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.