February 4: Last Day On Station

Laurence M. Gould here to take us home.

Our chariot arrived this morning at 0730 to take us home.  I wanted to wake up to watch them pull in, but they were a little early so I only got to see them throwing their lines over to tie up at the pier.  Everyone was excited to be off of the ship and walking around.  Now the madness ensues to get everyone’s cargo on board and samples offloaded.  Since we are leaving tomorrow morning, everyone is scrambling to get everything taken care of.  We moved out of our rooms and will be moving on the ship shortly too.

Fur Seal

Antarctic Tern

Yesterday I got to take an amazing farewell trip with the birders to look for a tagged Chinstrap penguin.  We got to go to Dream Island which is a long boat ride away.  The penguin wasn’t on the island yet so we got to relax for an hour and see if it came back from foraging.  The bird group had to stay close to the nest, but I got to go hike around the island.  There was a small cave and these beautiful rock formations all over the island.  I accidentally ran into a Skua nest and was then chased away by the parents.  I almost forgot, but I saw a Fur Seal, Weddell Seal, Elephant Seals, 2 kinds of penguins, an antarctic tern and it chick.   I finally went back to join the birders to make sure that I didn’t get left behind.  The tagged penguin never returned so we came back to the station to eat dinner.  Afterward, Mark gave a science talk about his research back home and then explained what we were doing down here.  Everyone was very excited to see what we had been doing and to see some of the preliminary data.

Well everyone it has been an amazing ride down here.  I’m not sure what the next couple of days across the Drake Passage will be like, but I imagine it will not be as smooth as the trip down.  Hopefully I will only be sick for one of the days and not all of them.  We don’t have Internet on the ship so I will be emailing Teresa at Calpoly who will be posting my emails and some pictures on the blog so check back periodically to see how the crossing is going.