Almost done

Well I have about two weeks left before I start to head home and leave behind Palmer and my new friends. I am truly going to miss this place. You would think that after almost 3 months of being away from home and creature comforts that I would be itching to go back home, but I am not. This place is so magical: Antarctica, Palmer Station, and my mental place. I have learned so much about myself here and yes I would definitely do it all over again. I would have my wisdom teeth needlessly pulled, I would experience immense sea-sickness again, and I would deal with every bodily fluid of a fish on me again if it meant I could stay. I hope in my pictures (and my borrowed pictures) and my posts I was able to capture the beauty of this place. I am so thankful to my Pi’s and my advisor for giving me this opportunity. It has changed my life and my whole world outlook. I hope that in the near future that I will come back again, and if my cards are played right maybe I will keep coming back for life. If anyone has a chance to go to Antarctica for either science or to do a job down here, you should take it. I can also say that by being here that the travel bug has bitten me hard and that I am not going to deny myself adventure. I can say that by meeting all the people here, you have all enriched my life in some way and I am truly a better person for it. See the main thing is that Antarctica is not a harsh, cold, dark, lonely place. But is a place full of life, wonder, and enrichment. Antarctica is a place best understand through personal experience. I will miss you.

Photo by Jon Q. Citizen

Photo by Jon Q. Citizen.

Photo by Jon Q. Citizen. Seastar and its babies courtesy of the divers in the Amsler group from University of Alabama, Birmingham.

Photo by Jon Q. Citizen

Research at Palmer

The science group that I am a part of at Palmer is working on trying to discover if there was a benefit for the icefish to lose the hemoglobin protein. But that is not the only research that is conducted here at Palmer. Many science groups come down to Palmer, some as short as 5 days and for some as long as 6+ months. Currently we have 3 science groups working long term at Palmer. My group which is working on protein synthesis in icefish, another group working on icefish reproduction, and the last group is working on the effects of global warming on calcified invertebrates and algae. Other groups that have came down here for a short time worked in fields other than biology. While I was here there was a groups from other fields like physics and geology. The physics group worked on VLF radio frequencies that are trapped in the ionosphere when they were emitted into the atmosphere by lightening (I hope I got the gist of that right). The geology grouped looked at soil samples around Palmer and at different Antarctica islands to identify different soil types and which then determines what kind of geological events happened in the past thousands of years (I hope I got that right too). So in today’s post I am going to share some pictures of the research and research subjects currently ongoing at Palmer. 

Gone Fishing

Internet will be spotty for the next few days as I am going to be fishing. I won’t be able to post on my blog for about a week but when I do it will be about the research on Palmer Station.

How To Get To Antarctica

Basically just go south for a very long time. In all seriousness there are three ways that I know of to get to Antarctica. Whichever way you choose, you will have an awesome story to tell and be part of the ~40,000/~5,000  people that visit/research at Antarctica annually. The most expensive way would be to take a cruise to Antarctica either leaving from Chile, Argentina, or New Zealand and tour some of the islands along Antarctica. There are several companies that offer tours along Antarctica and a good portion of the cruise ships come to Palmer Station on Anver’s Island. The idea is that everyday people get to talk with the researchers and workers here about what we do and why our work in Antarctica is important. There is one cruise that will take people to the South Pole for hiking and exploration. However taking a cruise is an expensive option, even if you have your own boat. The rest of this post is going to talk about how to get to Antarctica if you are from the United States, sorry its all I know. But I am sure if you look around enough you can find out how to get the Antarctica stations that your country inhabits. So the way that I got here was the cheapest and the easiest (for me), but is only available to people in a science field. If none of the above options do not apply to you then don’t fret, because there is a third option. You can work in Antarctica.

Daily Agenda

Here at Palmer I am on a tight schedule, not just for science stuff but for other activities as well. It took a while for this night owl to get use to early mornings. Generally we have breakfast made for us by 8 am, however since one of our chefs left 😦 we have to fend for ourselves. Which is okay with me because I cannot keep eating pancakes and french toast every morning, and I can go back to my usual light meal of bread or cereal. After breakfast,  another grad student and I check on our fish, scope out the ones that did not survive, and then a put chunks of ice blocks into the tanks. Then we usually have a quick lab meeting to discuss the plans for that day. Right now with my PI’s I am working on injecting fish with radioisotopes, dissecting fish, grinding tissues, and running assays. Once we use the last of our isotopes in the next few weeks I will move on to another task. Usually my day ends around 7 pm.  If we are dissecting fish sometime it can end around 10 pm because we have 12 hour time points. Time points are basically how long we wait to dissect the fish after we have given them the experimental treatment. Midday we have lunch, and then around 5 pm we have dinner.  Depending on how much works needs to be done, we will continue on working through the weekends following the same schedule above. Some days we will get a free day to break up the routine and not get burned out. So here is what happens when I am not doing science.

Let’s Go Trawling

To do research as a scientist, you need a model organism. A model organism can be anything from a single celled microbe to a multicellular organism like insects, fish or mammals. Model organisms are useful because they allow scientists to understand interesting features of a species and learn how to apply what was learned to humans and other organisms. After all, we are all connected in the circle of life (cue song). For the research that I will be a part of at Palmer Station, we will be using two species of Antarctica Icefish (no hemoglobin and/or no myoglobin) and their close relatives two species of notothenioids. These fish are endemic to the Antarctica waters, the Southern Ocean, therefore we have to catch our  model organism instead of ordering them. To catch our model organisms we have to go trawling in a 220 ft. research vessel (pictured below).

I Hate Elizabeth Swann

I hate Elizabeth Swann from the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. Why? Because not once did the writers depict her getting seasick and she was on a 100 ft wooden boat! While I got seasick when I cruised in a 220 ft metal vessel. Now I understand seasickness is widely variable and some people never experience it. However, I recently found out that I am highly sensitive to seasickness after an 8 day voyage from Punta Arenas, Chile to Palmer Station, Antarctica and I am bitter. (My 8 day voyage is the reason for the lack of posts recently due to limited internet capabilities.) So over the course of the 8 days I started planning this blog and the more miserable I got, the more I revised this post in my mind so I am ready to unleash. I am telling you, my mind went to some pretty dark places. So I hate Elizabeth Swann (The fictional one of course. To anyone in real life with the same name that I have not met yet, I promise I won’t be bitter when I meet you.)

I Got My Plane Tickets!!

So after much anticipation, I finally got my plane tickets and I have been PQ’d!! It was a long and expensive process, but also at times quite humorous. So there is not turning back now, it is actually going to happen. I am going to leave for Palmer Station Antarctica on April 9th at 5:45pm and land at Punta Arenas, Chile on April 10 at 5:30 pm. For a total of 7190 miles in a plane. But wait I am not done yet! I will spend a day in Chile getting my extreme cold weather gear(ECW), so I do not freeze in -7 °C weather (current temp and not winter yet.) Then on the 12th of April we will board the LMG (Laurence M. Gould Research Vessel) and travel along the drake’s passage collecting fish deadliest catch style. The drake’s passage is the roughest stretch of waters in the world, so I need to prepare for seasickness. I will be on the LMG  for 6 days and 744 miles later I will land at Palmer Station, Antarctica where I will conduct research for three months. Once a month I will still go out and help collect fish for several days. So this is my itinerary, and I can not wait for these five days to get here!

Lost Antarctica

It must be that time of year; because I took last week off again because I was volunteering at a conference and my hotel did not have internet. 😦 It was the 42nd Benthic Ecology Meeting, which basically is a science conference about ongoing research of organisms on the ocean floor. It was a great experience and I got to meet many other scientists and build up my CV. There is something about attending a conference that gets you all fired up and makes you want to go back into the lab. I think it is seeing all the results for experiments and wondering what the results of your own experiment is going to end up like. Anyways, I had a fun time attending the conference and hanging out with my fellow volunteers.  Guess what? While looking over my volunteering schedule I saw a name that looked really familiar and then it hit me.

It is like getting teeth pulled…

No, really I am serious. I just had four wisdom teeth pulled on Tuesday and I am beginning to feel like myself again. If you have any impacted or emerged wisdom teeth it is required by the United State Antarctic Program (USAP) to get them pulled just to make sure that no situations arise while you are in Antarctica. I mean I understand why, I am going to an isolated continent in the beginning of winter, that is only accessible by boat once a month and I cannot be airlifted out. It could be dangerous and expensive to evacuate someone. I mean I will do whatever it takes to get to Antarctica, and this is totally worth it. But I feel that having my teeth pulled was more dangerous than the whole trip, lol. Not that I want to sound like a whiner or naysayer I just would rather have a thousand vials of blood drawn in one sitting, 100 full physicals, or 10 rabies shots. As the researcher that I am, I decided I would look up everything I could to prepare myself for my wisdom teeth surgery. I asked Google, I looked around yahoo answers, and I watched the 30 rock episode were Liz Lemon finds her “future husband” (even though she is getting a root canal, same premise right?).