Journal Entries

2004-05

 

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	February 2005	01
Click here to access journal entries by Marianne Kaput or Giancarlo Lopez-Martinez.

 

January 16, 2005:

Today is a good day for field work, so we head out to Norsel Point first, in search of Belgica adults. We found a ton of them on our last trip to Norsel, but now there are hardly any! The Belgica adult’s 10-day lifespan can be inconvenient that way — on this island, the adults have come and gone. However, we go next to Humble island, and find more adults than we've ever seen, and we actually get to see adults emerging from their pupae (like caterpillars pupate and emerge as butterflies) and mating (see picture below). And finally, as if this weren't enough, we finally get to see Belgica's egg clusters! They are the yellow round things in the picture below. This is very cool, and we fill up various containers and Joe and I both have aspirators and are able to collect enough adults to keep Dave busy with his heat-shock experiments for a while.

Meanwhile the birders (the team of scientists here that studies seabirds, mostly penguins and giant petrels and brown skuas) are on Humble with us, measuring brown skua eggs and chicks. This is very interesting to watch. The brown skuas are probably my favorite birds here — they are built like fighter planes, fast and maneuverable, with a mean-looking beak — they can actually steal a meal from another bird's mouth in midair. When one slices by, you can see its head swiveling from side to side like radar, seeing everything. They build their nests on the ground, so the birders are able to get in and measure the chicks with no problem, although skuas like to dive-bomb people, so the birders have a tall stick planted in the ground that keeps them from getting buzzed too closely.

So imagine our excitement when we get home to find out that in fact someone on another island has found a recently dead brown skua and retrieved it for the birders, who have in turn donated it to us to check for parasitic ticks and mites, which are arachnids (in the same class as spiders and ticks). Getting a close-up look at this beast is amazing. Apparently they found it in front of a rock with its wings still spread, suggesting that it may have died from flying into the rock. Sure enough, Joe, in full CSI mode, finds a dent in the skull at just about the right angle to indicate that the skua timed one of those cool head-swivels exactly wrong and, looking the other direction, crashed right into the rock. I guess they really are like fighter planes — making one little mistake can be disastrous.

Joe, wearing rubber gloves, picks through the bird's feathers (which are amazingly dense, because skuas spend lots of time swimming around in very cold water and need lots of waterproof insulation) — and for a half-hour's work gets three mites. Oh, well. It’s sort of cool that skuas are that parasite-free, actually. I pick it up, and am completely surprised — it weighs like as much as I would expect a pigeon to weigh. Pound for pound, the brown skua is one seriously tough bird.

 

- Luke Sandro

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January 17, 2005:

My morning is spent typing up a detailed protocol for the HR33T osmometer. Keeping in mind that it’s the teacher that takes my place who will probably be tasked with operating the blessed thing next year, I write it as clearly and in as much detail as I can, and before I know it I've filled 3 single-spaced, text-packed pages. The lab tech has expressed interest in learning how to use this thing, so I give her a copy, too. She comes back after reading it and says, "Never mind."

The second half of the day I get to set up a fun experiment — Scott and I have been dehydrating larvae in the lab and measuring their osmolality, but we have yet to sample field-dehydrated ones. So I grab a bunch of the larvae-packed Torgie soil and stick it in a plastic tray, attach a sign that says "Please don't touch!" and put it under a mill van just outside our lab. The plan is to take osmolality readings and wet/dry weights of soil and bugs every couple of days as the thing gradually dries out. This will simulate how the larvae actually dehydrate on the islands, when there's no precipitation for a while or it’s so cold that the air is bone dry. We'll see how it goes.

Another beautiful sunset that lasts an hour and a half. I catch some of it on the roof above GWR, sipping a soda and listening to music. Very nice. About halfway through, up climbs Will the station doc. He talks to me for a couple of minutes, tells me the names of some of the mountains I'm looking at (William, Moberly, Francois) and how they were named — we agree that humans sure do like to lay claim to everything they see.

 

- Luke Sandro

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January 18, 2005:

Last night a yacht showed up in the harbor. We knew it was coming, but I guess I was expecting something a little bigger. These people have basically come to Antarctica in a sailboat. It has tied up off Bonaparte Point, about 11 yards across the harbor from our dock. There is a ton of brash ice in the water at this point, and we have a good time watching them paddle their little mini-Zodiac across the harbor through 3-foot fragments of ice to us. They seem nice, and the language barrier proves surmountable. They leave a nice note in French on the white board.

In the lab, a major piece falls into place. Belgica adults, which we didn't even expect to collect enough of to work with, are showing evidence of thermoprotection. In short, this means that if you put them at a certain temp for a certain time, say 30°C for one hour, they die. But, if you put them in 25°C for an hour, then 30°C for an hour, they live. Since we've already seen upregulation of HSP-70 in the adults in response to heat shock, this isn't necessarily a surprise, but it's a big piece of our story about how this insect does what it does.

So we take the evening off and are all in a fine mood. Looking out into Arthur Harbor, we can see a leopard seal ("leps"; these are sleek, muscular, graceful seals with nasty-looking teeth) floating on a chunk of ice, with a half-eaten penguin right next to it. He is apparently sleeping. I have probably seen 40 seals by now—a couple of leps, one crabeater and the rest elephant seals. Of those 40, three of them have been doing something besides sleeping. I’m starting to wonder how they are able to survive. Mammals, being endothermic (warm-blooded), generally take quite a bit of fuel to stoke their metabolic fires, meaning they have to eat a lot. How do these guys get away with behaving like they’ve been shot full of tranquilizers for most of their lives?

 

- Luke Sandro

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