The crow's nest

The ladder to the crow's nest

"Nice jumper!" Dee pronounced as she stepped into the stairwell. The short, spunky Australian carried a cloth bag, several metal water bottles, and a roll of tin foil. "Right then," she gestured for me to
follow. "Up we go."

We checked in with the bridge officer on watch and then headed over to a door marked "Kein Zugang" – "no entrance." Dee opened it confidently and gestured for me to look up. A metal ladder stretched several tens of meters over my head, and I could see sunlight through the opening at the top. We donned climbing harnesses, clipped ourselves to the safety line, and ascended one by one to the crow's nest.

Dee's research is not your typical Arctic marine biology. She studies atmospheric microplastics. Apparently, plastics released into the environment get smashed up into little bits that then accumulate in air, water, and sediment. Dee's goal is to quantify where they are, how they disperse through the environment, and what that means for animal and human life.

It's depressing work, really. Every time scientists test for microplastics in a new environment, they find them there. Think of a remote environment – deep-sea sediments, the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the rocky shore of an Arctic island. Yep, there are microplastics there.

I've never worked with plastics before, but Dee showed me that doing so requires an entirely different mindset than I'm used to. Many of the common products and equipment we use in research labs are plastic-based, so you have to constantly watch out for contamination. Pipet tips, gloves, zip-top bags, and even fleece jackets can all shed plastic particles and artificially inflate sample readings. Dee has figured out good ways to control for these factors and even takes pride in doing so – she relies on hemp rope, metal bottles, and lots and lots of foil. She also collects blanks and runs every sample in triplicate. 

Dee at her research station

Up in the crow's nest, her samples are collected in two ways: a pump that sucks in air, and a bucket to catch particles passively sinking through the atmosphere. None of it is complicated. The bucket is actually just that – a tall metal jar with some water in the bottom. Sometimes, research equipment doesn't have to be complicated. Making new discoveries is just a matter of looking in the right place.

The crow's nest is one of the few parts of Polarstern that I'd never been to before. The wind is pretty strong up there (Dee called today's 25 meter per second winds "Not that bad"), but it's also strangely peaceful. As Dee collected her samples, I enjoyed the sun and watched the helicopter circle the ship. We chatted about her research while she packed everything up. Dee knows she's on the cutting edge of plastic research and enjoys the work, despite how depressing it can sometimes be. Whatever humanity decides to do about microplastics – ignore them, manage them, remove them – at least we'll have reliable numbers and know how much is there. Maybe someday, Dee's research will help us figure out ways to clean it all up.