SNOW, SNOW, and MORE SNOW!
“This is my first snow in Summer”, exclaimed Kelly! We had gone to bed knowing we would stay in Foyn Harbor, as the winds were going to be strong outside in the Gerlache. What we hadn’t planned on was about 10 inches of snow to fall during the night and the whole day! What a surprise. We spent most of the morning onboard Ocean Tramp – a good time to reflect on everything we had done, organize some photos, share stories. After lunch we decided to venture out. One team decided to go on a hike up a nearby hill with Brad, our guest scientist in order to try to get anything of a view and to do some science and collect snow samples for his research – more to come from Brad soon with science updates!
Another team went out in the zodiac. On the water were platelets of ice forming and then snow accumulating on those platelets! The whole day felt like it was being played out in black and white – or at least a greyscale. the snow, the cloud cover, everything was somewhere on the spectrum between white and black and most somewhere dead in the middle of that. On the dinghy we also collected for FjordPhyto – we are collecting phytoplankton, so we had to tow a net behind the dinghy, we also had to send down a sensor to get readings of the temperature and salinity of the water at different depths, and we took some water samples. By the time we had taken the samples, we collectively decided it was time to go back to the boat to warm up.
Once the hikers also returned home we all indulged in an Argentine specialty – a submarino – hot milk into which one dunks a bar of chocolate. The key it to slightly mix it, but then to use your spoon to scoop up half melted chocolate every so often from your glass – clearly an art that argentine children must master as kids! We all warmed up a bit, but then a brave bunch decided it was time to go check out some icebergs, so into the dinghy most went again to get some cool iceberg shots.
What a day!
-Laura
