Yum yum

Harvest time.......avocados and mangoes.......ripe in probably a week or so........:0)

At home

First things I did - 

- Had a shower (my god I needed that)

- Downloaded my email to my laptop (682 emails while I was away.....ouch!)

- Set up my new toy - my friend Liz bought me a grill for staying in Grodnick while I was away! 

- Burnt my Annies Mac and Cheese (ish......no cooking for 45 days will do that to you)

- Lay on the couch and played couch potato for an hour until I fell asleep there

- Burnt my wholewheat pancakes (ish again - I not only burnt the butter to grease the pan, but

 also managed to burn the pancakes.....)

- Had a cup of tea! 

- Opened my mail (wish I hadn't opened them so soon....)

- Put my picture from Lala on my fridge! I love the half dome stamp! 

- Paid a few bills online

- Made yogurt! 

Things I need to do today - 

- Unpack

- Take box of work things to work, look at work mail - did this, well the box anyway, and I did 'look' at the pile of mail on my desk...:0)

- get a dentist appointment (a filling cracked while I was away and i've had mad toothache for 2 weeks) - this requires finding a dentist as I haven't got one here yet - appt monday afternoon, found a dentist in Manoa of all places, so easy to get to, lets just hope he's a good one, I really hate going to the dentist! 

- Take Beach Belle for a drive and give her a clean to get the bird poo off - took her to work, pulled in at a kids carwash and they did a great job! 

- Go food shopping - Bargain of the day - 2 packs of tofu for $3 (yes, thats a bargain here okay)

- Do a laundry load

- Download photos and put some up here

- Start to reply to emails.......ug.........

And i've had a couple of people ask, but here is my heel now (here is the before). It's doing well, I managed to wear crocs for most of the cruise and only had slip on steel toe boots when I went outside (with lots of socks!). I can still feel it when I wear backed shoes, but it's doing well and healing pretty nicely. 

Oh yeah....

Upgraded for free and REAL first class, going to be a sweet ride to
Hawaii........and I get picked up on the other end so roll on
mamosas.....

On the way home

Isn't it sad that the first thing I do when I hit Dallas airport is
pull out the iPhone and check my email? Then again I guess that's why
I bought it....

So I'm just awaiting the flight to honolulu, hopefully no layovers in
Oakland this time (though that was fun last time!). The end of the
cruise was manic so sorry for no posts, but I just had a wonderful 3
days in the mountains(torres del Paine) and a great evening with stian
before I headed out (hes back down there working for the next cruise,
won't see him till July, boo). I'll post some pix from the cruise and
the hiking when I get home.

Been sad to say goodbye to the 'hole-ians' and wishing I was headed to
MA not HI. Sob.

Happy US Mother's Day

To all out there, though particularly to Stian's mom - get well soon!

Elephant Island

Sorry, it's been a while since i've blogged, in fact I can't remember the last time I did, going to be very disjointed when I finally get to see all these blogs when I get back to land. So what have we been up to. So for the last two weeks we've been geology sampling for the other group onboard. It's been okay, though terribly boring. A lot of surveying, some characters have come out that are not so pleasant to be around, and an awful lot of 'old boys school' attitudes to two young women PIs. It does amaze me, though I have to say I think I either tune it out or don't see it as often as some of my women colleagues, that when I do get it, it really does bug me. The other PI group (the geologists) are all older men (over 55 lets say, though the oldest is near 70), and have some pretty old attitudes, especially when it comes to women running the show. I just feel so leaned over and so demeaned sometimes, both of us in fact do, and since most of our science party are women, many of them have got it at somepoint too. Now this is not to say they are all bad all the time, it just comes out now and then. Laura and I have also been amazed at just how little they know of what they are doing too, yet offering advice hasn't been much of an option. Oh well. We're on our site now and getting itchy to get sampling. 1.5hrs until the trawl goes in. This shows why I haven't been blogging this trip - it's taken me around 10hrs to write this! 

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Cruise Website - 

http://censeam.niwa.co.nz/outreach/nathaniel_b._palmer

Bergy Bits

Lat - 54 53.16S

Long - 40 42.65W

Depth - 2159m

It's been a while since the update, sorry. It's not that it's been all that busy either, but i've also been working on the cruise website which takes up time - check it out if you have the time, has some great photos on it. We're in the Central South Scotia Sea at the moment still sampling for the geologists. Getting somewhat boring now actually, and we still have another week before Laura and I get to sample again. When it does finally get around to being our time again, we'll be headed to Elephant Island to sample in the shallow shelf just off the island (~200m) and then head into deeper waters going all the way to 3000m into the Drake Passage. It'll be good to see Elephant Island, we're hoping for a stop off onshore as a morale boost - but the weather has to be perfect for that to happen, so we're not letting on to anyone, keep it as a surprise if it happens, and if it doesn't at least we'll get to see the island. Elephant Island is where Shackleton landed and left one of the boats of men while he went off to get help. Would be great to see that beach. 

The scenery has actually been way better than expected - lots of icebergs everywhere of all different shapes and sizes, some covered in penguins. I've actually never seen so many icebergs, but this area of the Scotia Sea is known as Iceberg Alley. There are also lots of "bergy bits" that keep hitting the ship - these are much smaller bergs (a few meters total) so can't be classed as a full iceberg. There has also been a bunch of "slick ice" out - this is a thin layer of ice that floats in a slick and has bergy bits all in it too. These particular bits of slick ice have also had seals in too! 

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Cruise Website - 

http://censeam.niwa.co.nz/outreach/nathaniel_b._palmer

Starfish Seamount

Lat - 55' 40.50S

Long - 42'45.55W

Depth - 3118m

Area - Central South Scotia Sea

We're now in the Central South Scotia Sea, working mainly under the geology project. It's been a pretty boring few days, so we decided today we would put down a trawl on a seamount we've been calling Starfish Seamount (because it looks like a starfish!). Unfortunately the trawl came up with an awful lot of rocks and nicely glued together with mud. Eeww. Oh well, actually with so many people it really didn't take too long to sort through, and there weren't that many intact animals - some really nice huge purple sea cucumbers, some mushed up starfish, but that was about it. Oh, except Kate - I got you a zooarcid fishy, little baby looking one. 

Other than that we're all doing well, we've actually put together an excellent group out here, everyone is getting along, having fun and working hard, it's been great. Sometimes it's hard to tell if your group is going to be a good one or not, as people definitely react to being at sea differently, but we choose well, they're a great bunch. 

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Cruise Website - 

http://censeam.niwa.co.nz/outreach/nathaniel_b._palmer

Busy busy!

Lat - 55' 28.86S

Long - 51' 30.95W

Water Depth - 4800m

Speed - 10 knots

It's been a busy few days, so sorry for no update! After leaving Punta Arenas within 30hrs we were sampling on Burdwood Bank for Laura and my project. We immediately put a trawl in at 300m and came back with a wealth of corals (fossil and live) as well as a handful of other interesting critters (starfish, urchins, shrimp), then went on to do a few more not so successful trawls and CTD casts. Weather has not been great, choppy, 50 knot winds and 20ft seas, but this boat rides amazingly well, you wouldn't realise the weather is quite so bad outside until you look out the window. 

Yesterday was our last day on our sample site and our final sample was a trawl at 800m depth. Nearing the end of the trawl, as we were bringing it up, the tension on the wire spiked to 8400lbs (normal for that depth is around 2500lbs). Immediately getting the winch operator to pay out wire the tension then 'pinged' to 1000lbs and luckily the wire did not break (when you have a trawl on the bottom you have to be careful not to anchor the ship by getting it caught on things - this is why we go to such lengths to choose good looking sites from maps and sensors). I was determined I had caught the net on something on the bottom (rock?), it had pulled the net and finally broke free, letting out all the animals we had just collected with it. 

Pessimistic I didn't even wake people up before the trawl came up to help sort. As the MTs started to bring the trawl on deck, they stopped, chatted and one of them came running back to fetch extra line. I went to the back and peered over the side. there was the net, bulging and straining with the amount of material in it. One of he largest hauls of corals I have ever collected then came on deck. 12 hours later, the 8 people who aided in it's sorted had finally finished with the initial work (sorting, preserving, drying). I now have over 100 individuals of 3 different species of coral (one very rarely seen here) as well as numerous other deep-sea critters. There are some pictures soon to go up on the cruise website below. 

What a wonderful way to end a sample site. Thanks King Neptune. 

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Cruise Website - 

http://censeam.niwa.co.nz/outreach/nathaniel_b._palmer

Cruise Website

http://censeam.niwa.co.nz/outreach/nathaniel_b._palmer

We're off.......

We've just got out of the Straights of Magellan, the ship has started
rolling and greener and greener faces have appeared..........and to my
mind we're barely moving yet.....yikes! We managed to head out last
night at 8pm, and although we had the basic 'safety' meeting last
night we have a ton of meetings today.

BUT (in capitals no less), one VERY exciting thing. My babies were
dead (no thats not exciting), but I loaded them onto the ship and
finally dealt with them last night. Some had completely disintigrated,
but some were still gooey (though obviously dead). So I let those ones
dry out. This morning they had totally dried out, and guess
what.........I have coral skeletons! The final piece of the
puzzle.....woo hoo! Most of all I have 3 (potentially 5) of them, so
plenty for both me and Laura to do interesting things to. Woo hoo!
Look out for a picture on the Censeam Website in a few days time.

We're off....

Hopefully, we're out of here today. Yesterday was just as hectic if not more. It's going to be an interesting cruise. My heel is doing well (and yes people, we can stop telling me I should have got stitches.....I know! Finally showed it to Stian, he says it looks good, so i'm going to keep quiet about it (unless something happens of course), haven't worn shoes yet and still have at least 24hrs before I have to, so thats good).

We're in the process of taking on fuel for the trip, loading the last few things and tying things down for the trip. I have to get the biology side more organised - though the students have been fabulous at getting things done - i've been really proud of our side of the science party, they have worked their butts off so far.

Stian is off to CA today to CA......everyone at portcall wants you to stay you've been so fabulous....will miss you baby!

The next post will hopefully be by ship email, we'll see. Our first post on the website should be up soon - http://censeam.niwa.co.nz/outreach/nathaniel_b._palmer

Super Busy.......

Wow, what a busy few days. Sorry no pixs today or yesterday, i'll try and remember to take some tomorrow to post. The last couple of days have been exhausting - setting up the equipment, supplies, organising things like berthing, watches....and utter mayhem. Due to an oversight (ha ha) at Raytheon, we have no MSTs (we should have 2), our MPC didn't arrive until last night and we had no MTs (we should have 4) until today (we only have 3). So poor Stian (who was MPC on the last cruise) has been being doing the job of MPC, MST and MT for the last few days - with only IT and ET people to help him onload and offload equipment (and since they don't really work outside, it was a lot more work, as none of them really knew how to deal with it). 

We've also had some mess ups - equipment and supplies missing, I had all my -80C samples from the last cruise brought over, but left on the truck for an hour before being loaded, so they had all pretty  much thawed (yes, ruining them), winches haven't been working and we haven't had the manpower to fix it as fast as it needs to be. Basically this all adds up to we're not leaving on time. The people we have had have been fantastic, but boy, did Ratheon screw us (and them) on this port call.......

And of course this means that Stian and I have had private time amounting to less than 24hrs (including sleep), and he flies off to California (and we hopefully pull out of port) friday morning....

Raytheon Glossary

MPC - Marine Projects Coordinator - does the main organising on the ship - goes between the science PIs and the ships Captain and crew. Basically makes everything work, or at least tries to. 

MST - Marine Science Technician - handles the inside science equipment and supplies (microscopes, water systems, chemicals, waste chemicals). 

MT - Marine Technician - handles the outside science gear - puts science equipment over the side, looks after all the major equipment. 

ET - Electronics Technician - deals with electronic stuff (wiring, cameras, etc)

IT - Information Technician - Deals with the ship email, intranet, data management etc. 

A day in pictures.....

....because i'm too tired to write much. The ship came in, saw Stian briefly which was nice, he's off at his end of cruise party and hopefully he'll come this way later. Today was mellow but tomorrow a full ship day for us.


First order of the day was getting our Extreme Cold Weather gear. Laura is trying on some of the many pairs of gloves we get issued.


A mound of clothes........

Marshall trying on the largest boots around......

After the morning at the ship the five of down here went out for a tour south of Punta Arenas. These are catagorically not penguins. Cormorants in fact. But they are black and white.

The five of us looking out over the furthest south point on the South American continent.

What kind of tree is this? Anyone know? It was very cool - succulent waxy leaves and big!


We went to visit a reconstruction of one of the first Chilean forts down here. Very cool.

Maureen, Laura and Dan looking out over the Darwin Mountain Range next to one of the forts cannons.


Me at the end of the earth - the furthest south you can get on the continent (there are islands further south...).


And I just liked this photo..........

In Puntarenas

Arrived in PA a few hours ago, washed, ate, drank pisco, and am now tucked up in bed. We go to the warehouse tomorrow early to get our cold weather gear and check out how my babies are doing.........hold your breath!

Stian gets into port tomorrow too - yay!

Just three more hours in texas.....

In Dallas airport, been here since 11am, it's now 6.30pm and another 3hrs to go....ish! I ended up buying the sixth season of Scrubs to keep me entertained, i've already watched 4 episodes while lying on the floor in the corner next to a plug (why are they always in awkward places). 

I did get to catch up with two of my favourite people though - Kate B my shenanigan companion, and the mysterious disappearing reappearing Kusek! And this is a test oh Kusek to see if you really do read this blog. Next time we talk/email you have to throw into the conversation "my my, i'm toasted". So there. 

Luckily I have only gone slightly mad with the tedious wait (oh, and I thought I would go to an REI just 20 minutes away, but alas even the shared ride buses were $30 each way, and the bus schedule was so screwy I couldn't tell if it would really stop there - so just ended up sitting outside for an hour of fresh air before coming in to eat), and entertainment in the form of Laura, Kathy, Dan and Marshall will soon arrive. Then maybe we'll break into the margaritas! 

Up up and away

Headed outta here, Antarctica here I come.........!

Antarctica the Sequel...

So where to this time and why?

A slightly different area this time - more North, more ocean, less land (potentially none at all in fact), less penguins - but still as much fun I am sure. The map above shows the Drake Passage and Scotia Sea (basin to the right) which is where we will be sampling. The objectives of this cruise is to find, take underwater pictures of and to collect deep-water corals in this area. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) runs through the Drake Passage and is the strongest current in the world, and it is this current that feeds into the Atlantic ocean, mixing with northern water coming down from the Arctic somewhere around the middle. Some corals live for over 100 years (some much more than that),and they have been around for many tens of thousands of years, and as they grow signals from what the water is like (temperature in particular, but also other nutrients) are recorded into their skeletons - so we can take those skeletons and look back in time to see what water masses were doing - pretty cool huh. This is the main thrust of the proposal and is my friends Laura's work. 

My part is to use underwater towed cameras and trawl collections to look and see what corals are where - no one has gone into the middle of the Drake to look for corals, so we're not really sure what we're going to find. We know certain species live on the Argentinian and Chilean shelves, and we know certain species live on the Antarctic shelf - but what lives in the middle and how does it get there. Also pretty cool. 

We then also have a group of geologists from the University of Texas that are sharing the ship with us and will be collecting rocks in the scotia sea - unfortunately no zodiacs and penguin tours this time, it's all work! 

I'll of course also be rooting for more coral babies...:0) Still hoping the ones left in PA in the warehouse have survived, but guess we'll see! 

We also have a cruise website this time - so although I will try and write updates to my blog, I'll also be working on the website (with pictures!), so may not be able to put things up here as often. The website is here - Censeam Cruise - and also if you click the title of the post.

Geckos running up the window again......this time on the outside......:0)

Antarctic Quotes

"Great God, this is an awful place"

Robert Falcon Scott - Led the Discovery (1901-1904) and Terra Nova Expeditions (1910-1930)

"If Antarctica were music it would be Mozart. Art and it would be Michelangelo. Literature, and it would be Shakespeare. And yet it is something even greater; the only place on earth that is still as it should be. May we never tame it."

Andrew Denton - Australian TV Host