Ny-Ålesund
Friends, I have arrived in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, with my research team! It is a blustery -16° C (3° F), and it is pitch black outside. A dusting of white snow covers the ground, and the bright half moon provides the only illumination. Around noon, the sky lightens by a shade or two behind the mountains so their outline is just barely discernable - black on dark grey. The rest of the time, tiny stars dot the jet-black sky. It is lunch-time, but it may as well be midnight.
We arrived here from Longyearbyen, the main settlement in Svalbard. While Longyearbyen is a true town with a school and a church and a grocery store and about 2,000 people, Ny-Ålesund is used exclusively for research. No commercial airlines fly here. My team of four joined a few other scientists on a small, propellor-driven plane that had been chartered by the logistics company in charge of Ny-Ålesund. Our luggage was weighed and stacked in the back of the plane, with only a cargo net to separate the luggage compartment from the rest of the interior. Eight seats rested against the cabin walls on each side, so the maximum capacity of the flight was just 16 passengers. From my seat, I could see into the cockpit, where the pilot and co-pilot navigated with an array of instruments in front of, beside, and above them. The flight lasted just 25 minutes before we touched down on the snow-covered runway in Ny-Ålesund.
Immediately after arriving, we were picked up by a van and brought to the center of Ny-Ålesund. After settling into our rooms, we met with the marine lab coordinator to discuss our work. We'll be using the research boat M/S Teisten to collect our samples in the fjord. This is the first year that Teisten has been available for winter sampling, and we are first group to use it. Both the marine lab coordinator and the skipper were extremely helpful. We will have to be flexible, they warned, because we can only collect samples in good weather conditions. If the wind is too strong or there is a lot of ice in the fjord, it becomes unsafe to use the boat and we will have to wait until conditions improve. Everyone is committed to making the research plan succeed, so I hope we will have good weather and be able to collect the samples we want!
We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening unpacking the 9 boxes of supplies I had shipped up here and setting up our equipment in the marine lab. We should be ready to go as soon as the weather allows!
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| The plane in the hangar in Longyearbyen |
We arrived here from Longyearbyen, the main settlement in Svalbard. While Longyearbyen is a true town with a school and a church and a grocery store and about 2,000 people, Ny-Ålesund is used exclusively for research. No commercial airlines fly here. My team of four joined a few other scientists on a small, propellor-driven plane that had been chartered by the logistics company in charge of Ny-Ålesund. Our luggage was weighed and stacked in the back of the plane, with only a cargo net to separate the luggage compartment from the rest of the interior. Eight seats rested against the cabin walls on each side, so the maximum capacity of the flight was just 16 passengers. From my seat, I could see into the cockpit, where the pilot and co-pilot navigated with an array of instruments in front of, beside, and above them. The flight lasted just 25 minutes before we touched down on the snow-covered runway in Ny-Ålesund.
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| M/S Teisten at the dock in Ny-Ålesund. The marine lab is in the background. |
We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening unpacking the 9 boxes of supplies I had shipped up here and setting up our equipment in the marine lab. We should be ready to go as soon as the weather allows!
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