Not much news

This week has been a big week for "getting ready" again as members of the LTER stream team and geochemistry teams arrived in McMurdo and they have been gearing up for their field work. I've been helping with bottle washing, preparing lab equipment and answering many questions. One bit of excitement came on Saturday morning as word spread that there were penguins on the sea ice runway. It's not too uncommon to see penguins and seals out on the sea ice near station, and if you were a penguin, wouldn't you want to walk on the flattest and straightest path available? Even if a C-17 was about to land? Would an emperor penguin think, "that's a really big and obnoxious penguin and it can fly!" I don't have any new pictures for this post because the penguins were too far away, but I did see them from the Crary lab spotting scope. They were pushing themselves along on the sea ice on their bellies. Here is one of my older pictures of emperor penguins.
I will be heading out to the field again tomorrow, just for a few days. Although, the weather has not been very amenable to helicopter operations recently, so will wait and see what happens. It has been snowing a little bit every day since I posted "mud season", but there has not been much accumulation.