Moving on up

The Antarctic adventure has begun! Right after Christmas, I left my family home in Chicago and headed off to Punta Arenas. The next day, was a whirlwind of orientation meetings, trying on ECW gear (extreme cold weather clothing loaned to cruise participants by the US Antarctic Program), last-minute shopping, and moving onto the ship. After all our gear was stowed, I furiously worked to finish up some last minute tasks from back at WHOI. I wasn’t sure how good our internet connectivity would be during transit, so I wanted to clear off my administrative responsibilities as much as possible. It was a pretty late night.

Yesterday we left port and scooted around the coast of Chile. We organized our gear a bit more, and I spent some time reviewing my sampling plan. It’s a little daunting to think about how I’ll be able to get it all done, but it will be a lot of fun to try, and I’m in really good company. I’ve folded in with the “zooplankton group,” run by Debbie Steinberg, who is also our Chief Scientist.

Today we had more safety training, including practicing climbing up a Jacob’s ladder in our steel-toed boot and a float coat (picture above). This practice is important because this is the type of ladder that is used to move from the ship to a small boat. After that I got to help string up a large plankton net, something I’ve never done before. I was thinking that my Dad would have been proud because he’s the one that taught me to tie a bowline in the first place. Today I also tried out the treadmill for the first time. It’s not particularly rough right now, but the ship was rolling enough to make running interesting. I had to hold on with at least one hand and sometimes two.

In a couple of days, we’ll arrive at Palmer Station, and we’ll be able to start sampling soon after that.