BEST Entry #5

BEST Entry #5(Day 14)
Date: Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Location: Heading East about 61N. Again crushing slowly throught ice…~6 knots.
Local Time: 11:15pm

Been about a week or so since I updated, pretty typical of the standard blog. I guess I didn’t have anything particular to discuss over the early part of the past week. Now, there is really no concept about weeks, weekends, and weekdays. Just one day after another, one station after the other.

We’ve basically finalized our sampling plan. So we do Process stations every other day, these include incubations, filtering for pigment, filtering for chlorophyll, and taking samples for use with microscopy(4-5hrs of work). About every other STATION, which we may do 2-3 per day, sometimes more, we filter for chlorophyll and take samples for cellular analysis.

I know, doesn’t seem a lot to a work day and its not. I’ve found other fun things to do like, sleep and eat. Also, I’ve been reading exciting ocean biogeochemical dynamics.

Oh, I actually read a non-textbook for the first time since who knows. The Watchmen. Movie previews looked great, I’ll never really have a chance to see it Bermuda, and its one of Times 100 greatest novels, so it was one of the books I actually somewhat sought to read and lucky enough it was found on the boat. From all the reviews of the book, I thought it was going to be spectacular. It wasn’t. There’s something about reading a book and conjuring your own dynamic images in your head, but you when you read something in comic form, where images are stationary. I found it difficult to relate the static pictures into exciting action sequences. Story line is definitely good and a lot of good characters, I just figure the movie might be a better experience than the book. I hope I’ve successfully discouraged anybody from reading it. And if you hear anybody saying, “oh the book is so much better”, without reading it, you will know its not. Because of me.

The past three days have been irregular from the first week and a half.

For one, Sunday was Easter. Some of us had a discussion of how the date of Easter Sunday is determined, none of us knew. In light of Easter lore, how much do you think Jesus could bench press? Pre-resurrection and post? I bet one of those dudes from ESPNs World Strongest Man could probably move a boulder similar to Jesus’s rock.

Here’s something funny, Excel Word gives Jesus’s, with an apostrophe as a typo. This can either mean two things. One, Jesus is/was poor as shit and does not own anything, so there can be no possessive form of Jesus. Or two, Jesus needs a post apostrophe like Jesus’ (not typoed) and is non-singular. So Jesus’ must also include LeBron James.

Back to Easter on the Healy. They cooked two pigs. We ate them in the helicopter hangar. Without the helicopter, unfortunately. It was alright, nothing special.

Today, on the other hand, was quite exciting. I was able to go on the ice. We’ve starting to head back East. AFTER, crossing into Russian waters for a little bit, how fucking awesome is that. I’m SURE the Russians were very closing to launching torpedos.

So, we’ve been crunching through ice, which makes for good, solid ice stations for science. To go on the ice, you must attend an on-ice briefing in the morning, which is usually during my filtration times. I managed to make this briefing and planned to go out later(1600) to help bring up sediment traps for ice holes, cored out in the morning.

However, around 1400, over the intercom, we heard that there was ice recreation time. So much of the scientists and CG attended a briefing and then went out to “play” on the ice. It was maybe 1 football field coned off, with protection from a Coastie armed with a shotgun for defense against Polar Bears. Any biologist knows that Polar Bears are impervious to shotgun blasts and will actually make the bear, angrier, and larger. Unfortunately, none approached.

Ice-rec time was grown up recess. Lots of pictures were taken and a game of kickball started. I’m a big fan of kickball. Mostly any sport involving an inflated rubber ball. Four-square, dodgeball, kickball. All sports very under-rated. But, pretty cool to play a game of kickball in the Artic on seasonal ice-patches.

That’s about it for this entry.