Our project is in the final stages. We have completed the seismic experiment and are now in the process of collecting and packing all of the seismometers for return to New Mexico Tech. Two of the largest factors that we were afraid may work against us this season turned out to be non-problems. The weather was the first concern. Last year the group encountered high winds and low temperatures, which made the work much harder and it took much longer. This year we have enjoyed good weather. Even though the average temperature around the hut was -20 degrees C, the winds stayed fairly calm. This made working outside much easier for all of us. It took us over two weeks to deploy the seismic stations around the upper mountain, which is pretty good timing. However, because the weather was so cooperative, it only took us two days to collect up all of the stations! This was wonderful! The second factor was the seismometers themselves. We figured that a few of them would have problems with the cold and the transportation so we counted on ten or so units to fail. As it happened, only one of the 80 units on the top of the mountain has problems. We are still working to correct those problems so that the data can be retrieved. All of the other units worked very well! So there should be enough data to look at for our scan. Of course it will take a year or more to go through the data and come up with the images that we are looking for. But as of now, it looks like we have good data! I will be updating my journal as the information is finalized. So everyone will be able to follow and find out what we really learned from this season. Remember, the fieldwork is only half of the experiment. Looking through and analyzing the data so that meaningful information can be obtained is always a large part of what we do.
While we have been in McMurdo I have had some time to look around the Crary Lab. It is a fantastic facility with everything needed for major science. I have put in some pictures of the lab and the different posters hanging around the geology portion. Also from the Biology section, I have included some pictures of the specimens found in the display cases. Very interesting!
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