So we've had some lectures, as noted earlier, these are not really photogenic activities so blogging about them isn't really so exciting, but I'll try anyhow. 
Below you will find a classroom, like most classrooms many people sit whilst one person talks. It's exciting stuff. Well, in actual fact it has been quite exciting because its pretty obvious that the people who have been talking to us really care about their subjects, they love talking about it and sharing the information. It has been a nice change when compared with some other lectures in Australia. 

The last few days have been filled more with very species and group specific information. 
So we've had Decapoda, ten footed critters.
Meroplankton, critters that are only planktonic for part of their life cycle. We learnt about Polychaetes, which are not "many parakeets" which is a conclusion one could jump to when tired and disoriented. 
Bryozoa, not to be referred to as "sea blobs", nor are Ascidians to be referred to as sea blobs. 
And molluscs, which are much more complex than my initial thought jump to the "modest mollusc" might suggest. Suffice to say, there is much more going on in the sea than I ever could have guessed.. 

We learnt a bit about some of the projects we're going to be working on during the "cruise". It's probably worth noting here that a "cruise" in this context is not quite what comes to mind initially. We aren't talking palm trees, relaxing by a spa and drinking cocktails. It's more like a research expedition. We're going to be heading up the West coast of Svalbard then over the North areas of the island, working 12 hours a day, and eating.. well.. eating whatever they feed us. The ship was a shrimp trawler (and still sometimes trawls for shrimp, like we will be doing) so it's a working boat.
So lets get rid of the pretty little relaxing ideas and think working nights, days and everything in between.
Part of the research is on shrimp (which are not prawns.. but google is disinclined to tell me a helpful difference). Here is probably a good point to say that realistically, no Australian EVER says "shrimp", they are always prawns. So how do they research shrimp? They trawl for them, count and measure them, gut fish that are caught in the trawl to see if they have been eating shrimp and then once all that has happened THEY EAT THE SHRIMP!
So, as many of you know, I'm a Geographer. Death is not a big part of the research deal. We observe, occasionally we prod, we take a whole bunch of photos and then we write it all up. This sudden immersion in the Biological world has been a bit of a shock. Not only because there is so much to learn but also the casual approach to death. Of counting things by killing them. Sure, there aren't many other ways to do it, but still, its a new paradigm. Apparently it is a relatively common concept in marine biology, that you eat what you study, all I can say is I'm keen that this does NOT catch on anywhere else. Geologists eating rocks, Geographers eating geography, No, just No. 
But who knows, maybe it helps people develop an appreciation for their subject so they work harder? I doubt it's really a bad thing. 
We're also doing a project on the benthic communities, keeping some of them alive in contained mud cylinders to see what they get up to under different conditions. Hopefully we'll get some cool photos of all this and we can start to see what the goss is! 

And below we see a picture of the view out the lecture room windows, yes distracting. 

And so now we head off onto a ship, out into the big beyond. Hopefully to see some awesome fauna, get covered in fish, eat some surveyed shrimp and maybe, if 
Yesterday was the Autumnal equinox, so from here it starts getting dark and cold. 

So, since being trained on how to shoot things and jump into cold water without dying, very little of photogenic value has happened. 
Instead what has happened is a bunch of lectures on various topics relating to the nature of the Arctic environment, the interactions between the water column (pelagic) and the sea floor (benthic) and then some super duper in depth discussions about the critters that live in the benthos and how they work. So, whilst it has been incredibly interesting and astonishingly educational it isn't so easy to write about because a bunch of kids taking notes in lectures.. well there's nothing new to that. 
So instead I'm going to share a few of the things we learnt, and random points I thought were interesting. 

Firstly we won't be seeing sea ice whilst we are here in Svalbard because of the Arctic sea ice retreat that you might have heard about. So that's a stark sign of global change. It's somewhat hard to deny that things are changing whilst up here, it's pretty clear.

The Arctic and the Antarctic really aren't similar, aside from being cold with ice. The biology is different, the seasonality is different, the amounts and age of ice is different etc. etc. Plus the Arctic has fjords, polar bears and no penguins, though it does have this thing that looks like a penguin (but it isn't!)

The water movements within the Arctic area are hugely complex. Water is coming in from the North Atlantic Current (which is warm and salty), then the Bering Strait brings in some cold fresher water and all these currents interact and swirl around in various patterns resulting in significant ecological differences in very small areas. 

Some of the deep water in the Arctic can sit around for 300 years, whilst other shallower more fast moving water can be in and out in 10 years. I still find the idea of identifying water as "Atlantic" or "Tasman" etc. as a somewhat odd concept, surely water isn't so easily described, but apparently it can be, and it's actually a really important part of oceanography.

I thought it was quite cool that the terminal moraine from a glacier at the end of a fjord, if sufficiently shallow, can act almost as a fjord dam limiting water circulation and therefore drastically changing that fjords ecology. Moraines are awesome.

There was a lot of general discussion about the importance of studying the marine environment and particularly the benthos.. seeing as this is a benthic ecology course that isn't overly surprising. But so far, I'd have to concur. There are some really importance processes happening at the bottom of the sea, including carbon cycling (ie. all I can gather from this article is that they know it's an important factor.. but really not much more than that). Plus, there are some super duper crazy animals living down there, and if these guys can't be an inspiration for some creativve biomimicry then I don't know what can. Anyhow, point is, its probably worth looking into. 

That said, it looks like the melt water from glaciers has a huge impact on fjord ecology too, bringing fresh nutrients, sediments and fresh water. So maybe it isn't just a pretty picture. 

Then we got into a little bit of Geography, which was fun. Stuff like the intermediate disturbance hypothesis and a little bit of island bio-geography. Not feeling too far from home now! 

There was a lot of discussion about the impacts of climate change and how they are going to change the ecology, and in some cases new species are already moving back into the Arctic because the environment has changed sufficiently. Overall, people are expecting a very different Arctic. A summer without sea ice will have a huge impact on the communities dependant on sea ice, not to mention on the communities dependant on the communities dependant on sea ice. And on it goes. There will be changes to the fisheries, to everything. The Arctic is at the fore of witnessing these changes, but it will only be time until similar changes are felt globally. When we won't find the species we used to find. It can be quite distressing hearing about the impacts of climate change, particularly on the big mammals that we tend to identify quite well with. Because of the lack of sea ice there are less areas for seals and walruses to raise their pups within reasonable distances from feeding grounds. (ie. imagine if all the supermarkets and cafes within your usual driving distance were removed and suddenly you had to drive twice as far, and then imagine it got worse next year, and the year after, not so bad if you live in the city, but for anyone already living on the edge.. well there's some expletives that can fit there. N.B a walrus CANNOT create it's own veggie garden as we can). 

So far no one has mentioned the giant squid, we can but hope.

The scientific world did tend to think that the deep sea was dull, boring, the same everywhere (homogeneous), dull, boring and more dull. That was until quite recently when they discovered those black smokers mentioned earlier. Then they started doing things like watching what happens to a dead whale ("Whale Fall") on a patch of apparently empty sea floor. And what happened was kinda cool, if rather macabre, and brought a whole new understanding to what's happening at the bottom of the sea whilst we're not looking. If a whale falls in the ocean and there's no one to hear it, does it make a noise? Yep, something along the lines of "THUD - nom nom nom nom nom". So much for Zen. 

Also, walruses are left tusked. Go science!

Next up, a bit of hard core biology for the geographer and preparation for a cruise. 

Its been less than 24 hours on Svalbard. So far I’ve navigated the shops and purchased some postcards. Whilst these activities are less than scientific they are vital life skills.

However, as they say in the burbs (suburbs for the non-natives out there), shit just got real. Today we have a safety course. What does this mean?

We had an hour or so lecture on the various ways you can die on the island (did I hear someone say Academia is an ivory tower..?). These ways include: avalanches, rock falls, falling into a crevasse (60% of Svalbard is Glaciers, that’s a lot of crevasses), getting a virus from mice (though that won’t kill you for 15 years), being bitten by a rabid fox or, as is traditional, mauled by polar bear. Then there’s the usual exposure issues, falling off boats etc.

The good news? No spiders, no snakes, no polar bears in town.

The “adventurous” news? Now we’re off to the range to learn how to shoot a high powered rifle at a bear.

I’d never seen a real gun before, never heard a gun shot let alone fired one of the bloody things. In that way I’m a fairly typical white bread aussie. I have, what I believe to be, a perfectly reasonable fear of guns. They are an astonishing way of extinguishing life with minimal human effort. That said, my natural pacifist tendencies when competing with the thought of a massively pissed polar bear.. well, survival wins out there. The day the bears learn how to load a gun we’re all 100% buggered.

However, in the name of science I, along with my colleagues, learnt from a wonderfully thorough Finnish fellow. We were taught gun basics, this is a trigger, this is a barrel etc. We learnt how to load and half load the guns. We were taught never to walk through town with a loaded gun. We were reminded that there’d be kick back and how to stand to maintain balance. Etc. etc. As introductions to a killing machine go, it was pretty friendly. I was also impressed with all the PI books I’ve read over the years. They were actually pretty helpful, particularly those written about people who were freaked out about shooting stuff. 

That said, the shock of hearing someone’s gun go off the first time.. bloody oath. 7 of us shooting at the one time made quite an impression. I have to say, I was pretty stoked with my first shots, though they went rapidly downhill from there due to excess adrenalin. As for shooting standing up.. I’m pretty sure I entirely missed the target on at least one occasion. 

Now, for all of you greenies out there, you’re probably a little worried. What are they doing teaching kiddies to shoot an endangered species for? Well, I’ll tell you.

Polar bears are deadly. They hunt and eat people. This is just how it is, Svalbard is their home and we barge in looking for coal, fish etc. So, in the first instance all effort is made to avoid bears entirely. This is done through knowledge of the bears, where they like to be at certain times of year etc. However, sometimes the bears surprise us. They’re curious creatures and like to have a wander too. For the most part the bears won’t be hunting people and if they are considered too close a flare gun is shot which scares off the bear. In most instances that works. It’s only in instances where the bear is actively hunting the people involved that there are issues. In this case, if the bear isn’t scared off by flares and loud noises and continues to approach, well then you might have to shoot. Believe you me, the description of an instance where a bear might have to be shot sent shivers down my spine. Let alone the thought of having to try and shoot a moving, rather angry/hungry creature who you know is endangered. That takes some guts. 

There have been two bear shootings this year on Svalbard. One was two skiiers and a dog out of town and in the other instance the bear was climbing into a hut (note, people were inside the hut).

For all people say Australia is a dangerous country, at least nothing is ever going to come barrelling into your tent to eat you. The worst that’s likely is a rather enthusiastic wombat, and even then.. unlikely.

So after the adrenalin and cold shivers brought on by bears, we headed back to uni to be kitted out with a cold water survival suit. The next thing that can kill you, and did kill a woman this year, falling into the water and dying of shock. Basically these suits are water proof, slightly lined, look like a giant caterpillar and will help you survive if a zodiac over turns.

This part of the day was pretty silly, nothing like climbing into a onsie to feel like a dag, and we got to float in the sea whilst gazing up at glaciers. It was awesome.

Tomorrow the real work starts. But let it never be said that I didn’t sing for my supper!

The home of pure geography

There is something genuinely mystical about flying into Northern Norway. Sharp mountain tops that scratch holes in the clouds. The aesthetically pleasing smattering of snow and the wending of the land and the sea.

Its no surprise seeing the land that it was the home of various trolls, ice giants and gods. The landscape is drastically shaped by the ice and cold.

Even in the 21st century very little of it is considered arable (farmable) so to a foreigner much of the land appears to be untouched and hostile. Only huddled outpostings of wooden houses on the sea shore looking alarmingly fragile.

I was lucky enough to get here a few times around the end of high school. Launching rockets from Andoya Rocket Range with a whole bunch of enthusiastic youths. This time I'm back heading further into the Arctic to Longyearbyen (literally translated - Long Year City) to study a bit of marine ecology. Not specifically my field, but I generally consider everything to be my field as a Geographer. 

The flight in was particularly exciting, I spotted almost every geographical feature ever mentioned in textbooks back at home. It was about as exciting as it gets.

Stay tuned for the next post! We're learning how to protect from polar bears and jumping into the sea in survival suits.