Sampling and lab-work in Carlini base
Three weeks are gone, the weather is changing very often and the good periods become rare. Good that we took every chance to go out with the zodiacs, sampled water and stayed up several nights to process the material.
Back in Germany, we will use the water samples to analyse iron isotopes. Since the concentrations of Fe in the water are extremely low, we need to take care not to contaminate the samples with dust particles. That´s why here in the base we need to work in our “pink tent”, a clean environment (with filtered air).
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Besides the water samples, so far we also completed three sediment stations. We cored 20-40 cm of marine sediment, extracted the pore water and performed a lot of nutrient analyses using photospectrometric methods and a so-called micro plate reader.
When sampling meltwater streams, sometimes we had scua visitors, curiously looking at what we are doing. These birds try to check out everything coming to their interest, e.g. the backpack of Jan. They also accompanied Jan when he was trying to do jogging (no pictures added…).
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We had the chance to take some meltwater stream samples at beautiful locations like the “Pinguinera” or at the opposite side of the bay with a great view towards the “Tres Hermanos” and Carlini station. Now we have less than two weeks left to try to get some more samples and to stow all the samples and laboratory stuff for the transport back to Germany. Let´s hope we can go out with the zodiac a few more times!
Muchos saludos de Antártida!