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Wednesday, 27 August: Back at SAMS
I went in to work for the first time this afternoon, having made peace with small child.
It was great to see the faces I’d come to know so well over the last month. Pauline and Susan were hard at work in the lab analysing samples, whilst others like Arlene, Henrik and Ray were wedged behind computers preparing scientific conference papers and reports of the cruise. I had this intense desire to get together with them all and talk about our time in the Arctic.
Arlene has been in since the start of the week and I think summed things up perfectly: "For the past few days Arctic people have been sitting together at coffee as we can't manage to mix properly. Or I've seen them wandering aimlessly about the corridors. Everyone still seems really tired and zoned out. It’s good to be back but I’m missing the ship - no more breakfast looking out over sea ice."
There are analyses going on in the labs that will reveal how rapidly carbon settles to the sea floor in the Arctic, and many samples still waiting in freezers and cool rooms on the ship. These will be collected when the James Clark Ross docks in Immingham in a month, and transported carefully back up to SAMS. Then another round of analyses will begin.
Meantime we can say for sure that the Arctic still has some sea ice, though it was not where we expected to find it. The microscopic plant life appears to have had its "spring bloom" long before the ice melted from the water above it (which is why by the time we arrived, the tiny animals in the water column had done their feeding and breeding for the year and already headed down to deep water to see out the coming winter). Interestingly, it appears that the closely coupled relationship between microscopic plants and bacteria in the water column isn’t as closely coupled as scientists had expected – far more nutritious carbon compounds were being produced by the plants than were being mopped up by other organisms. Which is good news if those compounds settle to the seafloor and are buried for millennia (removing carbon from circulation).
Though my adventure and this blog are now over, there are two things still to watch out for on the website:
The science summary of findings which is just being written by Ray the expedition leader; and
The photos I took during this amazing journey. Some have gone into the blog but there are many more and I shall try to put them up into the Gallery in the coming week.
(And thirdly, look out for the next instalment, ICECHASER II, planned for summer 2010!)
Till then, thanks for coming along with us all on this amazing journey.
My trip is complete
We boarded our ship, the Professor Molchanov in Longyearbyen on Monday 25th August. The Russian crew realised we were missing VITAL supplies as we were about to set sail! This was quickly rectified by some of the crew nipping off in a zodiac, back into town to the one shop for our vital supplies - we were told it was...BEER! I think it's because a lot of our fellow passengers were very young on our trip, usually the average age is 65+.... maybe I'm wrong, I don't think so!!!
We too visited Ny Alesund, how special it has been watching it on Newsnight. It was great to mention to my fellow passengers that I had been following you all and seeing where the British team do their work was amazing. We saw the little arctic foxes, just changing their coats ready for the winter - fabulous.
From there, we continued north , eventually heading up towards Phippsoya and the Seven Islands, into the pack ice. We had seen our 1st polar bear in Woodfjorde, near Musshama, but we didn't see any in this lot of pack ice. We moved down towards the tip of the Hinlopen Strait, and went east towards Nord Austlandet and the 3rd largest ice cap in the world. We landed at Palanderbukta and took a hike up on to the Vegafonna, part of the glacier. Spectacular views at the top. We had a group discussion about when our flights were on our return (not something you usually want to discuss so soon in the holiday - but turned out to be crucial!), to establish we all had afternoon flights - we did, and we all agreed that if at all possible we were up for the next part of our journey, we had to be sure and quick. We are only the second ship (and the last one for this year) to have been able to do this trip - we were going east, far east, over to Kvitoya. Wow, what a trip. We encountered a mother and two cubs in the pack ice on the floes - what beautiful Christmas cards these will turn out to be..... We saw two more bears and then to Kvitoya - what a desolate place this is, just like the end of the world but my am I glad I went. You were the only ones to Ripfjorden, I am one of the few to Kvitoya, brilliant.
Now we had to move it, the wind was moving the ice south and we could not get stuck! More polar bears and walrus and we were back to Edgeoya and Barentsoya. Sadly there were polar bears on the shore line so no landings but onwards south towards Hornsund, through Storfjorden, where we saw fin whales, before seeing more polar bears and ice calving at Hornbreen. I'm glad I caught that on video... Then back to Longyearbyen and for our last trip, to the Polar museum. What a fabulous trip we have had, I cannot believe it's over, it all seems so surreal. But thank goodness for photographs and my memories, especially those of my day in the pack ice with the mother and her cubs. Absolutely stunning. What can I say? You've seen it for yourself. I'll miss this blog, I feel like I made friends with people, and you. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed my journey like I enjoyed yours.
Michelle
(shelly@alpinerose.net)