{"id":8293,"date":"2015-05-18T19:27:47","date_gmt":"2015-05-19T03:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mlmlblog.wordpress.com\/?p=8293"},"modified":"2020-09-29T18:46:25","modified_gmt":"2020-09-30T01:46:25","slug":"tales-from-the-field-in-antarctica-post-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/2015\/05\/18\/tales-from-the-field-in-antarctica-post-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Tales from the Field in Antarctica: Post 3"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n\t

By Jamie Sibley Yin<\/h3>\n

Dr. Valerie Loeb is an adjunct professor at Moss Landing Marine Labs. Currently, she functions as an independent Antarctic ecosystem research scientist collaborating with Jarrod Santora of UC Santa Cruz. In April, she headed out to sea with a new NSF funded project entitled \"Pilot Study:\u00a0 \u00a0Addition of Biological Sampling to Drake Passage Transits of the 'LM Gould'\".\u00a0\u00a0The following are updates from the field by Jamie Sibley Yin who is in charge of communications.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

April 19th<\/sup>, 2015 - Palmer Station and Ice Fish Project<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A view of the Lawrence M. Gould (our ship) and Palmer Station.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I woke up it was hard to believe we were in the same ocean as last night.\u00a0 The water was glassy and glaciers cut with snow-capped black rock towered on either side of us.\u00a0 We were due at Palmer Station in less than an hour.\u00a0 Palmer was the final destination for some folks\u2014but not us.\u00a0 We were going with the ship, wherever she went.<\/p>\n

This meant fishing in Gerlache Strait and recovering underwater gliders from Shackleton Ridge.<\/p>\n

Palmer far exceeded my expectations for a station on an island off the coast of Antarctica. \u00a0It\u2019s nestled between light blue glaciers and looks out to the rock-studded ocean.\u00a0 The station feels like a ski cabin, fire roaring in thewood stove and floor to ceiling glass windows. \u00a0The facilities are excellent and include a sauna and outdoor hot tub. \u00a0After lunch we walked up the glacier behind the station (think gentle sloping glacier\u2014nothing hard core).\u00a0 We take a radio and write our estimated time of arrival on the board.\u00a0 If you are not back by this time, the rescue team at Palmer must spring into action and come find you.\u00a0 The Antarctic landscape is harsh and far from any medical facilities, thus, every precaution is taken to prevent and minimize injuries.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A large seal near the station.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After our glacier jaunt, dinner was served at the station, everyone from the ship was invited to dine with the station dwellers.\u00a0 All was merry and the food was spectacular: tacos with chile verde, seared fish, heaping bowls of guacamole and honeydew relish.\u00a0 Who knew food could be so wonderful in Antarctica.<\/p>\n

I was a bit sad to leave station after basking in its\u2019 glory for only two days, but to sea again it was.\u00a0 This leg of the journey was for the icefish group to catch their fish.\u00a0 They are studying two groups of fish: Nototheniods, an endemic group of Antarctic fish, and Channichthids, also known as icefish.\u00a0 Icefish are unique in that they don\u2019t have hemoglobin, a vital oxygen-binding protein found in the blood of all vertebrates. \u00a0Their blood is therefore milky white.\u00a0 They are studying the thermo-tolerances of these fish and how they will respond to warmer water temperatures, potentially modeling their response to climate change.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A gravid icefish in the lab at Palmer Station.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They have a lab set up at the station but first they must find their fish.\u00a0 They use pot traps and benthic trawls to fish. \u00a0The boat goes to specific locations where they have had success catching their fish in previous years.\u00a0 The trawling areas must have sandy bottoms (so the net doesn\u2019t become snagged on underwater pinnacles). \u00a0The pots are deployed in strings of four.\u00a0 They are left out for 24 hours after which we retrieve them and the fish inside.\u00a0 The icefish are strange-looking creatures, with flat elegant mouths and large sentient eyes they look more like crocodiles than fish.<\/p>\n

\"Kristin,<\/a>
Kristin, one of the PIs of the icefish project getting ready to unload a fish.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our zooplankton sampling has been put on hold until the fish crew is done.\u00a0 We are still sorting through our samples and attempting to identify all our critters, including some very small copepods that are barely a few millimeters in length.\u00a0 It will be interesting to see how their composition changes when we sample closer to the continent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jamie Sibley Yin Dr. Valerie Loeb is an adjunct professor at Moss Landing Marine Labs. Currently, she functions as an independent Antarctic ecosystem research scientist collaborating with Jarrod Santora of UC Santa Cruz. In April, she headed out to sea with a new NSF funded project entitled “Pilot Study:\u00a0 \u00a0Addition of Biological Sampling to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":8295,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[41,114,118],"class_list":["post-8293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drop-inblog","tag-antarctica","tag-fieldwork","tag-fish"],"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"MLML Student Life","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8293"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20581,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8293\/revisions\/20581"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}