Last week I went to WHOI and my PolarTREC teacher Gerty Ward tagged along. Our mission was to meet Rick Krishfield, our researcher on the expedition, and to learn more about the BGE Project. Mr K's lab is full of interesting equipment and mysterious boxes. He is very busy packing for the expedition. Out of all the cool things in the room, the very first thing I noticed were these marks on this ITP buoy. They are from a polar bear trying to figure out what this big yellow thing is sitting out there in his environment. Friend? Foe? Food?
Cavaleo sits on top of an IPT that has been on the ice. Those teethmarks you see are from a polar bear trying to figure out if this thing is an enemy -- or food?
The marks are big, aren't they. Looks like claws or teeth? Whichever, they mean the bear is big. Me, not so big. Thinking about how big the hand has to be to have those claws or how big the mouth had to be to hold those teeth made me feel kind of like an M&M, a small treat for this big bear. Imagine my relief when Dr. Mary-Louise Timmermans, a WHOI BGEP researcher, told us that every time we go onto the ice, an armed polar bear scout accompanies us.
Next we met Dr. Proshutinsky, the principle investigator on the BGEP. We are going to collect some sunlight data for him and a NASA project, which means we get to operate a detector of some sort. Cool. More on this from the boat.
Cavaleo greets Dr. Proshutinsky, the leader of the BGEP, at WHOI
Then we went to a WHOI machine shop where the ITPs, buoys, anchors, release mechanisms, are built, tested, stored, packed and shipped to the expedition sites. This was a big room with lots of loud machines going and people running around......
In this workshop at WHOI, the ITPs are built and tested prior to being deployed into the field. The blue pool in front is for testing, not swimming!
I wanted to swim in the pool but learned that it was only for testing equipment. Oh well. In among all this machinery, we found our PolarTREC gear: Gerty's extreme weather clothing and the bottles for the drift bottle project. We both felt better seeing that this got to WHOI and is in the right place, and now we know for sure we are going!
Cavaleo sits among my gear that I shipped to WHOI to be placed onto the ship prior to my arrival.
Mrs. W and Mr. K kept talking and talking, and I was getting hungry.
Mr. K and I talk about the expedition in his lab. I am standing next to a class 5 vault door. His lab used to house some very classified work!
Finally they finished and we said good-bye to Mr. K and WHOI. We will see him next in Edmonton, Alberta, on the way to meet the ship, the CCCS Louis St-Laurent.
Gerty Ward says see you very soon!