Sarah Diers has worn many professional hats in her life…commercial crab and salmon fisher in Alaska, fisheries biologist, coffee barista, whale watching naturalist, caterer and most recently, middle school science teacher. She is very excited to add the “hat” of PolarTREC participant to her collection. Sarah has dreamt of visiting our Earth’s great Southern continent since she was a child. She cannot wait to share her expedition with Polar students of all ages. Sarah invites you to become an active participant in the Dissolved Organic Matter expedition- ask her team questions, join the webinars, read the journals, wonder and explore Antarctica with her.
The last couple days flew by in a whirlwind of packing, cleaning the lab, hosting my 2nd PolarTREC webinar and participating in Gary Wesche's second one, as well as saying "see you later" to all the wonderful friends I met in McMurdo and dreaming up plans for my first couple weeks back in the "real world." Yesterday afternoon, I left McMurdo on a C-130 military cargo plane along with 87 other people who are either finished with their time on the Ice for the season, or are taking a short vacation in New Zealand before heading back to Antarctica to spend the winter continuing to keep the Station running and science progressing. After the 5 hour journey from McMurdo, Antarctica to Christchurch, New Zealand, the first things I noticed were the color of the sky- all dusky and fading to black, the smell of fresh cut grass, and the delightful pitter-pattering of raindrops as they sprinkled down on all the bewildered Antarctica passengers. I have not seen a dark sky nor felt rain since mid-November, so these sensations are very welcome and made me realize how fantastical Antarctica is even just for the complete departure from typical feelings it provided me. I have a little over a week in New Zealand before I fly to Honolulu, Hawaii to visit family on my way back to Whidbey Island. While in New Zealand I am taking a 3-day kayaking trip up in the Abel Tasman area of the South Island. My Kiwi plans after that are completely unknown as of right now- I am just letting adventures come as they may. I will try to update this journal as often as I can, but the lovely days of daily journaling are over with. This is not by choice, but because of circumstance. I will not have Wi-Fi on a beach or in a kayak in the ocean. Nor are many of the places I may visit conducive to spending time writing a journal, uploading photos and the like. So, my wonderful readers check back every few days in hopes of another posting by me. In the meantime, thank you for joining me on this amazing adventure.
I introduced you to one of the buildings in McMurdo Station a couple days ago, Building #1, the Crary Lab. While there are absolutely important and vital events occurring at Crary every single day, there is one building I give higher importance to in this town, Building 155. Building 155 is the hub of this community- there are living quarters, finance, housing, and recreation offices, a computer room with internet access, a craft room, the store, and most importantly, the galley. The amazing chefs, bakers, prep cooks, dining assistants, and supervisors that keep the people of McMurdo happy by keeping our bellies replete with delicious food are so tremendously appreciated by myself and the rest of the Town. The galley serves four meals a day- breakfast, lunch, dinner, and "mid-rats," or midnight rations, for those who work the night shift. You could say the people of McMurdo revolve our lives around our meals.
The forethought that goes into putting out a meal for 1000 people, let alone 4 meals a day, for the 6th months of summer, and for 250 people daily during each meal in the 6th months of winter is astounding. Think of it. There are no grocery stores, no mega-marts of any kind, no farms growing fruits and vegetables. All the food we eat at McMurdo is imported from New Zealand or the United States. Also, the galley cannot realize that they are out of a certain item and expect a delivery the next day- sometimes weather stops planes from making it to Antarctica for days so the people in charge of ordering the food plan months in advance and always make sure there is more than enough for us all.
Our bakers seem to have a never-ending book of recipes. They bake many different kinds of fresh loaves of bread every day, as well as cakes, pies, cobblers, cookies, macaroons, and other delicious desserts.
"Freshies," fresh fruit and vegetables are huge treats for everyone at McMurdo. We do not get freshies delivered on every flight that makes it into McMurdo, so when there are huge bowls of salad greens people pile their plates high.
The regular "laws" of food do not seem to apply down here. I see many people trying new and interesting combinations of food that are, most of the time, very successful in their deliciousness. Today, I was one of those people. For lunch I had a sandwich, but not just any old sandwich, this one was on fresh multi-grain bread. The spreads were a lime-cilantro mayo and an apricot spread. Fresh sliced ham, Swiss cheese, and freshies- lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, completed the masterpiece. Before living in McMurdo, I never would consider apricots, lime, cilantro, Swiss cheese and ham to appease my taste buds at all, but my taste buds have proven me wrong! My friend Travis, was just as adventurous in his dinner selection tonight- an omelet full of veggies, a pasta salad with chicken and peas, and a freshies salad with mushrooms and homemade cilantro vinaigrette- sort of a breakfast/lunch/dinner combo all on one plate. He was certainly happy with his choices.
Desserts are incredible here, but sometimes I just want something nice and simple, that is when I turn to Frosty Boy. Frosty Boy is our soft-serve ice cream machine and has quite a huge following in the community. I think that if Frosty Boy were ever to break (which I know will never happen) the people of the Town would pool their money together to fly down the top Frosty Boy mechanic to get our machine up and running again. I love that ice cream is such a necessary part of the diet of McMurdians when we are living in one of the coldest places in the world.
When finished with a meal all plates, trays, silverware, napkins, and the like are gathered off the table and taken to the dishwashing area. Food scraps are sorted from napkins. Forks, knives, and spoons are all plunked into labeled bins of soap and water. Plates and bowls end up in other bins of soap and water, while cups are put into crates. Then the most vital group of galley employees, the Dining Assistants, or DAs, give everything a good spraying and run them through the dishwasher. Thank you DAs for cleaning up after the whole community! You all rock!
Never did I expect to eat this well down on the bottom of the Earth.
This is the shortest journal I plan to write, aside from the few days when I did not write at all! I am nearing the end of this trip to Antarctica, and I am pretty busy with all the last minute items on my ever-growing "To Do" list. The DOM team arrived at Crary Lab to a completely empty lab space and somehow or other filled up shelves, drawers, counters, fridges, and freezers with countless science tools and pieces of equipment. By the time we leave, the lab must look as it did on our first day here- with no sign of the DOM team, except the project number on the door. There are items to pack into storage that need to remain warm over the cold Antarctic winter and others to box up and place in a huge cardboard container outside. The samples need inventorying and careful packing to get ready for their trip back to the States. There are meetings to attend and friends to say "see you later" to. There is also one big, huge, exciting, event before I leave the Ice- my second and final PolarTREC webinar! Have you registered? If you have not, please do so by clicking here and following the instructions. It is very easy to register and to set your computer up for this spectacular event. Then all you need to do is read up on a few of my past journals, and on January 6th- this Wednesday- follow the directions to log on to the webinar at 10 am PST. Collin, Mike, and Heidi are joining me from Antarctica and Christine is sharing from her home in Bozeman, MT. During the webinar, you will hear my voice, as well as the voices of my team and the wonderful people at the PolarTREC office and see slides about the science and culture the DOM team encountered in Antarctica. There are opportunities for you to ask us questions via the phone, Voice over IP, or on a chat. Please join me in this webinar. I so look forward to seeing the names of all who register and to answering all your questions. Really, this trip was as much for you as it was for me. Without the support and enthusiasm of my readers I know my experiences could not be as impactful, memorable, and delightful as they are. Thanks. I look forward to talking with you on the 6th!
I know my time on the Ice is ticking down, but I am not ready to leave!
The DOM team is beginning to close up our Antarctic science lab for winter, as we get ready to depart this beautiful continent in just four days. Heidi and I compiled lists of all the Cotton Glacier and Canada Glacier water samples. Heidi, Mike, and Collin are carefully packaging up samples for shipment back to Montana State and Ohio State Universities for further testing. I am making sure all borrowed equipment returns to the correct department around McMurdo- science stuff to the Crary Supply Center and camping and field gear to the Berg Field Center. It is a bit of a bittersweet time- I think all of the remaining DOM team members are excited to return to our homes, but sad to end this experience.
I realized that although I have well over a month of my Antarctic time at McMurdo Station I have not yet introduced you to many of the places around town. I do not think I have a chance to give you the full tour, but at least I can show you a couple of the places where I spend a lot of my time. Today, let me introduce you to the Crary Science and Engineering Center, or Crary Lab as I think I often write about it. All buildings in McMurdo have numbers associated with them, just like houses have an address attached to them. The Crary Lab is building number 1. It is the hub of all United States Antarctic Program/National Science Foundation science based out of McMurdo. There are lab rooms, a library, an aquarium, huge walk-in freezers and refrigerators, classrooms, meeting rooms, and the list of facilities within Crary goes on and on. Holly, Deke, and Brody, our Information Technology (IT) gurus, work their brilliance over computers and other technical bits and bobs from Crary. There is a science supply room to check out almost any conceivable piece of science equipment. One of the most fascinating aspects of Crary is that many of the sections of the building are modular- if you need a larger lab space the support staff at Crary can remove wall sections and shift around counter space pretty easily. A very brilliant design for a space that sees new demands from different research projects every year.
There are three "Phases" or levels to Crary. Phase I houses many of the biological lab spaces, offices for visiting science teams, the Science Supply Center, and offices for the Crary Support Staff (all amazing, patient, and very helpful people- THANKS!) There is a top floor to Phase I, too, where there is a small library, a conference room, and other meeting spaces, as well as the most beautiful view of McMurdo Sound and the mountain ranges. (I wanted to take a photo of this for you today, but the snow whitened out my view.)
Phase II is where I spend a lot of time getting computer help from the IT guys. Also in Phase II are most of the Earth Science facilities for the geologists, volcanologists, paleontologists, and others looking at the physical wonders of this continent. This season, joining the Earth Scientists in Phase II is a crew from the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) who are down here filming all over Antarctica for a new BBC/Discovery series called Frozen Planet.
Phase III of Crary is the Aquarium. There is a touch tank of Antarctic seastars, sea urchins, flatworms, isopods, crustaceans, and other local marine invertebrates. I visit the animals of the touch tank almost everyday- they remind me of the tidepool animals that live along the shore of Whidbey Island.
Where the DOM team and many other brilliant scientists work their scientific magic!
Happy Antarctic New Years Eve! Holly is a wonderful person to ring in the New Year with! He is such a patient and tremendous help to all the scientists (an PolarTRECers) that come though McMurdo Station. Holly, along with the other IT geniuses, Brody and Deke, keep computers running even if they were dropped into Mt. Erebus' crater, or bounced out of a backpack in the Dry Valleys. Holly is also very fascinating to talk to- his knowledge about life in Antarctica and advice on what to do and see in McMurdo has helped me get so much more out of my time in "Town." Thanks Holly! [video]
Meet the resident Santa Claus of McMurdo Station! Ho! Ho? Ho!
To continue with the science journals, I would like to talk a little about another tool the DOM team uses to study, on a molecular level, the dissolved organic matter we collect in the water samples from the streams at the Cotton and Canada Glaciers. Already, I have shared information on a few biological tests we run on the water samples- Chlorophyll-a extraction and fluorescence (Dec. 11) and Bacterial Production (BP) by 3H (Tritiated) Thymidine Incorporation (Dec. 19), and one on a way in which we concentrate the water and DOM using Reverse Osmosis (Dec. 23). Today is all about "seeing" the DOM using UV-Vis Spectrophotometry. UV-Vis Spectrophotometry: The DOM team uses a dual-beam UV-Vis spectrophotometer to measure the light absorbed by molecules suspended in our water samples. Well, actually, the spectrophotometer measures the light that is not absorbed by the molecules and the instrument has to do a little mathematical work to figure out what wavelengths of light the molecules do absorb. Huh? What? Wait, what is UV-Vis? What is spectrophotometry? Now that your head is perhaps a little confused, let me break down the title of this test. UV, or ultraviolet, is light that is just beyond the violet end of the visible light spectrum. The Vis, or visible, is the light that humans see as colors. My grandfather taught me a great way to remember the names of the visible light spectrum, ROY G. BIV, where R is red, O is orange, Y is yellow, G is green, B is blue, I is indigo, and V is violet. The visible spectrum of light is the colors of the rainbow in all their subtleties and nuances, where each "color" represents a specific wavelength of light. Okay, so, "UV" is the light that we humans cannot see as it falls after the V of ROY G. BIV, and "Vis" is the beautiful light we see in our very colorful world. The last word in the title of the test we use to see what light the DOM in the water does not absorb is "spectrophotometry." Break down the word "spectrophotometry" to it's root words and it is a great definition of it's purpose- "spectro-" means "to observe," "photo" means "light," and "-metry" means "measuring device." Spectrophotometry measures the amount of light that passes through the molecules in a sample, in our case water from the Cotton and Canada Glaciers.
Remember, light is merely waves of electromagnetic radiation that are absorbed, reflected, or refracted by matter. What we perceive as colors in any object or organism is actually the light that is not absorbed. For example, the petals of a red rose are red in color, because the petals absorb all visible light wavelengths, except red. It took the work of many great scientists and a great many years, to ascertain the light wavelengths at which many known molecules absorb light using UV-Vis spectrophotometry. Once a specific wavelength range on the light spectra is understood for a molecule, scientists may set-up the parameters on the UV-Vis Spectrophotometer to test samples for molecules of that particular absorbance. The DOM molecules we are studying are pretty complex and have no unique wavelengths. Rather, the amount of light absorbed by the molecules generally increases with decreasing wavelength i.e., as you move from the visible to the UV. Simpler molecules typically have peaks and shoulders that "fingerprint" its identity. We run tests on our collected at a number of different stages- within hours of the water coming to the lab from the field site, after the water rests for a day, immediately after a water sample is concentrated through the RO system, and after it rests for some time after concentration by RO. If water from the Cotton Glacier behaved like regular DOM then we would see a spectrum similar to what was described above with peaks and shoulders giving identity to the molecule. Instead the DOM team sees absorbance in Cotton Glacier samples that show distinct peaks at certain wavelengths prior to treating the water or letting it sit for a while, but once the water samples are treated or after a period of time, the peaks or the curve of the light absorption changes dramatically. At this point the DOM team has not analyzed the data to make a definitive conclusion on the nature of the Cotton Glacier DOM. We need more conclusive data using other powerful instruments back in the States to understand how these changes in DOM molecules occur, if they even do.
You mean there is even more to do with that water?!
The beautiful snow McMurdo is blanketed by has forced the DOM team into a couple days of quiet time- a chance to tie up loose ends with some data collection, begin to clean and box up the lab for the winter, organize samples, and rest. It is a well-deserved couple of days as Collin, Mike, and Heidi wait for the snow to stop falling long enough for them to take a helicopter out to the Cotton Glacier for the final sampling trip of the season. I used this time to answer quite a few very wonderful questions sent to the Ask the Team section of this PolarTREC site. Thanks to all of you who shared their curiosity with the rest of the Polar Enthusiasts! One of the questions I received asked about the shape of the Weddell Seals teeth and how it helped them chew through the sea ice to maintain openings to haul out from. I found great examples today to illustrate the shape of the teeth and thought I would share them in this journal as an additional enticement to get more of you to send questions to the Ask the Team section of the DOM site. The canine and incisor teeth of the Weddell Seals are pointed forward, unlike our canines and incisors, which are typically straight up and down. This adaptation in the Weddell is amazing in many ways- can you imagine how useful it is to have "digging" teeth, but it is also detrimental to the longevity of the seal. Their teeth wear down over the years until they are no longer able to dig and must find holes carved out by others when they can. Living off the support of other Weddell Seals does not always work, and older seals with worn down teeth pass away, sometimes long before the average life expectancy is met. In the foyer of the Crary Science Building we have cases filled with Antarctic artifacts, some of which are skulls of Antarctic marine mammals, including a couple of Weddell Seals. Compare the teeth of the Weddell Seal to that of another Antarctic seal, the Leopard Seal.
The rest of this journal is for all of you who were fascinated by "big trucks" as a child, or maybe even as an adult- just a smattering of the forms of transportation we have in and around Antarctica. There are trucks, bulldozers, ice-saw rigs, old-fashioned, but still essential, sledges, and planes, but no typical automobiles like you find throughout the rest of the world. Around McMurdo the beeps, honks, rumbles, and growls of these machines are the background noise to this hustling and bustling research station.
For all of you who loved “Big Trucks” as a little kid…
