last few days in Ny Alesund and on to Longyearbyen

The last week has been hectic, as we wrapped up our fieldwork and traveled back to Longyearbyen. On Monday, we collected the last needed CTD and alpha bottle samples and checked on the upwelling sediment traps, which of course had vanished. The fjord monster is hard at work. In the afternoon, we took the boats up the fjord along the Broggerhalvoya peninsula (where Ny Alesund is located) to go look at some stone circles and collect shells from some raised beaches for Laura P's project. Unfortunately, the waves were too big for us to anchor the boats off shore, so we returned to Ny Alesund empty-handed. Monday evening we had our webinar with Polartrec, which is archived here if you didn't get a chance to see it. Throughout the webinar, Mike, who is our PolarTREC teacher, constantly corrected his pronunciation of "glacier" to appease one of our PIs, Ross Powell, who is from New Zealand.

Sadly, Tuesday was our last day of fieldwork. I finished profiling the Kongsvegen/Kronebreen terminus with the echosounder. Julie, Ross, and I then headed to the northernmost toe of Kronebreen to run a few baseline transects there; if the 2011 Svalbard REU group chooses to work in this area rather than the Kongsvegen/Kronebreen terminus, then the few transects that we run there will be useful to them. In the afternoon, we finally made our way out to the peninsula to look at the stone circles and collect some shells. Due to isostatic rebound, many of the beaches along the peninsula have been raised, so a collection of shells from different terraces can provide a snapshot into different offshore ecosystems as a function of time.

stone circles at Broggerhalvoya peninsula

Wednesday we packed up all our field equipment and samples for shipping. For me, sample "packing" is quite easy, because I just throw my data on a few different memory sources, so I have a backup in case a hard drive dies. In comparison, Laura P, Theo, and Hector all have to wait for their samples to dry, cut the unused core liner off, and then package their gravity, sediment trap, and ekmen samples, respectively.

Thursday we finished up the last bit of packing by putting the labels and inventories onto all the boxes and moving the boxes to the necessary locations to be shipped. Afterwards, we headed to lunch, which was unbelievably delicious: potato soup and cheesy bread. At home, I almost always have soup for lunch, so it was a nice surprise for me. We then waited for our flight, which was scheduled for 2:45pm.

The polar bear in the service building (where all our meals are served) wanted to take me for a romantic stroll while we waited for our flight.

When we finally had to leave, I was a wee bit sad. It is hard to say goodbye to such an amazing and surreal place, even though I am excited about the prospect of nighttime in the near future. Unfortunately, clouds covered the fjord as we flew over, but it cleared a little bit later.