Author Archive | Grace Saba

Brad, Ryan, and I left Punta Arenas, in the Southern tip of Chile, on New Year’s Eve.  But before we left, T-Rex rubbed Magellan’s toe (a statue in the town square in Punta Arenas), which is a tradition thought to bring good weather during the crossing of the infamously rough Drake Passage.  I love the murals painted in this little city and the Imperial Cormorant (black and white bird).

One of the many beautiful murals in Punta Arenas

Pier full of Imperial Cormorants

Leaving Punta Arenas…onward to Antarctica

I don’t really think Magellan liked T-Rex much because we had a pretty rough crossing due to a low pressure storm front between Chile and Antarctica.  Winds were blowing about 50-60 knots, and 20-foot waves were breaking over the bow of our research ship, the Laurence M. Gould (or LMG as we call it).

Watch this video of our ship moving through rough weather (filmed by Dr. Josh Kohut from Rutgers University, who is also down working at Palmer Station this season):

breaking waves short

When the ship bounces like that, it is nearly impossible to do anything.  If you lie down in your bunk, you have to secure yourself inside by stuffing things around you like life vests.  But even then, you usually end up sailing up and hitting your head on the ceiling.  Sitting in a swivel chair is bad news for your tummy, and even walking goes from weightless steps to feeling like you are carrying about 10 times your body weight in an instant.  So the only thing that I can tolerate when the weather acts up is to sit on in the ship’s lounge chair and watch movies.  So that is what we did until the weather cleared up.

But we made it to Palmer Station on Sunday in one piece and met up with Abigail.  The view from my Palmer bedroom window is pretty spectacular (see below).  We have been very busy getting all of our equipment set up.  This project is very multidisciplinary in that we will be focusing on many different aspects of krill biology and physiology as well as chemistry of the ocean and even krill blood.  This is a picture of one of our labs – it’s pretty messy and full of equipment, but we are getting there!

View from my bedroom at Palmer Station. Look at all that sea ice!

Equipment Galore!

The research ship that brought us to Palmer left on Tuesday morning for their 1-month cruise along the Antarctic Peninsula.  This particular cruise has occurred every January since 1992 as part of a Long Term Ecological Research Project (LTER).  Sampling of this type is very important to understand not only variability in ocean dynamics between years, but also is one of the only methods to see long term changes in the environment, such as those related to climate change.  Read more about the Palmer LTER here: https://pal.lternet.edu/.

Their first order of business was to collect krill for our experiments.  About an hour after they left the pier, the zooplankton group on board lowered a net into the water and towed it for a little while behind the ship at a low speed.  This is the best way to collect large zooplankton for experiments.

Towing for Antarctic krill

Unfortunately, they brought the net up and there were NO krill!  They did quite a few more net tows with no luck, then moved to a different location farther south and tried again.  They were still not able to get any krill.  There has been a very high amount of sea ice this year. What is likely happening is that because of all the ice this year, the normal biology of the Palmer Antarctic summer season is delayed.  This is because sea ice can block the sunlight going into the ocean, and phytoplankton (microscopic plants of the ocean) need that light to grow. The phytoplankton that krill feed on just became abundant near the shore during the last week.  Usually that happens a month or so earlier (November or December).  So the krill are likely really far away from shore right now where there is little to no sea ice (offshore).

Due to our theory, chief scientist of the research ship, Dr. Oscar Schofield (Rutgers University), then decided to try to tow for krill offshore. And find they did!  Lots of them! As soon as they collected the krill, they placed them carefully in buckets and brought them back to Palmer Station around 1:00 a.m. Wednesday morning.  It was quite an operation – they had to crane them over to us.

Craning the buckets of krill from the ship to Palmer Station

Once we brought them into their new home for the next month, we placed them into large aquariums with flow through seawater.  We will begin experiments to look at the effects of enhanced carbon dioxide and temperature on their physiology in the next few days, so stay tuned!

Rutgers University undergraduate student, Ryan Fantasia, holding his first bucket of Antarctic krill.

Watch this video of the big krill swimming around…ENJOY!

krill swimming short

Dear high school students,

Do you want hands-on research experience in Greenland? Do you want to learn about rapidly changing polar systems and see it with your own eyes? Do you want to learn the benefits of large, cooperative international research programs and learn about cultures from other nations? Well, now is your chance!  The Joint Science Education Project (JSEP) selects 5 US high school students per year (along with other students from Greenland and Denmark) to spend part of their summers working with researchers in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. What a fantastic way to spend 3 weeks of your summer!

To learn more about the program and to apply (APPLICATIONS ARE DUE ON JANUARY 31, 2014), visit: https://www.arcus.org/jsep.

Also, check out this video summarizing the program: https://news.science360.gov/obj/video/9a89761e-2649-4e90-927d-075468d27648/students-experience-hands-science-greenland.

This post is addressed specifically to the Kansas high school students that are participating in Project PARKA, but of course I hope that others who read this will think about this too.

I remember exactly where I was when I knew, without a doubt, that I wanted to be a marine scientist.  At 8 years old, I had never before been seen an ocean, and had not even ventured out of Kansas, except for a few trips to Missouri.  I was standing next to a small pond behind a farmhouse in Harveyville, Kansas.  I had been watching a group of tadpoles for a number of weeks metamorphosing into frogs.  I still can’t explain why that affected me the way that it did, but it hit me like a ton of bricks.  And to this day, I have never thought about any other career choice.  I figured out, with of course some bumps in the road, how to get the education and experience I needed to get to where I am at today, and I have never regretted it. My story is what inspired me to start Project PARKA, to bring full circle what growing up in Kansas has done for me.  I  hope that you enjoy participating in this project and that it gives you some perspective on different career choices you may not have been familiar with.  I hope that my story will make you realize that you can do what you want to do if you hold tight to your goals and are willing to work hard. I am looking forward to meeting all of you in April at the student research symposium.

But until then, I want to ask you and I want to hear from you (you can use the comments section below if you want):  What inspires you?

With the government shutdown over, we finally received word from the National Science Foundation (the funding agency that supports our project) that our project was still on schedule.  We were all very relieved.  Palmer Station-based research survived the shutdown as we are the easiest United States Antarctic field station to get to.  However, many research groups based out of McMurdo and South Pole lost an entire year of data.  This also seriously affects graduate students, whose entire theses may depend on one field season in the Antarctic.  This is a huge blow to research on climate change, and we wish the best to those researchers while they can get back on their feet.

With regards to our project, our supplies have all been shipped.  They are all shipped to Port Hueneme, California, then placed on a large cargo ship that cruises all the way down to Punta Arenas, Chile.  This takes 3-4 months.  The cargo is unloaded in Chile and placed on our main research vessel, the R/V Laurence M. Gould (the LMG for short), which brings it down to Palmer Station.  Abigail, a graduate student with Dr. Brad Seibel at University of Rhode Island, is on her way down to Palmer Station right now with the first set of cargo.  You can track the research ship, the LMG here: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/9137337/vessel:LAURENCE_M_GOULD. The LMG is docking at Palmer as I type this (see picture below).  You can also watch at: https://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/palwebcam.cfm.  This website also has some great information (see links on the left side of the page) about Antarctic weather, the U.S. research stations, The Antarctic Treaty, research in Antarctica, and opportunities for travel to Antarctica.

Speaking of weather, it has not been cooperating with scientists at Palmer this season.  Just after the government shutdown ended and Palmer Station reopened, ice blew in and enclosed any open water for at least a few miles offshore.  There have been research groups there since mid-October, and they have not been able to conduct any sampling from the small ships, or zodiacs, yet.  This week looks a lot better, and they have been able to finish their boating courses that are required for anyone riding or driving in a zodiac at Palmer Station.  Fingers crossed the weather holds out for the remainder of the season!

The rest of our team (myself, Dr. Brad Seibel, and a Rutgers undergraduate student Ryan Fantasia) leave for Antarctica on Dec. 28.  We will arrive at Palmer on Feb. 4, 2014.  As the season progresses, we will blog about everyday life at Palmer Station and the diversity of research occurring in Antarctica, and of course we will show you the beauty of the continent and its inhabitants.  So please stay tuned, much more to come.

The government shutdown has affected many people in different ways.  Now, even Antarctic researchers are feeling the brunt of it.  We have been told that if the shutdown persists, field programs scheduled for this season at the U.S. field stations (including Palmer Station) may be cancelled.  You can read and hear more about this here:

https://pri.org/stories/2013-10-07/us-government-shutdown-could-reach-far-antarctica

Cancellation of Antarctic research programs are not simple and certainly not without a cost.  Many of us have already shipped all of our equipment down to the field stations (this is not cheap).  Some of our field teams are already down there, waiting to work, but may have to turn right back around and head home.  Our logistics contractor may run out of money by the end of the week and will no longer be able to support the staff we so heavily rely upon to coordinate our shipping, travel, and research.  And last but certainly not least, our long term ecological research (LTER) program at Palmer Station, which has been collecting annual data for over two decades, will lose an entire year of data.  This is tragic – and in a region that has seen drastic climate change impacts, including the precipitous decline of the Adélie penguins, missing a year of data makes it all the more so.

With fingers crossed, we are anxiously awaiting word this week from the National Science Foundation (which is still furloughed…)

One of the things I never expected going into the field of oceanography was how much time I would be spending as a plumber.  In order to run experiments on a research ship and at a field station, you need to make sure your experimental set up is as close to natural conditions as possible.  This ensures the most realistic conditions so that you can use responses observed in smaller-scale studies to model or extrapolate responses that might occur on larger scales, such as an entire population of organisms or geographic regions such as entire oceans.  When studying Antarctic organisms, this means everything needs to be incubated in very cold water.  Bottles containing organisms need to be kept in tanks that are constantly circulated with fresh cold seawater.  You can now purchase water-jacketed beakers and containers that you can connect hoses to and recirculate water from a temperature-controlled water bath.  Different kinds of pumps for pumping seawater require different types and sizes of tubing.  Even using gases, such as carbon dioxide, in experiments requires specific types of regulators, connectors, control valves, and tubing types and sizes.

For this project alone, we need 16 different types/sizes of tubing, 27 different types/sizes of tubing connectors, and 7 different sizes of luerlok connectors, and 6 different sizes of wrenches (so far…).  I wonder if I will ever acquire an honorary PhD in plumbing…

An example of why plumbing is important in oceanography. Here is a schematic of my complex intermittent respirometry system. There are different types of tubing required for the different pieces of equipment, which means a lot of different connectors are also required.

More plumbing to circulate seawater from a large tank through a chiller to keep the seawater at a constant, cold temperature. Photo by Brad Seibel

I have been testing out a new system that will allow me to measure oxygen consumption (breathing) rates in krill.  This system from Loligo Systems, Inc. includes glass chambers, each containing an animal, where seawater is pumped through. The seawater in each chamber is refreshed (via a flushing process) every 5 minutes. Then water from each chamber is pumped through an oxygen sensor and monitored for 3 minutes to measure the decline in oxygen over that time (via animal consumption/breathing).  This process is repeated multiple times for several hours and is called intermittent flow respirometry.

Fortunately, some colleagues at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were able to collect some krill for me off the coast of Rhode Island recently so that I could test out my respirometry system and get some background data on krill that I can later compare to much larger Antarctic krill (Thanks, NOAA!).

Now that I have the equipment up and running, it is time to break it all down, pack it up and ship it out so that it gets to Antarctica in time for our field season. Because we are extremely isolated there, we have to ship EVERYTHING from our home institutions.  This takes a long time, so we have to have everything shipped down 3-4 months before we actually go ourselves.

I drove up recently to work in the lab with my co-PI Dr. Brad Seibel at the University of Rhode Island.  Our goal was to determine how long it would take to get 165 gallons of seawater to drop in pH by bubbling the seawater with pure carbon dioxide (CO2).  Our goal was about a 0.4 drop in pH after 24 hours of bubbling.  We reached our goal within 15 minutes!  It was unexpected, but we now know we can manipulate pH rather quickly in large volumes of seawater for our experiments we will be running this field season in Antarctica.

Trial CO2 manipulation. We filled the 165 gallon tank with seawater, then cooled it to 2 degrees Celcius (about the temperature of seawater during the Antarctic summer….brrrr) using a chiller unit (shown in the left of the picture, protected by a wooden crate) to circulate and cool the water. Then we bubbled the seawater with carbon dioxide.  And voila, instant ocean acidification! Photo by Brad Seibel

We have been in high gear ordering equipment and supplies that we will need in order to conduct our experiments in the field at Palmer Station, Antarctica.  These supplies include items ranging from small filters, which we will use to filter plankton out of the seawater so we can determine what kind and how much algae (phytoplankton) are present for the krill to feed on, to large 165 gallon tanks to fill with seawater and bubble with carbon dioxide (CO2) in order to change the pH in our experimental treatments with Antarctic krill.

Boxes, boxes, boxes…just one day’s shipment of laboratory and field supplies I received recently. Every single piece of equipment is extremely important to complete our experiments at Palmer Station, Antarctica. Photo by Grace Saba

Our next steps are to test out some of the lab equipment to ensure everything is working properly, train the members of our field team, and to make sure we have spare parts for everything because there is no convenient “science store” in Antarctica!

We had an extremely successful teacher/scientist workshop in Kansas July 16-17th.  The participating Kansas High School teachers were very enthusiastic and receptive to Project PARKA.  They teach at a combination of both rural and urban schools all over the state of Kansas. Of the 22 educators participating, 21 teach various courses in biology, chemistry, and environmental sciences. The one English teacher participating, A. Moon-Bradley, will oversee a project-related blog written by her students. Please check out their blogs (coming soon) on this website! They all worked really hard during the 2-day workshop to learn about the science background of the project and to go through each of the 4 lesson plans that they will bring back to their students this Fall.

The teachers learned a lot of background information about oceanography, Antarctic food webs, climate change, and ocean acidification. Here they are having a group discussion about how ocean acidification affects marine organisms. Photo by Grace Saba

Teachers worked in groups to learn the lesson plans they will soon be teaching their students.  Photo by Grace Saba

Teachers checking pH of different solutions as part of the ocean acidification lesson plan. Photo by Grace Saba

The participants of the workshop (and the overall Project PARKA program) included myself, Kristin Hunter-Thomson (Rutgers COSEE NOW outreach coordinator), and the following Kansas teachers:

S. Borjon, Shawnee Heights High School

C. Cochran, Mission Valley High School

K. Denham, Veritas Christian School

S. Elangikal, Topeka High School

W. Elkins, University of Kansas

C. Ferree, Emporia High School

D. Finch, Council Grove High School

K. Gaines, Topeka High School

J. Hamilton, Silver Lake High School

M. Henderson, Burlingame High School

L. Houston, Fort Scott High School

R. Hutson, Blue Valley High School

M. Laughlin, Valley Heights Junior Senior High School

E. Meredith, Hayden Catholic High School

A. Moon-Bradley, Marais des Cygnes Valley High School

S. Nicholson, Quinter High School

J. Parker, Pawnee Heights High School

D. Rice, Marais des Cygnes Valley High School

B. Roper, Shawnee Heights High School

S. Scoggin, Marais des Cygnes Valley High School

A. Stinebaugh, Central Heights High School

F. Wecker, Emporia High School

In addition to the lesson plans, our science team will be doing live calls from Palmer Station to the participating Kansas High School classrooms during our field season in January 2014.  The students will take what they learn from the lesson plans and the live discussions with scientists to conduct independent laboratory projects, which they will present to each other and the scientists at the Student Symposium in April 2014.