Another long day of trying to catch krill, again with no success. Lots of really cool plankton again, including a neat worm that lives in deep water…but no krill. Science can be really difficult at times, but you just keep on working and eventually things work out. I am still working hard to find the krill, but have started another set of experiments with amphipods as a backup.
More great questions:
Students in Ms. Pagoota’s 2nd grade class at Sherrills Ford Elementary asked:
“How close does wildlife come to Palmer Station? Are they approachable? Are the scientists in any danger from wild animals (leopard seals for example)?”
The wildlife comes very close to station. In fact, penguins and seals commonly come onto the rocks along our shoreline. The Adelie penguin above hopped onto a piece of ice, only to find the leopard seal laying there!! It quickly jumped off and swam to shore not far from me, where I took its picture. A diver was in the water filming the leopard seal. Would you want to be that close to the seal? Typically the wild animals are not dangerous — we leave them alone and they leave us alone. Many of the animals here are very approachable because they do not have much contact with humans. But, we don’t get too close because we don’t want to disturb their normal behavior. Sometimes, scientists need to get close to the animals to conduct experiments. The diver above is a good example.
Students in Ms. Sipe’s 6th grade class at Berkeley Preparatory School asked:
“Do you name any of your animals in your experiments?”
Sort of, but I don’t name them with common American names. They all have scientific names which are in latin. For example, the “bigeye krill” I am studying is called Thysanoessa macrua, which is latin for “small tassell, long tailed” and refers to the long legs and tail of the animal. It was officially named in 1883 by a scientist named G.O. Sars. I shorten this name to “Tm”, and give each animal I work with a number. So, the 5th bigeye krill I worked with on this trip was “Tm5.”
