Through snow and ice

The frozen Woods Hole harbor at sunset

Friends, it has been a weird winter on Cape Cod. For the third time in a month, I am watching out the window of my house, waiting for the arrival of predicted snow. This time, the forecast shows Cape Cod getting almost 3 feet of the white stuff. It will be wet, heavy, and hard to remove. I won't be able to leave the house for days. 

The harbor in Woods Hole froze over this winter. Ice floes cover the sea surface near WHOI's pier, blocking in R/V Neil Armstrong. At just 41 N, Woods Hole is not a place that freezes over often - at least not in this century. The winter of 2026 has so far been exceptionally cold and snowy. 

In the midst of this long, cold winter, I am busy with science - writing proposals, developing ideas, and revising papers. Late last fall, I submitted a swath of manuscripts for publication, to share my research results with the world. Now that a few months have passed, each respective journal has reviewed my work and responded with suggestions for improvement. One small comment from a reviewer can take a long time to address - like a few days indoors during a snow storm. 

The manuscript I'm working on concerns "Dropstone Island," an iceberg that I had the chance to visit during an expedition on R/V Polarstern in 2021. The iceberg was carrying a large load of shale and quartz rocks - dropstones before they dropped. After discovering the iceberg, my team and I dug into the dynamics of ice-rafted debris transport across the Arctic. There has been a significant increase in the number of dropstones on the Arctic seafloor in recent years, which can only be explained by an increase in the number of icebergs. The study itself is super cool, and I'm very proud of our work. 

Here's where the reviewer's comments come in. Our data show a significant increase in the density of dropstones in the Arctic deep sea. "Has there been a change in the size distribution?" the reviewer asked. 

One of the images in Biigle, showing my measurements

Well, crap. Now I have to go back through our data and measure all the stones. 

While the snow falls outside, I am covered in blankets on my couch, working slowly, carefully in the online image analysis program, Biigle. One by one, I click through the images that my colleagues have recorded from the deep Arctic seafloor. One by one, I draw a rectangle over each dropstone to capture its length and width. Stone by stone, I come closer to answering the reviewer's query - and ultimately getting the paper published.