January 8, 2006 - More Seals, and Krill

 We went out in the zodiac to sample today.  The weather was overcast. There wasn’t much wind but there was a swell that caused it to be difficult to work and sample.  There is a small davit and winch on the zodiac that we use to lower sample bottles.  A bottle is added to the wire, then it is lowered a certain depth until another bottle is added to the wire.  A total of 6 bottles are typically added although today we only did four.  Once the bottles are down at their assigned depths, a weighted “messenger” is attached to the cable, and this is allowed slide down the cable until it reaches the first bottle. It trips a spring which closes the bottle, and releases another messenger that goes to the next bottle, and so on.  It is hard work to attach the bottles to the cable and do all the little adjustments and such.   A few of the folks on the boat started getting seasick from the swell, so we decided to head back a little early.  I didn’t really feel sick out on the water but strangely I felt a little queasy once I got back to the station.  One thing I learned today is that it is hard work to collect samples under these conditions!
 
By now you’ve heard about the elephant seals outside the lab.  Each time I walked by today there seemed to be more of them and they were very close to the boardwalk that we use to get from building to building.  I got a couple of good pictures. They are very entertaining.  Every once in a while it seems they just have to make a giant, loud snurfelling sound that really resonates.  I’m not really sure why they do it, but they all seem to do this.  As the little group grows, the smell is worse and worse.  Powerful stuff.
 
There is an aquarium room at the Station where seawater is pumped in so people can do experiments.  One person is doing work with Krill, the little shrimp-like creatures that are very important in the Antarctic food web.  They are holding some krill in big tanks in the lab.  I managed to get one good photo of them. These krill are living in filtered water, which means they have no food.  They have been in there for several days.  For some reason these krill have turned a bright orange, wherease krill in the neighboring tank, where they have food, are a more typical brown-clear color.  Interesting, eh?