15 July 2011 Getting Down to Business

Here comes the Sun

I woke up to bright sunshine this morning! The weather was absolutely perfect today. It got up to around 50ºF, with a light breeze and sunny all day.

Setting up the lab

The morning was spent unpacking boxes and setting up the lab. The group that runs the base here gave us an entire lab building with lots of space to process the samples that we'll be collecting.

The lab will also serve as "office space" for the group, with plenty of ethernet ports for everyone. (Interesting to note that Ny Ålesund is a wireless-free zone because of some important radio signal monitoring going on here – I will find out about that soon and write about it. But there's no wireless or cell phone use here, so the internet is done only through ethernet wires.)

After we set up the lab, Ross and Julie gave us some lessons on how to use the various instruments we'll be using.

Also, we had to select the right size survival suit and get them down to the Marine Lab where they will be stored. Fortunately we found a bike (and an REU student) to do the hauling...

Visitors

Apparently Ny Ålesund is a common stop on Arctic cruises. So today was our first visit since we arrived. The tourists come off in groups, and they walk around the island seeing the historically significant sights (which I will write about at a later date). They aren't allowed in any of the buildings except for the little store, the museum, and the little post office they have here (which is the most Northerly post office in the world).

Today we were also visited by two sailboats. What a place to go sailing!! (Brian, are you reading this? If so, come on up and visit me here!)

Evening Hike

After dinner George and I took an evening walk up behind Ny Ålesund. It seems I couldn't stop taking pictures of the breathtaking views. But we were also intrigued to find lots of remnants of the days when this town was a coal mining town. You'll notice that in the pictures we have a rifle – you're not allowed out of the base without a rifle, in the very unlikely event of a polar bear encounter. We also carried an ice axe with us to fend off another, much less dangerous but incredibly annoying animal... birds! Ny Ålesund is apparently in the middle of the nesting grounds of Arctic Terns, and they defend their eggs fiercely. It's not unusual to have a bird dive at your head and scratch you! So we often walk around carrying sticks (or ice axes!).

Question of the Day:

At almost 80º North you might be surprised to see so much life and to see that the landscape is not completely covered in glaciers. In other areas, such as Northern Canada or Russia at much lower latitudes there isn't anywhere near the kind of life that you see here in Svalbard. Do you know (or can you guess) what keeps it relatively mild here? (As with the other questions I've asked, if you think you have an answer, you can post it under the "Ask the Team" part of this website.)

Answer to yesterday's question

Yesterday's question was "What is a fjord"? A fjord is an inlet of water that is caused by glaciers carving out a valley that gets filled in with ocean water. Norway has many fjords because it was once covered completely with glaciers.