Just a short one today. This one is about my personal love for travel and perplexity about scaffolding.

I’ve been incredibly lucky. Getting to see all different parts of the world at different times. Seeing changes and watching how the world grows and gets smaller. The first time I travelled by myself, in Latin America and Europe was before the proliferation of Facebook, before a reliable Skype. Not the same world my dad talks of when he was backpacking. Months without hearing from home and only by letters, actually hard copy 3D letters. But still without a smart phone, without easily sharing photos and video chatting with the oldies to show them the view out my hotel window.

All up there’s been some amazing advances, some of them are great, some of them less so. The ease of travel and the high level of connectivity with home has mean that a lot more people are travelling than there used to be, that has it’s pluses and minuses. Anything that increases the worlds general appreciation for differences in culture is fantastic, though I worry that it’s easier to remain insulated from what you are actually seeing and hearing. But as they say, the world spins and we must spin with it.

However, onwards from the melancholic reflection that is westernisation. Something expected of travellers is visits to old things. Often old and beautiful things, but occasionally old and ugly. Oh, and museums, don’t forget the museums (there’s a bread museum 50m’s from where I write this, I kid you not, 4 levels of bread.. historic bread to be sure). So it’s not uncommon to have two categories of photos, I overheard this on an island in Lake Titicaca and am yet to hear a truer thing. A) Sunsets/Sunrises B) Churches/Cathedrals/Old Impressive Buildings. Sometimes people have variants of these with people standing in front of the old things. Which is great, we don’t have a lot of recently old (ie. Younger than 40,000 years and older than 100 years) in Australia. So I fully understand why people love to visit it when they can. The art is often amazing, the scale of the buildings is amazing, the glass work. Etc. etc. Stunning old buildings. 

However, a phenomena I have noticed recently, in the last 3 years or so (though it may be much longer than this). Is that almost all of the old buildings, churches and temples, I have gone to see have been covered in scaffolding. With essential restoration taking place, sorry for the inconvenience. I have since discovered that in most cases scaffolding really isn’t photogenic, see below. Now, the reason I’m writing this blog post is to try and work out if this just happens to be a feature of this time, ie. All the buildings have got to that age where they need restoration and my generation is just a little unlucky. Or whether this has been the case forever and ever and somehow it just never got mentioned, it isn’t really a good premise for a story, scaffolding. But it is important, and I'm glad they're doing it.

And onward, to the next story of travel and adventures! (via some very picture-esque scaffolding)

Though I shouldn't forget the cranes..

Just in case you were wondering, the point of this was to remind everyone not to take things too seriously, travel is fun, but it doesn't turn you into the messiah.. and occasionally it will go wrong, and instead of an awesome view you'll get scaffolding and cranes. Run with it, it's part of the charm. How many people can say they saw the amazing scaffolding of Angkor Wat?

So after the exams and the cold it was time for a holiday. And a little bit of time to try and defrost. This turned out to work a little too well and I found myself melting in 12 degree heat, an Australian summer’s going to be interesting.

So I spent a few days wandering around Berlin. I suspect by now everyone’s been to Berlin, everyone’s loved it and has their own radical stories to tell. Most Australian’s you’ll meet will tell you how you loved it and they’d love to live there for a year or so. To anyone who’s managed to miss Berlin, it’s cool. There’s graffiti, coffee, boutiques, statues, the bears (see below) and the ever present undercurrent of resilience, if there was ever a city that rebounded. This is it. They should get a lot of credit for not hiding history, not forgetting it.

I was still at the point of being overwhelmed by big cities, after 5 weeks in Longyearbyen with a population in the 1000’s cities with 100,000’s of people are a bit much. They’re loud, busy, you have to watch your wallet and the cars. So I don’t have too many stories to tell, but the city is highly photogenic. 

The two most noteworthy things for me wandering the streets were a) the number of completely lost tourists looking at maps (since when did people actually still stand on street corners looking at paper maps? Wow) and b) someone getting tattooed as a form of attraction in a Quicksilver shop. I was actually quite amazed by that, someone up the chain at Quicksilver decided that in Berlin that would strengthen their brand. Can I see that happening in Australia? London? Singapore? Nope.. but there you go, Tattooing and Quicksilver. 

Beyond that, the wall or what’s left of it was charachterful and expressive and had a certain “bite me” vibe. I don’t know what it is about Berlin that meant they rebounded with such vigour, but I wish that could be bottled and sent around the world. 

Now for some photos, which are going to be able to tell the story much better than I can. 

May the winds be in your favour.

It’s been real, and it’s been good, it’s even been real good. And I have to say, I don’t really want to leave. Winter’s here, there’s going to be skiing soon, and heading back down south it’s going to go from being -10 to 10 (20 degree shift in 5 hours, win for Geography!) and just the usual slightly dreary Autumn. Not the excitement of fresh crisp snow and mountains you could reach out to touch. That said, it will be possible to sit outside for more than two minutes without freezing from the inside out.

But it’s been brilliant. Why? Cause I got to go to classes with people who know their stuff and love it, both the students and the teachers. This idea that everything can be replaced by online learning is, excuse my language, complete bollocks. You can’t replace incidental classroom interactions with online classrooms, just as you can’t replace coffee with a friend with chat on facebook. It’s a plan B, not a plan A.

It was great to do something new and completely different. To learn about a whole new part of the world. To learn about different political issues, different management issues, different economic and social attitudes. And to do this whilst looking out the window at a Fjord that either is or isn’t open to fishing. It wasn’t abstract, it was real. Most of the creatures we were shown in the introductory slides at the beginning we then saw on the cruise. The gears that were talked about and the various equipment’s we saw, and in some cases we got to play with. For sure it’s not an easy way to each, nor a cheap way, but it’s effective.

And on top of all that, I got to spend a month in the Arctic circle. Surrounded by a language and a culture that I love.

Overall, I’m a pretty lucky duck. There was walking, there was snow, there was visiting huskies, there was a beach themed party, there was shooting and survival suits. For some people it really wasn’t their thing, whether the cold, the culture, the isolation or just the general “other-ness” (I suspect there is a reason the equatorial regions are more populous than the North/South), but for some, such as myself, we’d come back in a heartbeat. Whilst there’s awesome things up next it’s still sad to leave and I will miss the winter. Longyearbyen is a special place, just big enough, and just right for what it is.

I have to say though, I’m looking forward to having a real coffee when I get home. 

Then it snowed some more

And just a little bit more, just for good measure.

Then, when we weren’t looking, there was some more snow.

Then a teensy bit more.

It turns out there are kinds of snow. They aren’t actually making it up when they say that various native northern peoples have 50 words for snow, bearing in mind they are all names for different kinds of snow. We experienced happy little snow flakes, which dance down from the clouds swirling and twirling on their merry way. Fun, light hearted snow that doesn’t really carry with it the heart of winter. It there was ever going to be snow in summer, this would be it.

Then there was normal snow, which just comes down, occasionally irritating. But still it gets lit up when it drops by street lamps, and does look like something slightly mystical. Particularly for those of us who didn’t grow up with snow.

Then there was heavy snow. Snow with a vengeance and a plan. Snow with a mission. This is the snow that’s going to wend its way into the crack between your hood and beanie. That’s going to collect on your bag and wait for just the right moment to fall inside, ideally on your camera. Snow with enough weight to get caught on your glasses and melt sufficiently so you can’t see anything, somehow worse than rain. It’s snow that manages to make you look like yeti. It was still fun though, and very easy to catch and eat as it falls down.

After just a few days of snow it was almost impossible to imagine anything else. The mountains have always been white, the road always white, the fox tracks were always there. But apparently in other parts of the world, in fact just a little south, it’s not the case. Down there the leaves are only just starting to change, or if you want to go further down, down to home, it’s starting to warm up. Whilst it was snowing like there was no tomorrow on me areas of my home country were starting to burn. Houses, cars and people lost in hot blazes. Even though I’ve been there, seen fires, smelt and heard them, it’s almost impossible to imagine it being that bad. And yet it is. Shame I can’t send them some of my snow.

p.s re: Snow. Children, don’t eat yellow snow. Why? Ask your parents, but really, don’t do it. 

Who wants to study for an exam with me? It’ll be fun, I promise (well, fun when compared with being hung upside down next to your figgin).

So we’ve survived the practical remembering the species names exam, and apparently most people did really well! Congratulations to most people! Pat on the back to those of us who are just glad to have been able to write something down.

Our reward for finishing that exam is a) writing a report (that isn’t part of the grading system, and will be covered elsewhere) and b) sitting another exam! This is more my kind of exam, well, please note I am saying that before the exam happens. But it’s 4 long answer questions, over 5 hours although we aren’t expected to stay for the whole thing. So basically we’ll get a few questions which you have to answer with a short essay, including concepts that we’ve read about in the papers (cause I’m sure we’ll all have read the papers) and that have been in lectures. It’ll be fun! Why? Cause we get to think! Rather than just remember how to spell things, although it’s looking like I’ll have to remember how to spell Euphausiids.. hmmm..

So, I have decided, very generously, to share with you the studying for this exam. It’ll be wild, it’ll be wicked, and god forbid! It might even be educational too! I might add in little cartoons for you. We’ll see how much I want to procrastinate.

So, firstly, we’ve gone through and got all the questions that have been written into the powerpoint presentations we’ve had, these include:

How does oceanography affect benthic biota? – I’m going to go out on a limb here and say “Probably a lot”

Are all fjords alike? Or all locations in a fjord? – Again, out on a limb, “Probably no”

Are there characteristic Arctic and Atlantic communities? – “mmmyyyeeesssss”

How will climate driven changes in oceanography impact Arctic benthic systems? – Temptation to say “Many lots”

What factors might determine depth zonation in Arctic Benthos? – Good question

How are structure and function linked? – You remember the mud slicing and worm identifying loyal readers? That’s to answer this one

What is required to determine whether a system has been impacted? – Quite a vague question, but always always always need to start with an understanding of the baselines, ie. What it was like before

What are the benefits and drawbacks of using the benthos to study impacts? – There’s a really big one, it doesn’t move a lot!

What is different about the Arctic? – Looking for something a little more meaningful than “it’s cold”

How can climate change impact benthos and higher level predators? – Good question

How do we detect changes and uncover the responsible mechanisms? – We could employ Sherlock Holmes, or get our brilliant science hats on

How can we use the benthos to reconstruct past climate? – This is actually really awesome, and you can use mussels (among other things)

You should feel free to jot down your own answers to these questions as we go, just as you should feel free to dust on top of the fridge or send in every single work related receipt to the tax department.

So what’s next?

We’ll read some papers and come up with some answers to those questions and more.

Right now I have a very exciting paper open in front of me, from 2008, looking at shrimp recruitment and the factors that result in lots of shrimp and the factors that result in not so many shrimp. This is important because lots of people like to eat shrimp (though personally I am a prawn person). Good old Pandalus borealis. Basically all sorts of things impact on how many shrimp you get in the next year. And you can see some of them below (and possibly the reason I followed science rather than graphic design as a career). 

So basically, the temperature has to be right, too cold and all the shrimp freeze to death, or if it's too cold they head down to warmer waters to be eaten by more Cod.
The Shrimp and Euphausiids compete, so the more Euphausiids the less shrimp.
As one might expect, the more baby shrimp you have one year the more toddler shrimp you'll get the next year. 
And then baby cod eat baby shrimp, so the more baby cod the less baby shrimp. 
It's only slightly more complicated than that, because at different ages the shrimp are more or less vulnerable to different factors, 
But there you go, you learnt something! And so did I. 
Happy days are here again.

Now only 30 papers to go

Cause we all llloooovvvveee to study for exams. But, you can't have all this fun without showing people that you've learnt something. Otherwise it's kinda like cheating. So we have an exam. It's a practical exam, in some ways it's practical. We're going to be given 20 different critters from a list of 70 or so and we have to name them, Latin name that is. 
Now, my Latin is a bit rusty, well it's worse than rusty, and my ability to spell in latin is even worse. But I gave it a good shot. I know a lot of the kids in my class will have got around 100% which is pretty awesome for them, in this case though I'm just going to be stoked if I pass. There's other things I'm good at, well better at than remembering things in Latin. But either way, I thought I'd share with you some of the cooler creatures that were on the list, and some of my attempts at remembering who and what they were. 

Pectinaria koreni

The eyelash worm. Easily identified by its golden kita (ie. golden eyelashes), generally fat and spikey, lives in a tube that kinda makes it look like a nightmare ice cream.

Maldane sarsi

Bamboo worm, long segments, same nose and tail. Memorable not only because of how it looks but also that it kinda looks like mangled bamboo. If you can work out how to remember "sarsi" you get a prize of feeling awesome about yourself. 

Acanthostepheia malmgreni

One of my favourite little guys, fondly known as "Punky", I do feel terrible though because I completely forgot his first name in the exam.

Pagurus pubescens

HERMIT CRAB!! and if you can't make jokes about a pubescent hermit crab then you really aren't trying

Ctenodiscus crispatus

This is what we call a "Sea Biscuit" at home, both disc shaped and crispy

Heliometra glacialis

Looks like it’s from Avatar, and that creature spends most of its life hanging around the bottom of the ocean, just looking stunning where no-one can see

Hiatella arctica

Generally ugly, can be any shape. White with brown parts and can be mostly rectangular. Many have ribs with spines. They look like shells that have been through the Arctic and back again. 

Lepeta caeca

Conical and limpet looking, appears to have a small alien baby inside, don’t believe me? Have a look!

Last but not least:



Similipecten greenlandicus

Has evenly shaped ears, predominantly see through, very delicate looking. Such an easily broken looking thing to be living up here. 

The cold

It has distinct geographies, possibly nationalities. Today the Arctic cold hit, which was a bit of a shock really. It’s different. And cold, capital K cold, as my dad would say.

As you guys have probably guessed by now, I’m Australian. For an Australian I’ve done a pretty good job to check out some of our countryside. The red centre, the mountains, the tropics etc. And occasionally out there is gets cold. There’s different types of cold for the different places and times. There’s the cold that comes around Christmas time, in Summer, when you’ve spent a day at the beach and suddenly the sun goes down while you’re still wrapped in a wet towel. There’s the cold of winter when you’re walking along the beach wrapped up in your raincoat in a squall. There’s the cold that comes in the desert at night, which is a precious empty kind of cold and you can feel all the dust and hot rocks cooling off. There’s the cold in the highlands where the back of my drizabone actually frosted over whilst I was sitting by the fire. There’s the snow in Winter when it can drop to -3 or so, and the mountains in summer where it once rained overnight and then froze and we woke to a jingling sound of the leaves rustling in the wind with frozen water droplets on them chiming when then rustled together.

They’re all cold, and they’re all different. I had expected something else when I came up here. After all, it’s the Arctic circle. I’ve read stories about the cold. Beautiful descriptions of what happens to your skin at -30, what happens to the ground and the rocks. Of cold that needles in between stiches in your clothing and freezes liquids well inside your jacket. There’s rumours of nose hairs freezing. But when I landed here it was a balmy 7 degrees, just like the winters at home. There was the occasional breeze off the glacier but nothing to write home about. It was hard to imagine what all the fuss was about. 

Yeah, naive Aussie. 

We had a taste of the cold on the ship. When we were sheltered behind a glacier, I stepped out on deck and almost got blown away. Within a minute or so I couldn’t feel anything in my fingers and my fingers managed to get too cold to be registered by the touch screen on my phone. New first world problem for the list.

But we really got a taste yesterday. It wasn’t a full white out (where there is too much snow in the air to see beyond your nose) but you could see how it would get that way. It was cold, well into the minus, with a wind that rapidly picked up. It’s snowed quite a lot over the last few days, and because it hasn’t melted and refrozen the snow is still quite loose. As some of you may know, as snow gets colder it gets drier, this is logical but not something I regularly think about. So the snow didn’t stick to anything and instead is free to fly around the sky happy as a little lark, very much like a fine sand. It was fantastic, the snow gave shape to the wind, so you could see all the eddies and movements around buildings, or the snow willy-willys as we would call them.  And it was cold, the wind added a new edge to the cold. Rather than just the dry that sucks out the heat, it had barbs, needles. It was something completely new and different, and it finally felt like the Arctic.

I’ve already outlined my respect for the people who’ve lived and worked up here in the years before modern comfort and convenience, but wow. They must have been made of steel. It’s not easy, and even if I kitted myself out properly I can’t see myself surviving long out there.

That said, it is an awesome experience, and it is nice to have got at least a taste of the real North before we have to leave!

For those of you who are wondering, or thinking about a bit of science communication, you might be a bit curious about this blog. Possibly why it was done and how, and also maybe a little bit of my own thoughts about the process.

For starters it wasn’t easy. I’m here (in Svalbard) as a student to be studying, blogging isn’t part of the remit. As you may have gathered we were working late on the ship, sometimes 16 hour days. So to fit this in I generally woke up about 45 minutes earlier than my colleagues to write this out the morning after. Occasionally I got a little bit of time during the day to process some photos. I took about 150 photos a day which on average was about 146 photos/day more than everyone else.

Why did I do it? Why did I forgo lovely sleep? Because I think this is important. The chance that someone reading this might learn something new, might have a slightly greater respect for and understanding of science. That a kid might be inspired to go out and find something new or that a parent will want their child to grow up and be an explorer in this day and age where is seems everything is known and understood. I still remember one of my friends, we were 15, telling me that science was boring now, it was exciting 100 years ago when there were new inventions and such, but why do it now? There isn’t anything new to find. I’ve been told a lot of incorrect things in my life, but that sits right up near the top. There are new things found every day, new experiences, new systems to understand. It’s not just small critters that live at the bottom of the sea, but how these things all fit together. There are billions of things yet to find out, and we shouldn’t think all the cool stuff has been invented. (I’d also like to note that since then smart phones have become ubiquitous, the iPod is everywhere, my camera has a touch screen and we have satellite internet on ships below 80 degrees, technology hasn’t stopped).

So in part it’s inspiration and the wonder of science. But as a scientist this has also been a really really good revision tool. I’m going to have to memorise the names of all the creatures you’ve seen here. I’ll have to describe interactions and collection methods, all kinds of things. By having done this blog I’ve reflected as I’ve gone, I’ve got really detailed notes, and by having to explain things to other people I’ve developed a better understanding of the things I’m studying.

Whilst this isn’t for everyone, and most people can’t write as fast as I can (if it was more time consuming it would be a lot harder) personally I’d recommend the experience to everyone. Don’t let awesome things get lost because you were tired when you learnt them, because you wanted to watch TV rather than fill in your diary or worst, because you don’t think people would be interested in science.

Of course now the challenge is finding the next thing. 

Today is all about group work for our final reports. Our groups have been allocated the projects that we are going to be writing up. Our group drew the coveted “shrimp project”, you remember all the analysis of the stomachs? Yep, that’s going to be us.

So most of today is group meetings to work out who’s going to do what, what we need to do etc. etc. The excitement of the day is the deployment of a mooring in Kongsfjorden. I’m hoping to see that, cause it should be pretty cool to see a tonne of gear hanging off a line. 

These are parts of the moorings that are going to be located around Svalbard collecting a huge amount of information about sedimentation rates, and types, at different times throughout the year. As well as other information about the water column. I think they are a pretty awesome piece of kit. 

You can't rush the deployment of a mooring, there's a lot of bits and pieces to test to ensure that it will work as planned when planned. Mostly that the mooring will be released to float back up to the surface when it is called. The silver tube below is the release, and it had to be tested a number of times at different depths to ensure that it was at least working when deployed. Whether or not it would still be working in a years time after being iced over and attacked by salt water is a different issue (though from what I can gather they tend to be pretty successful)

The old pieces of chain and wire hanging below are what will be used as an anchor for the mooring. 

Additionally, very excitingly there was a tall ship sharing the dock with us this morning. If that ain't awesome I don't know what is. 

You might also remember that we had to draw a cartoon for the death defying nutrients/acid/chlorophyll experiment. Or you may not. Either way, this is our cartoon, we were quite proud. 

And here I will wrap up for the ship board blog. From now till we got off the ship it was mostly just cleaning tidying and cleaning. Nothing overly exciting, although cleaning was highly satisfying. 
Don't despair though, it ain't over till it's over! 
We've still got two weeks, one report and two exams to go. I've got a reflection to write and then it will be down to the business of identifying these creatures! Most importantly remembering their latin names, wooo! Who's with me?

We woke close to Ny Ålesund in much much much calmer seas. It was quite a nice break after the storm and the drama. Everyone was starting to feel a bit better, though there are a few grey faces. Our day started with attempting to identify more polychaets. This wasn’t overly successful from my account as there were just too many new words and concepts to be learning. But the leader found a great little guy (below) for me to try and ID. 

He was pretty awesome up close too, although he did make a few spirited attempts at freedom, including all over my jeans, an event he definitely won. 

And then those little legs up even closer, as you can see they are pretty impressive, and there are a lot of them. 

But then we got to go onto the land at Ny Ålesund which is a fantastic little research station. Our ship docked and looked quite photogenic. 

It used to be a coal mining town but now the mine has been abandoned, mostly due to a drastic incident a few years ago. Now it’s entirely used for research and there’s a whole bunch of nations that have little settlements up there. So there’s some cool old mining relics, including a random little train.

There’s the cool way everyone gets around town, though there are plenty of cars too. 

We went for quite a walk along the beach to stretch some tired ship legs and found a beach covered with snow, which for the Australian’s was quite a shock.. 

And of course we all had a bit of fun relaxing, though it wasn’t your average beach party. A lot of activities become more fun when you are wearing waterproof snow clothing. 

When we got back there was still quite a bit of work to be done. There were a few molluscs to try and identify. As you can see here.. there are a few to go:

And they look pretty awesome up close. But we didn’t get a whole lot done, there were too many new things to learn and not enough time which was quite a shame. But it was quite nice to have a close look. 

There was also more glacier time. There are few things more refreshing than going out for a breath of fresh glacier air when you need a break. Even though all the heat immediately gets ripped out of your skin. There was quite a bit of action happening on the glacier too, plenty of bits breaking off it and lots of sounds from the ship crashing into mini icebergs. 

Our last full day tomorrow, it’s been a very full time but it’s going to be a shame to leave the boat and move back to landlubber activities.

P.S I asked if I could stay in Ny A and the goss was, really probably not, its 1000NOK/night plus 1000NOK/day for food plus your “bench”/lab fee. So it’s some pretty lucky scientists that get to stay up there.. though it is remote