Sonic Antarctica

Last night there was a sonic tour around McMurdo Station. Andrea Polli, a sound artist who is visiting McMurdo Station on an NSF artists grant, led a group of people around the station to make recordings of different sounds. The tour ended at the NASA antenna where they track the polar orbiting scientific satellites. This is where Nik and I met up with the group. The dome can be seen easily from the station, but I had never been inside it until last night. The antenna was tracking a satellite while we were there, so first it moved into position and then slowly rotated to track the satellite as it moved across the sky.

The antenna made some interesting sounds, but the dome itself sounded like a drum. Each panel in the dome is made of a flexible material and as the wind blew, it sounded like a percussion instrument. I would like to go back when it is very windy to get the full experience of the drumming sounds.
The dome and antenna are on a hill above McMurdo Station so there is a less obstructed view of the sky. Sometimes the satellites are low on the horizon, so a little elevation helps with tracking. Being up high also gave us a nice perspective looking back on station. It looked expansive, but the buildings were small and looked like miniature versions of the station I know. I spend most of my time going between three buildings, the Crary Lab, my dorm, and Building 155, which is where the dining hall is located. It's always surprising to me to see how much stuff we have here. The footprint of town is fairly small, but then there are many shipping containers used for storage of supplies. There are also many containers for waste that are waiting to make there way back to the US for disposal.

It's tropical blue

Officially, we had a two day break over Christmas. It was up to me to decide how much work to do versus just enjoy the holiday. There were many social events to break up the days including the town holiday party on Sunday, the Christmas Eve fancy dinner on Monday, the Christmas morning brunch on Tuesday, the Christmas evening knitting and other social events taking place in the course of two days. Somehow I ended up with a pile of presents to open too. (Thank you everyone.) It takes time to sort the bubble wrap, the tissue paper, the ribbons, the boxes, the plastic packaging, etc. and dispose of them in the proper waste disposal categories. The two days were over before I knew it.
In between opening all those presents and eating Christmas Eve dinner, I manged to take a walk to Hut Point. The sea ice is melting a little more. The melt pools are turning a tropical blue color. I think the color is from algae growing there lending a greenish tinge to the usual "glacial blue". Of course there were seals hauled out into the ice. Another one made an appearance popping up through a hole in the ice. If you use your imagination, you can see the seal swimming in the melt pool. Maybe I will get a better telephoto lens some day, but for now you can just accept that the dark blob in the pool is a Weddel seal. It was a beautiful sunny day, but the winds were howling at Hut Point (as usual), so I did not stay for long. It was so nice during the day, but then later the fog came in and since then it has been windy and overcast. It makes it easier to stay inside and work in the lab. The holiday is over, so it's back to work.
Samples have been coming back from the field and we are making lots of progress on all the lab work and analyses. Here is a picture of my lab bench. This is were I work to set up my samples for the ion chromatography instrument. In this picture, I am setting up a run of lake samples to analyze for cations. I always line up my samples by increasing depth because they get saltier with depth and I prefer to run them in order.

Transitions

We are a week away from the summer solstice. The sun is high in the sky and we have had a series of warm sunny weather days. The temperature is just above freezing, just about 1 to 3 degrees C (or 33 to 38 degrees F). This is the start of the melt season. Streams are flowing around the station as the snow pack continues to melt. Streams are flowing in the dry valleys too. It’s time to transition from puffy down jackets to our windbreakers. At this time of year the sea-ice starts to melt a bit. The ice is still mostly solid, but the transition areas from land to ice are messy. It's prudent to move the fish huts back onto land while they still can, otherwise they risk getting stuck and eventually floating out to sea on an a sea-ice raft later this season. Today we learned that the sea-ice will be off limits in a couple more days, as soon as they can finish moving the remaining huts and equipment back onto land. The huts look like a row of vacation cottages lined up on the road to Hut Point.
There were a few seals hauled out onto the sea-ice near Hut Point. It is not very obvious from my picture, but the small brown blobs are Weddell seals. A few days ago, this blue ice pool was still solid, but now it is turning slushy. This makes it easier for the seals to find places to come up for air and to haul out onto the ice for sunbathing. While I was there, a seal was swimming just under the ice skin on this melt pool. He poked his head up for air a few times, just breaking through the thin ice layer. Away from land, the ice is still solid, but that will probably change over the next few weeks.

The other big transition is that research groups that were working on sea-ice to study the seals, the fish or the sea-ice itself, will now have to call and end to the field season. Groups that study hydrology and stream flow are getting busy. The nice sunny weather also makes it more fun to get out and do some sight seeing around the station.
The weather has been nice, so Nik agreed to go for a walk with me. He is wearing a fuzzy hat to keep his ears warm because the breeze is almost always blowing at Hut Point.

Yes, I'm still here

I seem to be in the doldrums a bit. Not much is happening. Work is going fine and I am keeping up with everything. It’s just that, as I explained last year, it’s more of the same old thing. Water samples in bottles are not very exciting in themselves, not until you get the data! I’m approaching the mid-season mark with about 2 months to go. The days are all fairly similar. The internet is also painfully slow, so when I attempt to post to my blog, I seem to get blogged down. OK, I’m writing this in word, in case blogger actually opens and I can make a posting. Ah there it is. I have been waiting for 10 minutes for the window to open so I can upload pictures. I think I should try again later. So, for anyone who was wondering if I was still here, yes! I promise to write more soon.