SAMS Students in the Arctic 2016/17

Arrived in Longyearben in the early hours of Saturday morning (29th July), but being so far north means that there is 24hour day light so it felt like mid-day!




Once at the accommodation, I had plenty of time to unpack and head to the grocery shop to stock up with food and then gather my stuff together for my first private trip the following day. The trip was to see some walrus on the west side of the island. The trip left longyearben at 9am and headed out by boat taking a tour of the fjord before heading out to the walrus. Along the way I encountered my first polar bears along the shore, as well a passing a carving glacier. 




After a great first day, it was now time to do the 2-day compulsory safety courses at UNIS. We covered all the normal things like first aid but also went into detail about things more unique to the Arctic, like polar bear protection This consisted of going to a shooting range and learning about the behaviour of the bears and how to avoid a bad situation and of course what to do if you get into a bad situation. We also got trained on what to do if you fall into the sea. This was very practical activity as they did make up jump into the sea and do several drills (linking each other together, swimming to shore and getting out) although we were wearing dry suits to keep warm. After a pretty intense two days, my group and I were treated to a pod of Beluga whales that swam in just of the shore behind the student accommodation. It was great to see them as I have never seen beluga in the wild before!





The lectures at UNIS started the next day and have continued throughout the rest of the week. My class have been planning a week-long field trip next week. We have been assigned a project to base our trip around. My group has been given the topic of geese and we have chosen to study their habitat preferences as we journey around the west side of Svalbard towards the northern most tip. Being a marine science student, this is a bit out of my comfort zone but it should be a great experience to try different sampling techniques on land.

Although it’s a bit hectic at the moment trying to get everything together and the planning done for the trip but hopefully it should be very enjoyable when we are out there!


Alistair

Hi everyone!

This post is about some more recent activities: visiting the more Russian side of Svalbard.

Obligatory picture of snowmobiles. This picture really reminds me of how small we can be, compared to nature.

 

The Barentsburg school, with some really cool murals!

The old (now out of use) greenhouse. I think this may have been one of the few signs not written in Russian.

The reading area of the library.

Books and stuff.

They also have a really quaint church. It's probably around 10 metres squared in total, but it's a coompletely different style to the rest of the city.

Lunch at Cole's bay. Picture from our professor, Mads Forchhammer.

Only one "cheap" and efficient way to get around the snowy wilderness that is Svalbard in the winter: snowmobiles! Also a really fun way of getting around

Our polar bear guard... A bit worrying that he seems to be looking through people...

Here's one of the holes we made, with an electric drill and hand held saw. Someone is using a straining ladle to remove the slush that accumulates on the hole. Otherwise, it would clog the net.

A zooplankton net (bottom right) with a really heavy cod end. We would lower and raise it using the quadrapod.

People pulling a zooplankton net/Nisking bottle back up. Gloves were highly recommended, as the rope was wet and we were well into the minus degrees!

Some of the equipment we used to process the sample on the ice. The round black thing is a sieve with a tiny mesh size (0.02 millimetres, if I remember well), which we used to collect all the organisms caught in the cod end.

This is an ice core we collected. The instrument we are probing it with is a thermometre. The ice was around 30 centimetres at that point in time (it has gotten thicker since).

Sun! Woo hoo!