October 28 Today was our last real day working at Cinder Cones. We finished clearing out the enclosure of all the large critters and put out all of our experimental cores. The big nemertean worms are really hard to get a hold of because they are so amorphous and slimy, unlike the sea stars and urchins, which are quite easy to pick up. It is quite amazing how many sea stars, urchins, nemerteans, and pychnogonids are in a 10x10 m plot. Dan put on a brave face when starting his dive to clear the enclosure, while Andrew had more trouble hiding his emotions.

Our last big project for the site was to deploy our time-lapse camera. The plan is to put down three quadrats of enriched sediment and do some time-lapse photography of the quadrats to see how the sea stars react to it over the first day or two. The camera system had been tested in the lab and had worked great; we even got some footage of some icefish spawning in one of the tanks in the aquarium. Luckily things worked out wonderfully and the deployment went off without a hitch. It was really neat to see pictures of what is going on down below while you are nice and warm in the dive hut, especially when you see the other divers down there working. The camera was programmed to take a picture once every 17 seconds, so when you watch it played back it looks like all the slow moving organisms are moving at a normal speed, while the more active organisms like fish look like they are moving at hyperspeed.

After the dives we walked up to the top of a hill that was just south of our hut. On top of the hill is a memorial to Jeff Rude, a scientist who died nearby in the 1970's. It was a beautiful spot, and you had an amazing view of the entire area. It was also a really beautiful sunny day, so all in all it was the perfect day to be up there and was very relaxing. We ended up our little hike by sliding backwards headfirst down to our hut on the snow. Our big red parkas made very nice sleds as long as you remembered to keep your hoods up, otherwise you got a nice cold shock of snow shot down your back. It was a nice ending to a productive day. (Insert Erebus.JPG and Memorial.JPG)