1 month to go!!!!
And so much fascinating, inspirational stuff is happening!
I met various members of our team on Thursday, I’m going out on DJ’s boat to see his MBARI ROV in action on Tuesday, we have our Antarctica: Colder than Santa Cruz in the Summer event on Friday, and the Tuesday after that I meet my Cabrillo class that’s going with us virtually. I’ve given various presentations, I am gearing up to give a bunch more, and I am communicating with teachers and administrators from schools all over – including schools in Maine and in New Zealand.
Yippee! Excitement is certainly in the air.
But let’s tackle one thing at a time.
Let’s finish, for now, the little introduction of our ICE AGED team members as I finally met them just a couple of days ago.
As I describe these awesome people a little more, think about who you’d want to go with to the driest, coldest, windiest place on earth?
What backgrounds would you want them to have?
What should they be like? What would be problematic? What would be helpful?
We only had a few hours together and we had much to learn and do, so I just got a brief glimpse of what everyone is like and what lead them to this expedition. While everyone was asked to bring a short, simple PowerPoint with pictures and information about them, it was awesome to see the ingenious presentations that emerged. Videos, beautiful pictures, crazy pictures, and fun, creative stories gave little snapshots of what these people are all like. Everyone has stories to share and these people that are all heading down to the harshest place on earth (except poor Justin who doesn’t get to deploy) are certainly no exception.
This is not Antarctica! This is a member of team ICE AGED trying to find Antarctica from California.
Yes. something is weird about this picture of an ICE AGED team mate at the South Pole. Is he holding up our planet or is he trying not to fall off the planet?
I'll just share a few interesting tidbits about most of our team. In time, you and I will all learn much more about these characters.
Though Paul Dayton wasn’t there, we heard a beautiful story about his observations of the desert around a campsite he found and revisited years after year as he and then his kids were growing up. We heard how he counted and observed the desert creatures and plants and how that helped guide him into ecology. We also heard how the changes over time, such as the trees that grew old, died, and then vanished, helped him get a sense of the many scales of space and time.
From Stacy I gathered insights not only to her background, her hobbies, and her love of her incredibly cute doggies, but also to the work and years that goes into someone getting to run their own grant. She went from studying the larval ecology of hydrothermal vents, to human impacts on the Antarctic undersea environments, and to long-term monitoring of undersea environments. She’s been to Antarctica numerous times and worked her way up from being a graduate student helping John Oliver, to being a teacher for an Antarctic Biology course, to finally, after many revisions and rejections, being awarded her own grants!
DJ focused more on SCINI and the work that’s been keeping the engineers busy for the last few months in order to get her ready for the ice. They installed a new navigation system, build a grabber so SCINI can pick up organisms, and they have been trying to clone SCINI. It’s been a mass of work but soon their time will be up and DJ really hopes that SCINI will behave in the challenging waters under the ice.
Though Jennifer was also not there as she’s up in Oregon, we learned she loves baby crabs, has been studying them for years in all kinds of cool places, and that she loves Antarctica because of the crazy marine (and human) life and the slowed ecological interactions. Jennifer, who has been to Antarctica twice, says the experience is worth every frozen toe, pulled muscle, and drop of sweat!
David shared how he has been involved with long distance fish assessment and underwater security systems and from Paul’s beautiful story we learned that he’s a 4th generation Merced inhabitant and that he once worked at the 3rd largest tomato processing plant in the world. Though that might help us down in Antarctica, his experience with various ROVs and ground operations that supported NASA missions will come in much more handy.
Julie, who was also absent as she’s in Washington, still shared a bit of her story of how she has traveled the world, worked with sea otters and artificial rocky reefs, is interested in sustainable fisheries management and habitat restoration, and is also a fellow community college teacher. Lastly, we learned she gets a kick out of traveling to places where she has no clue what people are saying to her, and she loves not only cute clams but also adult crabs.
Kevin not only shared "flattering" pictures of his wife, the love of his life, but also told us about his work with rockfish and kelp forest disturbances. We also learned about how he grew up on a ranch in Bolinas and thankfully, he “volunteered” to design our Halloween costumes when we’re on the ice as he has creative experience with that.
Dustin told us a bit about how he’s redesigning the satellite tags on whales here in the Monterey Bay and that he’s redesigning the data station down at Moss Landing. Dustin, who went to Antarctic with Stacy’s team last year, also shared that he’s excited to be back at MacTown, to wear Big Red again, to use SCINI for new purposes, and to spend more time with Frosty Boy and Jell-O.
Justin, David’s brother, finished up by sharing his story of working on RF antennas. He also hinted at how he would like to jump in some gear box so he could come with us. We’ll have to watch for that, as even with heaps of emergency heating blankets, he’d probably freeze. Sorry Justin.
Which ICE AGED member is tying kelp into knots?
Which ICE AGED member thinks clams are cute?
After just a tiny glimpse into everyone’s life, we got to watch a couple of presentations from Stacy about the science that we’ll be doing and about what to expect in Antarctica.
I was struck by how important the science that we’re doing is. This is the one opportunity that researchers from the early days of Antarctic undersea exploration, Paul and John, can come together with researchers from these days, Stacy and her team, to share and pass on their knowledge about the sites that they studied so many years ago. If we can find and study the same spots, the same cages and plates, that they set down up to 47 years ago, on the bottom of the ocean under layers of ice on this harshest and most remote of continents, then we can start to really see how the communities have changed since then. Furthermore, we will really be able to see the processes that drive ecosystems over decades in the last habitat that is still relatively undisturbed by humans and in a habitat that still has top predators unlike all the other ecosystems in which we have killed off the lions, tigers, bears and other top predators.
It is just mind-blowing to see how the forces and people involved have found and created a way to come together to study something so vital before it is too late, before we lose the knowledge and expertise of the “tough old buggers” or before we destroy more of our environment and world.
We have taken the first steps, so many, many, many steps, and now we are all coming together to see what we can do. This will certainly be, like so many people are saying to me, the “adventure of a lifetime” for all of us going and for all of you following along with our journals.
What is wrong with this picture? Where is this dog? Whose doggie is this?