Waiting for a Helo... AGAIN!

We've been trying for the past two days to get to Cape Crozier, one of the other penguin rookeries we want to sample. But, bad weather strikes again! We haven't been able to make it. So, we've been spending our time processing samples in the lab.

It's very busy in the lab when we're all working. A lot of different things are happening at once. In this video, Uffe is in the laminar flow hood (in the back) weighing soil samples to be extracted for invertebrates, which he puts on the sink for Diana to process. She uses tap water to rinse the soil through a sieve and capture the invertebrates in a very small-mesh sieve. Zach is on the other side of the lab centrifuging samples, and every now and then he pops into view to bring Uffe a new sample. Once Uffe has poured soil into a beaker for invertebrate extraction, he then pours part of the sample into a sieve for me. I sieve the sample to remove all of the rocks, then pour the soil into a bag for storage. We'll take that bag of soil back to Dartmouth to measure chemistry. The rocks go into the waste bucket, and I wipe the sieve for the next sample. Meanwhile, Julia is measuring soil samples into tin cans for soil moisture. She keeps going to the fridge to get a new sample, weigh out 20 g, record the weight, then bring it back to the fridge. Jenn is just off-camera measuring pH and EC on her soil samples.


Hopefully we'll be able to make it to a rookery tomorrow!