Well, today turned out to be much more eventful than I had anticipated. I woke up at an unusually early time, getting myself up for a reason unknown to me. I crawled to the mess deck, still tired, and getting ready for breakfast. I came into sit down, and everybody started wishing me a happy birthday. I was thoroughly confused by this, so I looked at my watch, and sure enough, June 13, my birthday. I had no idea how all of these people had gotten wind of it, but they had, and I later found out it was because of my mother, who had reminded Mr. Buckley of it. I sat down at the table next to Tish, and she said that on her birthday, she saw two polar bears. Ha ha. Yeah right, I thought.
I finished breakfast, went to the dry lab, hung around for a while, and went to my room to play the guitar for a while, having nothing better to do. After I wore that out, I came back up to the dry lab, and Mr. Buckley and Terry were rushing back inside with cameras in their hands. I asked them what was up, and they had said there was supposedly a polar bear out there, though neither one had seen it. I sighed, and then Art, a coast guard electrician of sorts, came in and told us that it was located off the bough and on the port side. I couldn't resist. My camera had several pictures left, and a 60mm zoom lens. Why not? If it was too far away, I could at least observe it, and ditch the camera.
I made my way to the bough, dashing and leaping over various obstacles
that might prohibit me from capturing a glance at one of the most mysterious
and elusive animals... When I reached it, there were several people, all
with cameras. I found a free spot along the rail, and spotted the bear.
It was pretty far off, running parallel to us. I
couldn't imagine what it was doing, but as I looked at it, and compared
it to the other bears I had seen in Barrow, it looked significantly smaller.
With this observation I formulated the idea that it was a second-year
cub running to its mother, being unsure of what to do when you spot a
gigantic red monster creeping across the horizon.
Sure enough, that was the case. Mother showed up from the other direction, occupied with something, and ignoring the boat. Every once in a while she would glance up to track our progress, but she kept eating. Pretty soon the boat had crept incredibly close, and both bears were obviously at a seal lair that they had effectively invaded. There was a good deal of blood on the snow, and the seal was practically gone. I was thrilled to see two polar bears like that.
After the polar bear incident, it suddenly eerily occurred to me that what Tish had said was right. Was this just coincidence, or are the bears on a higher plain, where they can hear our subliminal requests for interaction? The Eskimos had beliefs that bears were like angels, and they put you through a test. Those that encountered one, and the encounter turned out good, were said to have been blessed by the bear. In this case, the bear is above the human -- as are many animals in some native cultures. In a sense, I believe this to be true. The polar bear has been a very successful inhabitant of one of the most barren places on the planet. Eskimos learned much of their seal-hunting techniques from polar bears, and learned how to live by watching how the polar bear lives in such a harsh environment.
After the polar bear incident, I went to the dry-lab, did some work, and got ready to go out on the ice for another station. I expected today to be a long station, but not quite as long as it was. It took from around 1330 to 1830. It was very good ice to spend a lot of time on, though. It contained an incredible amount of sediment, and an even more astonishing number of biological specimens. The ROV needed the divers to guide it to the first stake that we stuck through the ice, and from there, it still couldn't find any more of the stakes along the transect that we had made. It got good video footage of three different ice types, and long strands of melocyra (I am not quite sure of the spelling) hanging down. While the ROV preparations were taking place, however, I scoured the nearby ice for artifacts that might prove helpful to Pete and Will -- as well as for sediment.
The
sediment was everywhere, and it was no hard task to fill a jar of it.
The neatest thing, though, were the little animals, and animal remains
that we found on the ice. I found about six bivalves in various melt-ponds,
all of different shapes and sizes. I got a few samples of the numerous
worm-casings, and I found some snail egg-sacks. Those were possibly the
oddest thing I saw -- donut-shaped rings that looked like hard-packed
mud, flat, about three centimeters in diameter.
While I was looking around, and my search was drawing to a close, I met up with Terry who was somewhat preoccupied with the abundance of shells on the ice. I was trying to catch up with him as he walked along a crevice between the large slab of ice we were on, and the next. I was cautiously peering down, admiring the mystery of what lies below the cold, blackness in the depths of the Arctic Ocean. I approached a large piece of sea ice, about six feet tall, jutting out of the crevice which I was edging along, and something caught my eye on the muddy "bank" of the ice. It looked like a trilobite, but I dismissed that notion as soon as I realized what I was thinking. Looking closer at it, it was the shell of an incredibly large insect-like creature. I had found many of these along the beach in barrow, all only about a fourth of the size on a good day. This was a MONSTER bug -- and it was whole. The exoskeleton was not disturbed at all, and all of its appendages were perfectly in place. This was the type of discovery I had always envied other people for making, my father being an archaeologist, he always saw things long before it ever occurred to me to look. I am guessing it was close to eight or ten centimeters long, but I am tempted to dig it out and do some photography, and measurements.
I quickly summoned Terry, who was ready to see something that didn't quite measure up to my excitement, and he gasped. The shell he was going after was forgotten by him, and we quickly went to show Pete, who was equally as excited. Another nice addition to a good day -- finding a big critter like that on the ice.
Soon after that incident, the ROV started its journey under the ice, and our legs started making more and more apparent how long we had been on the ice. My eyes were smarting from being sunburnt, for it was too dark to see a whole lot of detail with my glacier glasses on (which I needed to find monster bugs on the ice). We were all ready to get back on the ship. The time came where the ROV was winched safely up to the boat, and they were ready to bring us up in the crane platform. In two trips we got ourselves and all our gear on board, stored it in the hangar, and went to the dry-lab to get out of our mustangs, and ready for pizza night.
And a night full of pizza it was. I hooked myself up with seven slices, and went to digest the food in my birth. I played the guitar for a while, got to exploring some of the more exotic scales, which soon put me fast asleep. I was slumped over my guitar when I jerked awake, and realized how pitiful it would look if Mr. Buckley had come in. I hopped in my bed and resumed my well-deserved rest.
In the middle of a good sleep, far too deep to have dreams, Mr. Buckley came in the room, shook me awake, said that Terry had paged me to the dry-lab, and ran out. I quickly got up, and ran up to the dry-lab, still not knowing where I was, and in a state of complete and utter disorientation. The door to the dry-lab was closed, so I opened it, and revealed a dark room with a lit cake in it, and people all around. I realized that this probably had something to do with my birthday -- but was still struggling with why I was on a boat in the middle of the arctic. Everyone sang happy birthday, while I quickly conjured up something that would pass for grateful thank you, and tried unsuccessfully to get my bearings. It was a genuinely nice thing for them to do, though. I thanked everyone, and Mr. Buckley reminded me that I had to blow out the candles before the GE alarm went off, and we would be eating cake in the hangar. I blew the candles out, and Mr. Buckley passed out the cake.
People slowly filtered out, and wishing me happy birthday. I reclined in one of the chairs, and sat around with Bill for an hour and talked about east coast things. We started off with talking about CRREL (Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab), which is based in Hanover, New Hampshire -- and we got to talking about life there. It felt good to be reminded of my true home. It energized me, and made me look forward to life back in Maine. When Bill first came in, I was reading TIME magazine (a gift from my Mom, that she had literally stopped the helicopter while it was about to take off in Barrow to send to me -- she had also sent the cake, from the new Stuaq Puk AC store), and he gave me another Sheba item. This one was a patch, which I think is a REALLY cool gift. How many people have a patch from ice-station Sheba?? This is what it said on the patch:
NGCC Des Grosseilliers
SHEBA 97-98
CCGS Louis St Laurent
It was colored in red and white -- the colors of the Canadian flag. I am going to keep this safe for the rest of my life. I now realize that what I am doing is something so many people in the world never get to do -- most of them never even think it possible. Being part of an elite research expedition to the Arctic Ocean is a feat not too many people get to embark on in their lives, and perhaps don't want to. They do not know what they are missing, if that is the case. A land so seemingly barren is so incredibly full of life, which is what our algae studies, our walrus/whale/seal/polar bear sightings, our ROV's and Box Cores and Trawls -- they all contradict any thought that the ice-pack is lifeless. It never gets boring, which was something I was greatly considering and preparing for before the voyage. The people on this vessel -- down to the lowest ranking crew member -- are all incredible intellects that show an uncanny interest that is uncommon in any other member of the general population I have met. This is the trip of a lifetime -- and the magnitude of what it means for science, the environment, and more personally my future educationally, is all wrapped up in the sound that the chunks of ice make when they are sucked under the hull of this magnificent ship.