On the way down

Kharis happily packing our things.

I stood in the middle of the lounge area on the upper floor of the marine lab, hands on hips, not looking at anything in particular. Just thinking. What was my next move? We had finished all our scientific work. Over 500 larvae rested safely in small jars of ethanol; we had 32 jars of sediment and all the animals in it preserved in formalin; CATAIN was on the seafloor; and Kharis was busily packing up our gear downstairs. What was I to do? 

So I made a cup of tea and sipped it on the couch. 

My grad student, Kharis, is a bit unusual among scientists: she actually enjoys the logistics that accompany field work. Anytime we travel together, she sets up the lab, catalogs the samples, breaks down the equipment, and packs everything to go home. I try to help, but she really doesn't need me. It's a pretty convenient trait for an apprentice to have - when she handles the logistics, it frees me up to work on big-picture things. Or, you know, take a break and sip some tea. 

The white board outside our 
lab. I used color-coded tape 
to keep track of what we had 
left to do. As you can see,
all our goals ended up in the 
"finished" list!

I always like to take a moment near the end of a trip to reflect. This week, that moment came for me when I was taking a walk through Ny-Ålesund one evening. I had my hood up and my face cover on to protect me from the wind, and I climbed a hill behind the gas station where I could overlook the town. Warm yellow lights glowed on every building as the wind whipped down from the mountains toward the fjord. If I didn't know any better, I would think I was in a storybook, just a woman in a frontier town in the high north. But I do know better - and this scientific life of mine is better than any fantasy story. 

We really succeeded this trip. Everything that we wanted to do, we were able to do to some extent. Sure, we had to reduce the number of replicates for the isotope experiment and use a reduced design for the settlement assays, but we did them. And the data we collected will reveal important things about how larvae survive in the polar night. We also ended up with more species of larvae than we planned on - oh my goodness, we have so much diversity in our samples! We even got bonus samples from the middle of the fjord. We collected an entire dataset for soft-sediment communities. We deployed CATAIN. We helped a film crew tell the story of our science to the public. This trip was as successful as it realistically could have been. 

Now, we will make our way back to the land of the light as we drop degrees of latitude. We came, we collected, we conquered. It's time to go home.