About to head out...

We're about to head out from Palmer Station in about an hour and go towards our first sample site - woo hoo, lets get this show on the road! We should be there at around 5am, but we're going to do 4-5hrs of surveying (using sonars to see what the bottom is like - flat, bumpy, sandy, rocky) before we start sampling. We'll be working 12hr shifts here with things going on around the clock - i'm on the midnight to midday watch - Stian is on a slightly different schedule, he'll be doing 8pm to 8am, so at least we overlap a little in both our work and free time. I'm suspecting there will be samples I need from the other watch too (midday to midnight), in general although you're on a shift, you often end up working a little on the other shift too if there are samples you need.

So from here on in, no photos, as we loose the internet as soon as we leave Palmer. I'll try and be as descriptive as I can with what we're up to!

Palmer Station in the background, with me waiting patiently for us to pull in. Right after this photo I went to get another layer.....brrrrrrr.......

Palmer Station - with not much (or any in fact) snow. When I was here in May-June 2006 it was covered in snow, so it's pretty different without the white fluffy stuff. We'll stop here on the way back to Chile to pick up people too, so it'll be interesting to see if it gets more white just in the 3 weeks we'll be out.

Me on the deck of the bar sitting in an adirondack chair.....the sun was shining and clear views all around (see mountains in background). Palmer Station put on a delicious pizza party for us in the bar, followed by a few drinkies, pool and even some dancing.

Serious science. Our chief scientist from Hawaii on the right with his postdoc loading him up on the left......I should probably add that there is NO alcohol on the ship, it's a dry boat, so these port calls often turn into quite a party - both for us on the ship who have been dry and those on base who suddenly triple their numbers and have new people to talk to.

More serious science......

Palmer Station sits on a peninsula surrounded by a glacier - here is one edge with a cool cave. Unfortunately it started raining on me, so I didn't explore further. But I did get a really nice walk in before we had to head back to the boat.

The Gould pulled into the dock. Stian and the other techs have spent the two days loading and unloading containers and equipment, and setting up the deck ready for the science to begin. The run up to the science starting is really busy for the techs and pretty mellow for us scientists. That will reverse in just 12 hrs....