Sunday is a relaxing day, also in Rijpfjorden. Our generous field marshall gave us an extra hour of sleep, so today we had breakfast as late as 09:00 *! In addition to regular instant coffee, Daniel served some fresh espresso, and the porridge ration was XXL. Some sampling equipment maintenance late morning, and off we (Janne, Malin and Daniel) went to our site for some zooplankton community sampling, while Miriam, Josef and Einar stayed behind in the camp, busy with their own projects.
Sampling went smooth and many hundred copepods lost their lives in our sampling jars.
On the way home we spotted a polar bear in the far distance, but it was some 5 km away from camp, and winds were in our favor – so far it did not show up here. Returning to base on time, we were surprised by an excellent dinner prepared by Einar – the first day without DryTech for most of us. Sweet!
At the moment (midnight) Malin is checking the vital state of the copepods that are still alive, while Janne is removing the females from their kids before they can eat them. More details from the Calanus world tomorrow. Sleeping time for the secretary now. Goodnight, and welcome to another exciting day at Rijpforden tomorrow. If weather permits, tomorrow will be ROV and horizontal under ice sampling day.
And this time some scientific results:
If you look at our beautiful CTD plot, you will notice that it is still winter in Rijpfjorden. No stratification, temperature close to freezing point and as yesterdays picture shows, ice algae are doing very well.
* Footnote: In contrast to Bjørnehiet residents, Sukkerbiten residents got up half an hour earlier than usually because Miriam heard suspicious noises and informed the rest of the women team about them.
(DV)
I’m very happy to find news on this project. I wrote about Calanus Glacialis in my personal statement. They amaze me and I’m interested in making sure that we can keep them as the prime copepod of the Arctic.