Day 14

So I retract the statement, made a year-and-a-half ago, that "this is not an online journal".

The winds finally abated today, and we got to make up the field trip that we missed last week Thursday. Boat trip to Hall's Island in Harrington Sound was a choppy, 45-minute affair in the R/V Henry Stommel, piloted by a local named Alfred and nicknamed Barbara. We were soaked to the bone before we even arrived, and "not gusting", of course, is far from the equivalent of "pleasantly warm".

Actually, to be honest, I nearly died when I first hit the water -- if Hell ever had a winter, it would be that cold. Twenty minutes into the collection, Clay had lost all feeling in her hands, Gretchen (grad student from Harvard) had given up the ghost and climbed back on board the boat, and Laurie looked like she was in danger of losing a couple of toes from frostbite. I was supposed to collect Niphates erecta, but underwater sponge identification is not the easiest thing when one is in danger of succumbing to hypothermia at any second. I compromised by cutting off a piece of something long and purple before getting out of the ocean. (Incidentally, after peering at it in the microscope, I'm 75% sure that I got the right species after all.)

And then we stayed in lab until half-an-hour ago cutting everything up, which begs the question: Why am I sitting here writing about all this when I should be in my room consuming analgesic medicine and appreciating the fact that I'm dry and warm?