Long - 67'W 06.95
We finished at station G (nothing much in the coral collecting
unfortunately, but a few anemones here and there) and moved on to do
some rock collecting for another project for the next three days.
Another Principle Investigator (PI) was funded for 3 days on this
cruise to collect rocks from some of the islands around Marguerite
Bay. Research cruises are expensive (especially to Antarctica) so the
funding agencies always try to fill up the days with as many projects
fit on one cruise - we were going to Marguerite Bay to do our
sampling, so it makes sense to have a few extra days added to the
cruise to get this guy his rocks, rather than send him out on a whole
other cruise. It's going to be the same on my next Antarctic
adventure in April - we have two projects running on the same ship.
So this morning I got to go ashore and help do some rock collecting,
it was a brief visit but was nice to stretch the legs and do
something different. We went over in the zodiacs and had a fun beach
landing through slick ice - more fun for us I'm guessing than Stian
who had to direct the whole thing and keep people safe. As we landed
through the ice and had to jump out with our gear, some waves came in
and threw ice into the boat and at us - nothing very unsafe, but a
little hairy, as chunks of ice on the back of your legs as you try
and get out of a zodiac is not the most fun. And Stian didn't even
get to go ashore as there was no where to tie up the boat, so he
returned to the Gould until we were finished. We stayed on land for
around an hour and came back to the boat, the next party just went
out a short while ago (we're all taking it in turns to go - 7 science
at one time), so in the next three days everyone will have a chance
at land. Hopefully Stian got to go ashore on this trip.
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