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I started this day by finishing my write-up for November 20th, at about 1 AM, then staggered out of bed a few minutes late. With Jim gone, the writing corps is getting thinner and thinner, and as we approach the end of the season, much of what we do is duplication. As I'm the new web czar, we may not be quite as scrupulous at maintaining currency!
My late arrival won me the coveted position of dive tender on one of our better sites, Cape Evans South, which I dove a few days ago with Dan's camera. Arriving back at the lab, we swapped two of us and some more core samples out of the Pisten Bully, added two tenders, and Stacy, Dan and Jen took off to retrieve the time-lapse camera from the Cinder Cones Site. Jonna and I sieved samples and ate a more leisurely lunch.
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| Little pycnogonid at Cape Evans Iceberg Scour site./td> |
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| Sea cucumber perched on tube worm |
As we approach the end of the trip, the schedule is changing more and more rapidly, Jonna is scheduled to depart Thursday and Dan leaves Friday. With our forces reduced to half, we have already begun turning in the massive piles of gear we've accumulated from all over town. It seems only a few weeks ago I was wandering around town looking for BFC or wondering who to ask about getting food. Now I've made my last stop at the Food Room, where the Peggy looked sorry to see us go, despite the massive food pull and consequent large return and despite the strange requests for turkeys and wasabi (which she easily filled). MEC wants their vehicles back; the same building houses SSC, which wants chainsaws and a wide variety of power equipment, most of which we still have. To BFC will go a wide variety of random scientific and field equipment, from pee bottles to Global Positioning Systems. Fortunately, the departure process seems to go much more smoothly with a greatly increased knowledge of the station.
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| Piles of gear getting ready to go or get packed for another season. |