August 17- Nymphalis urticae
We are scheduled to depart today! Several days may laps between posts and photos due to minimal, if any, Internet access. So please be patient and stay tuned :).
Yippee! Another shorts day! I actually got a sunburn! Another kaleidoscope of friendly butterflies kept me company while I was working on the helo deck today. Their coloring is a vibrant orange and yellow with splatterings of metallic blue and white with a brownish mothy body. One kept landing on my leg and forearm. It was interesting watching the proboscis poke around looking for food. I managed to get a 4:30 video and find the species in my Arctic guide book- Small Tortoiseshell Nymphalis urticae. This is a very ancient species thought to be 15 million years old.
I would like to highlight two more NABOS crew members, University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) PhD students Channing Bolt and Till Baumann.
Channing grew up in Washington and spent some time in California before arriving in Fairbanks. She is in her third year studying trace metals in sea ice, and is a student of Dr. Ana Aguilar-Islas. On this cruise, she is helping with taking samples for the analysis of nutrients, methane, oxygen and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC). She is looking forward to collecting samples of rare earth elements used as geothermal traces, the second chapter of her thesis.
Till Baumann, hails from Northern Germany. He has been in Fairbanks for three years, and is working on physical oceanography and is a student of Dr. Igor Polyakov. On this cruise he is working on the mooring team- servicing and preparing instruments; downloading the data; and helping with the operations on deck. His thesis focus is on Eastern Arctic oceanography. Till is looking forward to meeting and working with interesting people, and getting back an exciting data set! Stay tuned for more details when Channing and Till start sampling and mooring!
Breakfast: bread, meat, cheese, and butter
Lunch: beef vegetable soup, meatballs with penne pasta, and mixed green salad
Tea Time: crab salad