The art of walking in the wind
"No race has ever been won in the first corner; many have been lost there."
- Garth Stein in The art of racing in the rain
I guess my first clue should have been when I sat up in bed and could feel the building subtly shaking around me.
The wind today is horrible. Forty knots. Twenty-one meters per second. Forty-six miles per hour. That's how fast you drive a car!
It was obvious that we couldn't go out on Teisten, but I've never been one to give up easily. I mean, we flew all the way to 79 N. I want to spend my time here collecting samples, not sitting indoors. I just had to try. Could we use the small Polarsirkel boat and just stay in the harbor? Could we try deploying our gear by hand from the dock? Could we collect alternate samples to at least have something?
Erlend agreed to try the Polarsirkel boat in the harbor, so the team and I suited up for the test. We donned our survival suits (they're ultra-warm and keep you afloat if you fall in) and every layer of clothing we had brought with us to go underneath. We covered our faces and hands to prevent frostbite. We wore our warmest boots with good grip. And we took a waterproof radio in case of emergency.
It actually worked surprisingly well with the small boat! Erlend was able to manuever in the harbor, but we decided not to complicate the operation with sampling gear. If Erlend had needed to make a quick adjustment to avoid the beach or the dock or a piece of ice, there was a good chance the gear could get destroyed. Because we have some low-wind days coming up, it's actually best to play it safe with the gear for now. We'll need it later, so best not to risk it.
Even if we couldn't collect the samples we wanted, I still wanted to use the back-up plan (actually, I think this was like Plan G). I had brought materials with me to make traps and catch scavenging amphipods. We put together the traps in the lab and then set out looking for bait. Amphipods are little shrimp-like animals that eat any dead meat they can get their mouthparts on, so some raw fish or chicken was going to work best. I asked the kitchen staff if I could have an old, bad piece of fish (and got some weird looks while I explained what it was for) but walked away instead with a salmon steak (yum!). We cut it into small pieces and loaded the traps.
To deploy the traps, we attached them to heavy steel bars so they would sink and hung them from cleats on the dock. It was actually a bit of an adventure to carry them out there, because the wind was causing seawater to spray over the pier and solidify into a slushy mesh. We were grateful for our warm suits!
The high wind has made walking outside very entertaining. It should die down in the next few days, and in the meantime, I'm hoping we can get some good samples from the amphipod traps!
- Garth Stein in The art of racing in the rain
I guess my first clue should have been when I sat up in bed and could feel the building subtly shaking around me.
The wind today is horrible. Forty knots. Twenty-one meters per second. Forty-six miles per hour. That's how fast you drive a car!
It was obvious that we couldn't go out on Teisten, but I've never been one to give up easily. I mean, we flew all the way to 79 N. I want to spend my time here collecting samples, not sitting indoors. I just had to try. Could we use the small Polarsirkel boat and just stay in the harbor? Could we try deploying our gear by hand from the dock? Could we collect alternate samples to at least have something?
Erlend agreed to try the Polarsirkel boat in the harbor, so the team and I suited up for the test. We donned our survival suits (they're ultra-warm and keep you afloat if you fall in) and every layer of clothing we had brought with us to go underneath. We covered our faces and hands to prevent frostbite. We wore our warmest boots with good grip. And we took a waterproof radio in case of emergency.
It actually worked surprisingly well with the small boat! Erlend was able to manuever in the harbor, but we decided not to complicate the operation with sampling gear. If Erlend had needed to make a quick adjustment to avoid the beach or the dock or a piece of ice, there was a good chance the gear could get destroyed. Because we have some low-wind days coming up, it's actually best to play it safe with the gear for now. We'll need it later, so best not to risk it.
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| The amphipod traps with salmon inside. The mesh at each end forms a series of flaps that will be easy for the amphipods to enter but hard for them to leave. |
To deploy the traps, we attached them to heavy steel bars so they would sink and hung them from cleats on the dock. It was actually a bit of an adventure to carry them out there, because the wind was causing seawater to spray over the pier and solidify into a slushy mesh. We were grateful for our warm suits!
The high wind has made walking outside very entertaining. It should die down in the next few days, and in the meantime, I'm hoping we can get some good samples from the amphipod traps!
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