Things are off to a pretty smooth start, with everything we have planned working essentially perfectly. Yesterday morning (the 21st) we successfully dropped off Ben and Shubin's archaeology team at Ekarma. It was definitely an "all hands on deck" sort of operation to get all of the field equipment, all of the personal gear, and most importantly, all of the food for 11 people for a 10-day field camp. That's 110 people-days of food, which is a LOT of food!
I won't have any good way of keeping up with what is going on with them until we pick them up on 31 July or 1 August. We will be in contact with them, but only to establish that all is well with them.
In the meantime, two teams (Archaeology survey and Russian Vulcanology team) camped one night on the north end of Shiaskotan Island, with two days of work. It was a really good "shake down" for us (the survey team). It was a pretty short trip, and we didn't have very elaborate goals. So it wasn't a big deal that we don't have our system working perfectly smoothly yet. And we were able to work some of the kinks out for our system of working together, figure out what pieces of equipment we should have had with us, etc. The camping set-up worked great - our team had 5 people. With the one-day cushion that is always built into the planning for safety, we had 15 people-days of food. And we had good weather and plenty of firewood to use for cooking and comfort.
Tomorrow we will visit Kharimkotan ("kotan" means village, but I'm not sure what "Chirin," "Shiash" or "Kharim" mean) for one day. But then there will be 4 separate teams all working in different places!
After that, we move to the Pacific side of Onekotan (pronounced "oh-knee'-ko-than"). There will only be 3 teams working, but we will have a total of 16 or 17 people all working from basically the same base camp. For four days. So we have to go back down to the galley and ask the (very patient) cook ladies for between 80 and 85 people-days of food (did you get the same number?).
I'll try to get caught up on some of the archaeological and geological science that we're doing tomorrow. I am still undecided whether or not I will bring my laptop to shore on Onekotan - I may not have a way to charge my batteries, so I would have to work pretty quickly.....
Ok. It is late, and I've had a pretty long day. But before I close this out, I wanted to share with you some more fish data. The morning we dropped off Ben and Shubin, the ship's crew caught another large batch of Atka mackerel (this was the only species I saw them catch and they caught somewhere around 200 of them!). Anyway, ever since that day at Chirinkotan, I had been kicking myself for not measuring a sample of the fish to generate what is called a "length-frequency distribution" (again, for relating modern patterns with ancient patterns). All that means is how big are the fish, as measured by their length? While we were waiting for Ben and Shubin to return from their reconnaissance of the potential camp site at Ekarma, I measured 82 Atka mackerel, and this is what the results looked like:
SIZE NUMBER (FREQUENCY) 35 1 36 1 37 1 38 3 39 6 40 11 41 17 42 17 43 12 44 5 45 3 46 3 47 0 48 0 49 0 50 0 51 1 52 1
So what is the mean **or average size of fish that was caught? Is it the same as the most frequently caught size of fish (which is called the **mode)?
Time for me to go out on deck and try to send these posts using the satellite phone. If there are any "Ask the Team" postings, I'll try to get those sent back tomorrow night.
Spokonye Noche ("good night" [literally "peaceful night" in Russian])
--Dr. E.