Halfway

We’ve had a lot of stormy snowy days here on the peninsula, which can be attributed to the changing weather leading this part of the world into another long dark winter.

Until today we’ve been sampling mostly by bucket at the surface, due to epic CTD failures of two different devices, as well as not having an adequate working fluorometer on either machine to know where to collect the deeper water, specifically where the Deep Chlorophyll Max (DCM) resides in this water column. The DCM is the region below the surface of the water with the maximum concentration of chlorophyll of the vertical profile of the water column. DCM is usually found between 67 and 127 meters below the surface, however we expected it to be a lot closer to the surface here given the decreasing amount and strength of sunlight. So bucket sampling has been the norm for us up until this morning, when we believe we found the DCM at our current location at around 12 meters. Incredibly shallow, but given the low light this time of year, seems par for the course.

At this point in the trip, we’re finally at the hallway mark, this is the day that starts the countdown to our arrival back at Palmer Station on May 19^th, before starting the journey back to port in Punta Arenas, by May 29^th. We've sampled nine times at different locations, and predict to sample only five more times to complete our experiments examining the mixotrophic ecology in the waters along the Antarctic Peninsula.

At the beginning of this trip I had no idea what was in store for me, the views and experiences that would make up two months of my life. The long journey that laid ahead of me just a few weeks ago seemingly never ending and somewhat overwhelming, until now. Today on its own is nothing special, an odd numbered day of the week, so we’re sampling, but after today passes we will have spent more time in Antarctica than we have left to spend in Antarctica.

That feels incredible.

And I swear it’s like the peninsula knows, and is rewarding us for working through storms, snow, and leaky ship pipes. The colors of the sunrise we were given today were our reward for trudging through the weeks of snow and slush and failed instruments. This morning we started all of our incubations early, and then stepped outside to enjoy the most beautiful sunrise the world has to offer.