Palmer Station January 14, 2006
Today is my Dad’s 73rd birthday, so Happy Birthday Dad!
This morning was nice and sunny and the temperature was up to about 40 degrees Fahrenheit. In the late morning I noticed a line in the water near the mouth of the harbor. It was a foam or scum line formed by the tide. We see these types of things a lot around Dauphin Island where bay and ocean waters meet. Here there are no fresh water rivers, but the glaciers are a form of river that delivers freshwater to the coast. As the glaciers calve off big chunks of ice, these become floating icebergs and there are many of these around the station now. As the icebergs melt, they add freshwater to the seawater and this lowers the salinity (salt content) of the surface layer. This surface layer of slightly fresher water floats on the saltier water below. Since it is sitting on top, this layer also gets warmed by the sun quicker than the deeper waters, and this makes it float even more. This type of phenomenon affects our research because the surface layer is what exchanges DMS with the atmosphere. Plankton can get trapped in the surface layer and if they do, they will get stressed by high light, including ultraviolet light. This may cause the algae to produce more DMS as a stress response, but it also can slow down the bacteria that eat the DMS. These effects would cause DMS concentrations to go up. But the ultraviolet light also destroys DMS in a photochemical reaction. Which of these processes wins the battle depends on the conditions, and this is one of the things we are trying to understand.
I saw a leopard seal cruising the perimeter of Arthur Harbor this afternoon. The seal was swimming near the surface and would poke its head out frequently to look around. He swam over to the iceberg and cruised around the perimeter of that too. He must be looking for penguins, which is one of their main food items. He was too far away for a photo. I hope I get a closer look at one – they are supposed to be impressive predators.
An hour or so after I saw the leopard seal I saw a Gentoo penguin on the rocks near the pump house. This happened to be the time that a sailboat yacht just arrived to pay a visit to the station. I got them both in a photo.
Today was Saturday, so we did House Mouse again. This is when everyone picks a job out of the hat and helps to clean the Station. I got the Administration Hallway today. This was not bad at all. I had to vacuum the hallway and offices, empty all the trash cans and do some general cleaning of the hallway. It took about an hour. Ray and Maria got kitchen duty today. Ray Najjar is one of the collaborators on our project. He is a mathematical modeler, who will take our data and use math equations and computer modeling to predict what is happening with DMS. Ray works at Penn State University but he is originally from Park Slope Brooklyn.
After a nice oriental dinner, including Peking duck, I decided to join Ray and Marianne Kaput on a hike up the glacier. I hadn’t been up there yet so this was a new experience. It was great! But you’ll have to tune in tomorrow to hear more about it.
