Author Archives: Jeff

This is a very short post to share the spectacular National Geographic moment we had this morning when a pod of killer whales swam into Arthur Harbor and spent about an hour terrorizing the local seals.  Spoiler alert for the … Continue reading →

It’s been another quiet week at Palmer Station, out here on the edge of Antarctica… This week was punctuated by a set of intense storms.  The one that came in on Wednesday was the most intense storm that we’ve had … Continue reading →

We were supposed to sample the regular LTER stations by Zodiac yesterday, but this was the view of Arthur Harbor as of yesterday evening: No possible way to get a zodiac through all that.  We’ll have to wait until the … Continue reading →

We gained two more members to our team this week; Conor Sullivan, a field technician with the Ducklow group at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and Ribanna Dietrich, a graduate student at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.  After dropping them … Continue reading →

Today’s a special day in the annals of Antarctic exploration, it’s been 100 years to the day since Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance was crushed by ice and finally sank after 307 days beset in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea.  … Continue reading →

It’s been a busy few days as we wrap up ice sampling and make the transition to sampling by boat at the regular Palmer LTER stations.  This afternoon we’ll break down the ice removal experiment we started over a week … Continue reading →

The storms of the past week cleared most of the pack ice out of Arthur Harbor, although the land fast ice that we’ve been sampling from has survived.  In anticipation of the start of the boating season there was a … Continue reading →

The Laurence M. Gould departed for Punta Arenas last night, taking Colleen with it and leaving Jamie and I on our own until reinforcements arrive in two weeks (you can check out Jamie’s blog here for more on what we’re … Continue reading →

After a tough couple of weeks things are starting to look up.  I’ve got the flow cytometer up and running, and Colleen’s instrument received a complete makeover (thanks to the über instrument tech at Palmer) and is producing good data.  … Continue reading →

We’re off to a rough start this season!  Two of our instruments are down, including our flow cytometer – annoying, but we can deal with it – and Colleen’s instrument for measuring superoxide.  That’s a real problem.  Colleen is only … Continue reading →