Jan. 6: Palmer Station

January 6th, 2011

I'm actually writing this entry before midnight.  Yayyyy!  Well ladies and gentlemen we are officially Palmer Station residents. It has been a crazy day here, both on the station and on the ship, as everybody makes their final preparations for the ships departure and as we get settled in.  We had kitchen/food orientation at 08:30 this morning so we had to wake up early and clean out our steel container house and pack our luggage up to our new rooms.  We turned in all of our linens and ate our final meal on the ship (really!). 

After double checking that everything was off of the ship we went and met one of our chefs, whose name is Beaver. Don’t know the story yet. We found out how to do our own dishes, where food scraps go, where food is located, where to sign up for cleaning duty. 

After processing all this I feel like we are living in a commune a little bit. In a great way though.  Everyone is part of the machine and everyone takes care of each other and chips in. It is an amazing feeling because everyone that works here has made the choice to be here and accepts the need for all of this. Maybe it is also because of our reality show complex these days that I almost feel like we are part of a show in a way. 

After kitchen orientation, we moved on to waste orientation and then on to lab orientation, where we learn what goes where, how to get anything we need, and the general operation of the laboratory environment. There are groups already on site and a couple of groups that are moving over from the ship that are from universities all over the U.S. 

The science groups are studying everything from viruses to bacteria, to insects to penguins, phytoplankton and zooplankton and general oceanography. Most are ongoing studies based out of the station. The neat thing is they are all located in the same room, within walking distance so everyone kind of peeks over each other shoulders and are always asking questions. 

After orientations on orientations about orientations we had a little break and then time for lunch. All I can say is that I might not come back just because the food is so good here.  Artisan café mixed with 5 star restaurants.  Can’t say much more other than take a picture of the lineup for every meal.  After lunch we took a boating class to get cleared to ride in the boats. 

Then we had the rest of the day off to work and get set up in our lab. I installed our satellite phone for the REMUS units (remote Environmental Measuring Units) to call back into.  For those of you who haven’t heard of the REMUS’s, these are the underwater robots that we use to map, sample, and study the ocean. We also got our computers checked out to make sure they were clean and secure for the station. 

We finished up the evening with a station/ship pizza and ice cream get together and then here I am writing about our day and getting ready to go to bed.  It has been snowing all day, with light fluffy snow, but none has stuck to the ground.  We had another seal hanging out for a little bit, but nothing else showed up to play today.