The Science Begins….

[Written by Elizabeth Leonardis for our old blog, So Civilized]

Alex driving our zodiac

photo: Scott Sternbach

Now for the real reason we are in Antarctica….

Alex & I had been on station for just under a week, when we were cleared on boating II and ready to take our own boat out on the water. Our zodiac is slightly bigger than the others with a bigger motor due to the fact that we have a huge platform with a winch attached to lower our bottles for water sampling.

climbing over the platform on our boat

photo: Scott Sternbach

We will be sampling two different locations within the boating limit of the station. We’ll be going to stations B & E which you can see on the boating map. Once we arrive at the location we will be taking measurements to determine percent light and then sampling accordingly. Sampling is done by attaching Niskin bottles to the winch and lowering them to a specific depth. The bottles have a cocking mechanism that opens both ends and when a lever is hit (by a small weight thrown down the line) both side of the bottle close and the water from that depth is sampled. The Niskin bottle are then brought back up on the line and we empty them into more manageable sized, amber nalgene bottles, that help to protect our precious phytoplankton from the light.

Alex positioning the winch over the water

attaching a Niskin bottle to the line

photos: Scott Sternbach

Once we return back to the station with our many liters of seawater, we filter the water and perform a plethora of experiments. We are looking at pigment composition to help identify phytoplankton species, chlorophyll a measurements, nutrients, dissolved organic carbon, and a few other things for Hugh Ducklow, the PI of the entire LTER project of which we are a part.

You may be wondering who is this Scott Sternbach that takes all these wonderful photos. Scott is down here on an artists and writers grant through NSF to document science in the Antarctic. Alex & I love having him here because a. he is a really cool guy and b. he takes excellent photos of all of us on station. You can check out more of his work at his website. If you are interested in reading more about what he doing down here you can check out this piece from LaGuardia CUNY where he is the Directory of the Photography Department.