{"id":1,"date":"2015-06-24T07:27:18","date_gmt":"2015-06-24T07:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geotraces2015\/?p=1"},"modified":"2015-07-02T12:53:37","modified_gmt":"2015-07-02T19:53:37","slug":"day-minus-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geotraces2015\/2015\/06\/24\/day-minus-16\/","title":{"rendered":"Day -16: An Introduction. Also, There Is A Pile In Our Basement."},"content":{"rendered":"

Coordinates:\u00a049.25 N, \u00a0-123.25 W<\/p>\n

There is a very large pile of boxes in the basement of one of the buildings of the University of British Columbia. The pile keeps getting larger, and several groups of people are\u00a0milling about the pile, adding things to it, duct-taping parts of it, labelling it, and stacking parts of it on other parts. It’s a very important pile, and we’ve been working on it for months. This is the pile of scientific equipment that we are taking to the Arctic Ocean this summer. Today, after long\u00a0preparations, we are ready to ship our pile across the country, to Qu\u00e9bec City.<\/p>\n

On July 10, 44 scientists from 14 institutes (and a hard-to-pin-down number of countries) will set sail from the port of Qu\u00e9bec City on board the Canadian icebreaker the CCGS\u00a0Amundsen<\/em>\u00a0on a\u00a0summer-long\u00a0research expedition to the Canadian Arctic. The expedition is part of the GEOTRACES program<\/a>, which generally\u00a0aims to better understand the distribution of trace elements in the ocean. In addition to conducting\u00a0trace element studies, many of the participating scientists\u00a0do research in other fields as well. Together, we’ll be looking at things\u00a0like phytoplankton, climate-active gasses, and ocean acidification – trying to discover\u00a0the unknown\u00a0in the furthest reaches of the north.<\/p>\n

For now, however, we are looking at this rather formidable pile. \u00a0The amount of logistics involved in a research expedition is staggering, and even with nested to-do lists, we are almost overwhelmed. We have\u00a0expensive and fragile instruments with involved\u00a0acronyms (PFPD – Pulse Flame Photometric Detector! FRRF – Fast Repetition Rate\u00a0Fluorometer! MIMS – Membrane Inlet Mass Spectrometer!) , but we also have large quantities of much more mundane things that cannot be forgotten: pipettes, gas-tight bolts, rubber boots, notebooks, computers, toolboxes, and veritable mountains of glass and plastic sampling\u00a0bottles. This provides a challenge: if\u00a0we forget anything, we\u00a0will have to sail without it,\u00a0potentially jeopardizing our\u00a0research. \u00a0There will be many challenges ahead, but for now,\u00a0the one to focus on is this pile.<\/p>\n

\"Expedition<\/a>

Expedition scientist Nina Schuback tends the pile.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Boxes<\/a>

Boxes stacked on boxes, which are stacked on more boxes.<\/p><\/div>\n

A quick introduction at the end:\u00a0My name is Tereza Jarn\u00edkov\u00e1, and I am a graduate student <\/span>in<\/span>\u00a0Dr. Tortell’s research group<\/a> at the University of British Columbia, where I do research on climate-active gasses. On this blog, I will be writing a sort of ship’s diary for the CCGS\u00a0<\/span>Amundsen’s<\/em>\u00a02015 expedition,\u00a0<\/em>documenting our journey north.\u00a0Through this blog, I \u00a0will also be relaying messages to the ship – we would be glad\u00a0to hear from you! Would you like to ask\u00a0us questions about our research, the Arctic, life on board an icebreaker, or anything else? You can send words to the Arctic here<\/a>. Please do! It will be exciting\u00a0to hear from the outside world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coordinates:\u00a049.25 N, \u00a0-123.25 W There is a very large pile of boxes in the basement of one of the buildings of the University of British Columbia. The pile keeps getting larger, and several groups of people are\u00a0milling about the pile, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32459,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geotraces2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geotraces2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geotraces2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geotraces2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geotraces2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geotraces2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geotraces2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/64"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geotraces2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geotraces2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/geotraces2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}