We hit our next station today, and it turned out be absolutely perfect,
amid the frustration exhibited throughout the entire staff of scientists.
We were scheduled to hit the station and begin work at 1200 noon, but
never really got the boat ready until 1830, after the evening meal. I
had been in and out of my mustang countless times, preparing to be lowered
down onto the ice (that was notably thin). But
they kept experiencing problems positioning the ship. They usually put
us off on the starboard side, but today they wanted to put us off on the
port side so the ROV could go under the ice and tell us where the algae
concentrations were. Basically the crew was trying to position the ship
so that the ROV would have a pool of open water to be deployed in, and
at the same time, we could be lowered onto stable ice from the same side
off of the helo deck. It was a tough situation. Everytime they tried,
a whole bunch of chewed-up ice would float up where the ROV was supposed
to go in, and when they finally had that taken care of, the boat started
drifting. Lance wouldn't let them turn on the turbines, for fear that
the ROV would be in danger, so we would drift.
It finally happened though -- and I was down in my room playing guitar. Terry had told me to wait an hour, so I did, and when I came up to find him, they were on the ice. Then, instead of just waiting for them, I took the initiative, and got the crew to lower me down on the ice. Apparently they had all been given the choice: "go now or not at all." So they had to go, and couldn't tell me. They were all just waiting on the ice for them to pop the ROV in the water, and really hadn't done anything. I felt better knowing that they were all a little annoyed by the situation -- more hurry up and waiting.
It was beautiful outside, though. They sky was the light blue color that reminds me of warm summer days -- which this turned out to be. It was very comfortable outside. The ice had a tinge of aqua from the melt-ponds, making it seem like a white-sanded tropical paradise (from inside the mustang anyway). It was really very extraordinary. It then occurred to me that I had never really seen a June that was so incredible. It wasn't the typical lower forty-eight June, but an exotic one, way up in the regions everyone would rather die than spend a summer in. For me, this is the ultimate summer. I don't need high temps, just the beauty of the vast land of naturally formed ice-sculptures. The greatness of nature up here, uninhibited, without mercy -- yet so calm and peaceful. I couldn't be happier.
After
admiring the greatness of the landscape, they finally dumped the ROV into
the water. In the meantime we had used the ice auger to drill holes that
penetrated the bottom, so we could stick wooden stakes down there for
Lance to use as landmarks. Watching the machine come towards us, and under
the ice was sort of eerie. It was hard to believe that this was a machine,
and not some sort of white frog-monster coming from the unexplored depths
of the arctic to check us out. It was pretty amazing to see it maneuver
with such life-like motions.
Lance looked at the transect where we had laid out the stakes, and told us that the algae was pretty much scattered, and that we would have a good a chance as any if we just randomly dug cores. So we commenced to dig some cores along the transect. It was a twenty meter transect, and we pulled three cores (one for structure, one for algae, and one for chemical) randomly between every five meter mark -- getting a total of twelve cores. We only kept certain portions of the cores, though. Mr. Buckley and I will have to do chemical analysis on the last twenty centimeters of the four cores taken for us, since that is the only region of real interest.
We got done our work, and the boat had drifted several hundred meters away. We couldn't walk that far, due to the instability of the ice, and they didn't want to pick us up in the ship, so they sent a helicopter out to us.
Once we got out of the helicopter, we waited for it to go back and get the gear, and the other guys, and we took off our mustangs (which we were at this point roasting in). I proceeded to the dry-lab to get some last minute things done, and stopped by the wet-lab. The ROV monitor was going, and Lance was driving around the bottom of the ocean. This time, instead of sand dollars, there were thousands of brittle stars galloping along the sea floor. I had never known them to be so animated!
After that, I went to the dry lab, and downloaded the pictures off the camera. It was about 2240 at this point, and I was getting eager for mid-rats, and a good workout. So I started downloading, and went to create a form that I could photocopy and give everyone to fill out. It includes all of the information I have to seek out after every station, so that no longer becomes necessary, and the information will be more readily available for me to enter into the "big log."