spent 6 hours the last couple of days helping her in the kitchen. The Indian food was a major success! Everyone loved it and was so shocked that I made several dishes of the meal. We had the following menu:

- Samosas (potatoes, peas, veggies baked in a puff pastry. See pic below.)

- Tandoori chicken

- Butter chicken

- Tandoori seitan (for vegetarians)

- Butter seitan

- Basmati rice with turmeric

- Curried Lamb

- Curried Lentils

- Cucumber yogurt sauce

- Garlic butter naan

We also had plain lentils and chicken for people with "delicate palates". Hehehe, everyone loved it and now we're all fat and fed with Indian food. Plus it made the whole station smell like mommy's house :) I love Palmer! And I LOVE Indian food.

A fleet of sailing ships and outreach

Palmer is a unique station in that sometimes cruise ships or sailing yachts come into port and stick around for a couple of days. These ships come from all over the world and if the group on them is small enough, they will be allowed to visit our station and sometimes even have lunch with us. Today we had a French yacht parked off station and the French people got to share our meal. I got a chance to meet with them and practice my French (which is sadly underused). They were all older people, about 9 of them, from all over France who had never met before their 3 week trip into the Southern Ocean. I can't imagine sharing such a tiny space with people I don't know! Hmm... wait a sec, Palmer and the Gould are a bit like that actually. Heh, it's been fun :)

A couple of days ago we had an Australian yacht about the same size also here. It was fun to give them a tour of the labs and explain our work. We also had an Italian cruise ship, an American one and a private American yacht earlier last week.

It's great that NSF allows this on station because it gives people from America, and all over the world, most importantly American tax payers to see what they are paying for down here. They get to see the underwater remote operated vehicles, our bacterial work, the virus work, and the people who study the only bugs in Antarctica. When scientists apply for funding to NSF, there is a whole section about "broader impacts and outreach" and how the proposed research will affect the American public. The fact that we can share our research in Antarctica is a great thing to put into outreach sections of grants.

Another sampling day

Today we went out sampling again, took us a very short time of about 2-3 hrs. Really nice since it was so cold and overcast, certainly different than the warm and sunny first day. I admit I didn't do so well at the second station because of the large swells tossing the little boat around... but we had already done all the water collection and we were about to leave, so I didn't contaminate any of the samples we got.

This time I am adding a new experiment, collecting RNA from the water to look at activity in other ways than only the microFISH technique I normally use. I still have all the regular incubations going plus this, so it's a busy day. The good thing is I feel a bit more prepared and less like I am "drowning". Heh.

We also got some results yesterday from a big experiment we did. They look pretty good, I am impressed! I already see a couple of interesting results- yes the bacteria are using the compounds differently. It's hard to make any conclusions (in fact we can't make any with just one experiment) so I won't try to.

The whole station smells of the fresh baked cookies they made (actually they make them everyday). I love that I have a warm home, warm food, warm bed every night while I am down here. It's so comforting!

First sampling and experiments

Sorry I have been bad about updating this blog. On the 10th of January morning we had our very first water sampling trip at Palmer! The morning was sunny and beautiful with little wind. We climbed into the Zodiac around 9am and collected water from 1m depth at 2 different stations. We had to maneuver around all the brash ice floating on the water- brash ice is ice broken off/melted from the nearby glaciers- see image below.

The other group was doing CTD casts off the side and filing 7 Niskin bottles separately. I filled up 2 x 20L carboys at each station and brought them back to the lab at Palmer. I set up a 57 bottle incubation using various radioactive organic carbon compounds, for example radioactive glucose and amino acids, etc. Most of my incubations were 4 hours long but one went as long as 8 hrs. After incubations comes filtering the water onto thin filters for either microscopy later on back in DE or scintillation counting which we did immediately. I didn't leave the lab till about 10pm, but it was a good day.

Yesterday I spent filtering more and babysiting the stupid scintillation counter- it didn't like my bottles and I had to insert each one manually- which took from 6:30pm to about 11:30pm, joy. Today I finally got to analyze some data and take it easy. Results look good so far- the bacteria are using the compounds I added to the water. The two stations look a little bit different but not a huge difference, which is good since they are only 2 miles apart, shouldn't be a big difference.

We are planning to sample again tomorrow- although the weather looks like there might be a storm brewing with 25-40 knot winds. We may end up stuck inside. We've been lucky to have beautiful weather thus far though, so I guess that makes up for it.

Some pics

Here are a few pics of the Gould (ship we took to Antarctica), the glaciers near Palmer station. Sadly I have realized that it is a serious pain to post pictures onto this blog, so please refer to Facebook for future pics. This blog will just be for updates on my activities at Palmer and the science I am doing down here.

Antarctica is beautiful!

WOW, Antarctica is breathtaking.
We "sailed" into Palmer Station yesterday around 2pm and got a great view of glaciers; they look like brilliant white toothpaste speckled with bright blue minty pieces. Since we were late taking off from Punta Arenas, the ship sailed directly into Palmer rather than going through the Gerlache Strait which is more beautiful. However, it was breathtaking enough ;)
Yesterday evening there was a huge party on station with the crew of the ship and station and all the science complement. It was a lot of fun and I got to meet nearly everyone. On station there are about 45 people. The boat, called the Lawrence M. Gould, dropped some people off and picked some people up. It will sail out early tomorrow morning. Today we spent all day in orientations and the ship was unloading all our cargo. Currently my laptop is being outfitted for wireless internet (it's taking longer than normal since I was a problem child and didn't get my antivirus software to NSF standards) but tomorrow I should be able to get some pics up.
Great to be on land! Cannot WAIT to start the science!