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.