We just finished our first full week at Palmer. We managed to get out onto the water for some surface samples on Friday. Scott Sternbach and Kevin Lindberg came along to help assist with our sampling. Scott is a professional photographer here on an NSF grant to document the scientists and life at Palmer Station. Kevin is the waste technician. Because the US Antarctic Program is committed to minimizing their impact on the local environment, waste is a serious issue here. So, Kevin’s job is pretty critical around station. Anyways, we sampled at Stations E and B, and filtered the water for chlorophyll and other pigment analysis. We also prepared a fraction of our samples for nutrient, dissolved organic carbon, and flow cytometry analyses to be carried out by Hugh Ducklow’s group as well.

Zib handling a GoFlow bottle onboard our zodiac with Kevin in the background.

This photo shows Elizabeth bringing a GoFlow bottle onto the deck of our 20 foot zodiac. Once we are back on shore, we will use the water collected in the GoFlow bottle for filtering so that we can analyze phytoplankton community characteristics. Kevin is in the background holding the zodiac in position, and Scott Sternbach took the photo.