SAMS Students in the Arctic 2016/17

 This was the week of analysing all the data from our field trip as well as getting to grips with the R statistics program. It is a bit like the MATLAB that we use at SAMS. Thankfully my group’s analysis on our data about geese and vegetation has shown something useful, so all that is left is to write up the report and prepare the presentations that we will be delivering in the next few weeks. We also had our first “real” lecture on the second course that I am taking (AB-204) on population dynamics. We were told what we should be expecting from the course and individual projects were set which we will be investigating, writing and then presenting our work and findings at a conference in November.

On Friday after a pretty tough week, the Friday gathering changed from its usual get-together in UNIS to a trip to Barentsburg, a Russian settlement a few hours by boat further down the fjord. Barentsburg looked very different to Longyearbyen although it is still a coal mining town. It had a definite Russian feel.  I saw the moon for the first time since I arrived and we are now getting an hour or so of darkness each night.

Moving around outside Longyearbyen is getting increasingly difficult because of polar bear activity. Over the last week we have had a mother and two cubs and an adult male close by. This meant that UNIS was disrupted with no fieldwork allowed in the area where the polar bears were located. The town authorities track the polar bears and will warn if they are getting close to the town.

-Alistair

The majority of us, apart from Mr. Terrestrial, are taking Arctic Technologies focusing on hydrology, climate change and environmental pollution. Which luckily for us included a five day field trip to Petuniabukta just north of Pyramiden!  

On Monday we rode the catamaran across the fjord to Pyramiden. We saw sea birds, seals, 3 polar bears (mum and two cubs), and a glacier 30 to 40 meters high. The glacier has been recorded as receding by 20 meters a year and so you can imagine the calving process is very active. We actually saw a chunk of ice cracking off and plundering into the sea when we passed. Small icebergs surrounded us in the water. We literally saw climate change!

We arrived at Pyramiden, an abandoned mining town and then trekked to the Czech research cabin in Petuniabukta. Fred and three other people from the course loaded the bags, food and gear for the fieldwork onto a Zodiac and drove it (in four trips) over to the beach in front of the cabin. First thing Sally and Victoria did was check out the faecal cabin/dry toilet (a bucket). It was a tiny hut, upon opening the door we were greeted with a rather unappealing smell. Everyone was quite mentally disturbed and decided it was not for us. Instead most of us decided to use the much larger toilet, the Earth! Where there was plenty of rocks and amazing view over the entire fjord including the glacier.

 

After scrambling into the bedroom and choosing who was sleeping on the top bunk we all gathered in the kitchen for Soup. Cabbage soup I think? With potato. There was definitely potato.

Then we settled into bed, which was easier for some of us than others. The beds didn’t have mattresses and Vicky only had a few mm thick sleeping matt. Vicky’s night was filled with nightmares about polar bear attacks- it seems to be a recurring thing, too many talks about meeting polar bears and death seems to be the trigger.

10 hours later with two and a half hours sleep for the girls and like seven for Fred, turns out a lot of people snore. It was morning. The plan was to go on a hike and check the glaciers surrounding the Pyramiden mountain. But oh my god, we were not expecting what was ahead, a 26 km hike. Hope clocked up 36,314 steps. The breakfast was at 8am but it was good, jam and butter on bread and some fruit and porridge, a good energy filled breakfast (maybe a sign of what was to come?). We set out about 10:30 trekking back to Pyramiden mining town and then started our trek on the moraine of the last mini ice age and then up on the glacier Bertilbreen. After many, many twisting ankles and sliding down the side of the valley we took a lunch stop just before getting onto the glacier. Many stops were taken whilst on the glacier, simply admiring the view, including some beautiful melt water channels. We were on Bertilbreen for roughly 3 hours trekking to the top. There were small holes in the glacier, called Cryoconite holes, all the way to the top with black mud in. The dust accumulates and then absorbs the heat from the sun causing the surrounding ice to melt creating these deep holes were the black mud resides. You can actually see the air bubbles under the ice on the surface of these little melt holes (SO COOL!).

So 3 hours later we reached the top of the glacier and then walked down the glacier on the opposite side, Ferdinantbreen. This one was much more steep and ended in an even steeper hill of gravel. Everyone attempted to slide down gracefully, whilst Vicky was less graceful scraping skin off her thumb and ripping into her merino wool gloves. And Sally was greeted with a mud swamp which engulfed her entire foot which included brand new hiking boots. But all was well when we finally reached the cabin, crawling almost as we reached the last 100 meters. It was 7:30pm when we finally got back. No one even made it back into the cabin and we rather enjoyed the chilly air and the amazing view in front of the cabin. But 15 minutes of regaining strength and a loaf of bread later, dinner mostly cooked by the girls was on the stove and ready in no time and all was good again.

The evening followed with a ‘Czech tradition’ some vodka shots with glacier ice for surviving the first whole day in the wild and singing to the tunes of Laura’s ukulele.

We trekked to Pyramiden to the beginning of the moraine of Bertilbreen. The mission was to identify how the mixing of the stream from the moraine was and to identify eddies, if any. Two types of dye was let loose in the river, one was streamed pink and the other was bright green. This meant we could distinguish where the better mixing areas in the stream were.

Further down the moraine we measured water currents and then after freezing some of Victorias toes we headed back to camp.

After dinner cooked by the guys (and again following the ‘Czech Tradition’ some more vodka shots) we jumped into the sea. It was the fourth day we were away and since there was no running water this was our only way of having a near bath experience. It was seriously intense and as cold as you imagine. However, we were all really glad we did it, because not a lot of people can say they’ve been swimming in the sea at 79 degrees North. Later that night we were greeted by a polar fox. I’m not sure if it was a bark or a scream but it was definitely not what we expected a fox to sound like.

The next day we focused on more field work. The measurements we took the day before didn’t work since the batteries died on the current meter. We split up into three groups, two of which went onto the beach to collect sand samples for the pollution course we are taking that we would take back to the lab and identify the amount of micro/nano plastics within the samples. The other group was taken out on the zodiac to visit the Scottish settlement across the fjord, an old mining area that was abandoned after 3 years due to the mining not making enough money. Following that was a zodiac trip to the 40m tall Nordenskioeldglacier and then a stop at an ice cave. Jan, our Czech cabin host, has been coming back to do research there for 7 years now and he told us that the ice caves we visited were 200m deep, now they have retreated to 20m. Fred saw a bearded seal on a block of ice that had melted off the glacier.

The last day we went to Pyramiden and joined a tour around the old town; learning about the people who lived there and what the town is now used for. We even took a stop in the hotel, one of the few buildings that are still in use. After that we packed up the boat and went home to hot showers and warm beds.

In all we saw 4 polar foxes, 14 grouse, 3 polar bears, a seal, and many sea birds (lots of very hyper Puffins). Even though we woke up with sore feet, greasy hair and endured long days, we all had great fun and it was a great way to get to know each other. It’s something we wish we could all repeat again!

- Most of The Arctic Scottish Colony