Extra sausage

I stood in the so-called "working hallway" on Polarstern's main deck. The doors to outside were wide open, and the cold Arctic air surrounded me. Two technicians used the ship's built-in tracked winch system to lift and move the CTD onto the main deck. It was a familiar procedure. As soon as that CTD was in the water, I would get my next larval sample. 

Another researcher, Peter, walked up and stood next to me. I nodded a greeting. He nodded back and pointed to the CTD. 

"This is my extra sausage," he said in German. 

"Good for you!" I responded, giggling a little inside. It's true - things have gone well enough this trip that we've barely had to cancel anything. What cancellations we did have were because of ice conditions, not equipment malfunction. The chief scientist was even able to honor requests for extra samples toward the end of the expedition. If this was an American ship, Peter might have told me that the CTD was the icing on his cake or the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae. But this is Polarstern. And the culturally-relevant food metaphor is "extra sausage." 

A mitraria larva of Galathowenia oculata,
magnified 50x

I got my own extra sausage - two, in fact. We collected larval samples during Peter's CTD cast and during a CTD cast on the prime meridian. That last station was meant to fill in a gap. We had great sampling coverage in the eastern Fram Strait, near Svalbard, and pretty good coverage on the west side, near Greenland. The middle was a big blank spot on the map. We used our extra time to fill in that gap by sampling right in the middle - 0 degrees west, 0 degrees east. Right on the line between the hemispheres. 

We sorted our prime meridian sample last. Crystal-clear water made it easy to pick out the larvae. My postdoc, Johanna, and I worked side-by-side at twin microscopes to separate larvae from water. As we worked, I noticed a larval with sparkly blue spikes in my dish - Galathowenia oculata. Johanna's favorite larva. 

It's been a highly successful expedition, and I'm glad we were able to end on such a high note!