Day 11: Never mind that plan, here’s a new plan!

Coordinates: 61.53 N, 67.19 W

Our present location, following a change of plans.

Meeting Neptune has been postponed, because we’re not headed to the Arctic circle for the time being. The ship has gotten called away by the government of Canada to help break ice for supply ships to the community of Inukjuak in the Hudson Bay. It was a strange moment yesterday afternoon when, in a placid sea with no landmarks until the horizon line, the ship made a hairpin turn and started heading south. The situation left us in a bit of a funny predicament – if we wanted to set up one of our ocean acidification experiments, we would have to stop the ship for as brief a time as possible, cast down two rosettes at once, collect all the water for the experiments as fast as we could, build the incubators, and set the whole thing up in a matter of hours. So it was that, after two leisurely glasses of wine with Sunday dinner, we suddenly mobilized into rosette action. Dr. Jay Cullen, one of the trace metal scientists on board, made a stop-motion video of our preparations (set to light classical music), which we hope to share shortly (provided the ship’s bandwidth can withstand videos set to light classical music).

After a night of work, the incubator is up and running. Photo: Manuel Colombo

Meanwhile, we’ve run into ice and out of darkness. During our night of action, the sun didn’t set, so only the face of my watch was there to tell me that it was 3 AM as we were tying down incubators. At five thirty in the morning, as the sun rose – or, rather, got a bit brighter in the sky – filling the world with a deep pink, and the waves turned glassy and viscous and bright, our fingers finally fell numb and our setup was finally done, just in time for a quick nap before breakfast. Tonight, likely, we’ll see the stuck ships.

Finally, some ice. Photo: Manuel Colombo