BACK TO SCHOOL

This week the population of the town returned to normal as everyone returned from vacation for school which started Monday.  For the family, the start of school is the beginning of our routine from now until we leave in February.  The boys saddled up on their new bikes and headed off to school.  Nicole and I also walked to school to make sure everything was OK.  Anders gave Nicole a hug and went into his class and Jason came to the door and pushed us both out… a sign of the age difference.  I was a wreck all day hoping that everything went well.  Jason came home right after school and skyped me a work to tell me that things went well.   Anders, being the more gregarious son on the other hand, did not return from his first day of school.  After 3 hours of his disappearing act, I got a car and drove around town looking for him. An hour and a half later, he arrived home and told us about his new friend, Hilmar.  Tuesday and Wednesday the 5-7^th grades went on a hike and then a bike trip.  With the distance and the rain ensured they slept well.  The rest of the week went well and we were introduced to a number of other parents. 

Anders and Jason on their new bikes heading off to their first day of school.

Friday the sports center had their open house will all the activities in town for the year.  Jason signed up for dog sledding (taking care of dogs and learning to be a driver) and Anders signed up for football.  There are so many things to do that my whole week could be filled with activity.  I will likely stick to football, basketball and joining the diving club (always wanted to go diving up here).   

One the work front, I spent the beginning of the week putting the vehicle together, charging it, and assessing whether all the systems were functioning.  There have been a number of research expeditions where we had arrived with the equipment only to find out that the vehicle was damaged in shipping.  Not the case here and all systems appear to be functioning well.  I am still trying to work out a boat as there have been significant demand on the UNIS boats from other field camps.  I think this will be worked out the beginning of next week.

Integrating the batteries into the underwater vehicle and assessing the various vehicle systems.

Jason and I went back up on the glacier yesterday.  We took a different route this time on the southeast side.  The fossil hunting was excellent and Jason found an excellent “single leaf” rock.  We also enjoyed the refreshing meltwater.  We are going to try and do a trek like this every week.

Jason's "single leaf" fossil.

The 25^th of August marked our first sunset (only 7 minutes) so we are beginning the transition into darkness.

Picture of the week: Sun disappears behind the mountains and fog.

Mountain shadows across Isfjorden.

   

EQUIPMENT ARRIVES!

After some repairs, testing, shipping, and then waiting, the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) that I will be using here in Longyearbyen arrived.  There were 8 boxes in total for all the auxiliary equipment (computers, power boxes, underwater acoustic navigation system etc.).  Jason happened to be here delivering my lunch, a luxury that he seems happy to afford, so he was recruited to help me lift them up to the office.  In following posts, I will get into the operations etc. but for now the next steps are to put in the specialized battery packs, power up the vehicle, do a bench test and then program the first mission.  That will all happen next week and I am excited to being close to starting.

The REMUS Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) arrives in Lonyearbyen!

In discussions with the faculty at UNIS, we have focused our interests a bit and are interested in examining the transition into the polar night and finding out the activity during the polar night.  UNIS will be establishing a new mooring (chain of instruments that are vertically distributed in the water column) station about 2 kilometers offshore of the airport.  They want me to repeatedly deploy the AUV around this area to describe the spatial variability in the oceanography and biological activity while the mooring provides the high resolution time series of the same variables.  That is the big picture plan for now.

Other activity this week included an invitation to a meeting in Oslo with the Ministry of Research and Higher Education and a meeting in Stavanger on current capabilities with AUVs for application in Norway. Unfortunately they are at the same time at the beginning of September, so I will be joining some colleagues and students from NTNU in Trondheim for the AUV meeting.  Another Fulbright grantee, Cara Magnaboasco, arrived this week.  She will be a student at UNIS for the following year, so I hope to interact with her and facilitate her projects if possible.

The temperature in Lonyearbyen was the highest in the past few years, with 4 days of blue skies!!

The highlight this week was the weather with 4 days of clear blues skies and temperatures between 10 and near 17 degrees C.  It was the warmest day in at least two years, and most of the town took advantage to get outside.  Three relatively long hikes included one with a colleague from NTNU, Geir Johnsen, up to Sukkertoppen (Sugar Mountain), which provided a great view of Longyearbyen.  On the hike we also located the dinosaur bone that I had found 4 years earlier.  It was too big to carry out then, but I packed it out this time.  We have contacted the governor’s office to see if they are interested in the find. 

Lichen threads over lichen covered rocks.

Blooming flowers on the plateau above Longyearbyen.

One of the many species of mushroom in Svalbard. For scale, this is 1 cm in diameter.

Fossil clam found in the canyon right outside of Longyearbyen.

Remnants of a coal mining conveyer system in Lonyearbyen.

Reflections off the drinking supply lake in Adventdalen.

Arctic tern chick recently fledged.  This bird will mature in the next month and fly all the way to Antarctica!

Longyearbyen in the midnight sun (runner up picture of the week).

UNIS from on top of Sukkertoppen.

The second hike at Deltaneset was further east in Isfjorden and accessed by boat.  It is the location where the giant Predator X dinosaurs have been found.  The family spent the day examining the site and looking for the best marine fossils (ammonites, mussels, clams, squid pens etc.) which were everywhere!  It was good to get out onto the water as well to see the area from a different perspective.  We also saw a number of  bird species, with Anders’ and Jason’s favorite being the puffins, which were struggling to get off the water after gorging themselves with juvenile polar cod and crustaceans (i.e. krill).

Anders, Nicole and Jason arrive at Deltaneset.

Anders and Jason on the way to the fossil field.

Marine fossils revealed after spliting open a rock.

On the way back to Longyearbyen.

Nicole loving the adventure.

The third hike was another trip to the Longyearbreen (Longyear glacier) with the entire family and Geir. It was amazing weather and we all had a great time picking fossils (this time terrestrial plants), enjoying the scenery, and drinking newly released 2,000 year old water from the center of the glacier.  On the way back, we also saw our first polar fox!

Family hike on Longyearbreen (Longyear glacier) with Longyearbyen in the background.

Jason getting some recently melted 2,000 year old water out of the glacier melt stream. Check out Geir Johnsen and Anders (left) in T-shirts!

We also took in a movie last week and this week enjoyed the final installment of Harry Potter in 3D. Other happenings this week included a trip to the kids’ school to meet their teachers. We had a very nice experience and the boys are looking forward to starting school on Monday. We also found out that they have a bike trip planned for next Wednesday, so we went to the sports store and bought a couple of bikes for the boys. They have spent the last two days getting used to the frames and gears and are ready to use them as regular transportation to and from school. The town population has swelled this past week with all the families returning to start school, and the lines in the super market are a bit longer. I will follow up on the first week of school next week.

Picture of the week: Longyearbreen (Longyear glacier).

ORIENTATION WEEK

This week I traveled to Oslo to take part in the US-Norway Fulbright orientation.  It was a great opportunity to meet the other Fulbright fellows and scholars, learn a bit about their backgrounds and what they will be doing in Norway.  For the 28 or so that attended, there was a large diversity of projects including sculpture, history, brain imaging, wetland/water chemistry, and theater to mention a few. In my future travels around Norway this year, I hope to visit with them again.  It turned out that this year 6 of the participants were graduates of St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN (including myself).  While this sounds extraordinary, given the connections that the College has with Norway and the fact that more than half of the students travel overseas while an undergraduate it's not that surprising.  We are going to try and put something together for the alumni newsletter.  A big thanks to the US-Norway Fulbright Foundation staff!  Tallented professionals with loads of relevant information for our Norway experiences.

The St. Olaf College 2011-12 US-Norway Fulbright contingent.

I had arrived in Oslo early as my passport was full and I needed more pages, so I was able to walk around the city. I had rushed into town on the train during a 6 hour layover in 2008, so it was nice to finally spend some time there.  The weather was beautiful (about 20C) and visitors and locals were out enjoying the sun.  After picking up a few things to bring back, I took a trip over to the Maritime Museums.  It was great to see the Fram, an ice strengthened wooden ship that was frozen into the Arctic pack ice by Nansen to evaluate the drift patterns in the ice for 3 years in the late 1800’s.  The ship was also used by Amundsen to get to Antarctica where he walked to the South Pole.  Seeing the inside ship and the cabin spaces was the most interesting for me to imagine what it must have been like on these journeys. 

The Royal Palace in Oslo.

As it turned out, I met the director of the Maritime Museum at the Fulbright reception at the US Ambassador’s house.  This was a memorable event hosted by Ambassador White and his wife at their residence, with guests including the Minister of Research and Higher Education and Research, Tora Aasland, and the Deputy Director General for the High North Project, Polar Affairs, Energy and Resources, Anne Kari Hansen Ovind.

US-Norway Fulbright Director Petter Naess, the Deputy Director General for the High North Project, Polar Affairs, Energy and Resources, Anne Kari Hansen Ovind, Ambassador White, the Minister of Research and Higher Education and Research, Tora Aasland, and me at the reception.

While on the trip Nicole and the boys remained in Longyearbyen.  I felt a bit like I had abandon them on an island in the middle of arctic (which I had!), but while gone, skype kept us well in touch and found out that that things were going well. They entertained a local family (the miner’s family I mentioned before) for dinner one of the nights and this was reciprocated the following night.  We were also invited to join the christening of their 3-month old and are looking forward to that cultural experience.

Arriving “home” felt familiar and comforting (despite the early snow!!).  We are certainly settled in.  On the work front, I met with a couple of students at UNIS to talk with them about their projects and planed the field sampling with two of the faculty. 

Picture of the week: Sunlight piercing through the clouds across Isfjorden.

My equipment should be showing up early next week and I am looking forward to beginning my data collection!

LIFE IN LONGYEARBYEN

After 3 weeks in Longyearbyen we are getting into a groove of activity.  While still shocked at the price of food, we have a series of meals that are both good for us and ones the boys enjoy.  Nicole is doing a great job keeping the boys busy during a time of year when most other children are on the mainland or traveling.  The boys have regular jobs around the house, they have occasional shopping errands, and go to swimming when it is open. We try and make sure they get outside for a few hours a day to burn off energy. School starts in less than 3 weeks, so we (and especially Nicole) are looking forward to that.

Anders' daily chore of loading the dishwasher.

I have been keeping regular work hours at UNIS, although this week I was disabled by a cold for a couple of days.  UNIS is about a 15 minute walk down the hill.  I have a large office, where I have learned to be efficient during the day.  Depending on the day, I either walk home for lunch or twice now, Jason will provide the luxury of delivering lunch to UNIS and spend a few minutes talking.  UNIS, along with the Norwegian Polar Institute, is housed in an amazing building that won the runner up position for best building on the planet in 2006.  The exterior roofing is copper, the interior is wood and copper.  The hallways were designed to look like coal mine shafts that connect this modern building to the historic past of Longyearbyen.

The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS)

Reception area at UNIS.

My office at UNIS.

Office corridor designed in the shape of a coal mine shaft.

This week was productive, with two papers from our polar work being submitted for publication and possibly an additional two news articles on the work.  The walk back up the hill after work takes me by the center of town, where I usually stop to get some groceries before heading home.  Most of the time, the town center is quiet with some common faces also doing their afternoon shopping.  Sometimes, however, there will be a large tour ship docked for the day and during these periods, the town can be inundated by an additional 500-2000 people.  I usually by-pass town if this happens and simply head home.     

The new culture center in the middle of town with a coffee shop and theater.

During the weekends, I stay home and we usually go on a hike or two.  Today we were able to get a car from UNIS and traveled west to Bjørndalen (Bear Valley).  Going there was also important for my underwater work as this is the turnaround point area for my underwater vehicle when traversing the fjord.  Getting good fixes along the coastline (adjusting the Google Earth maps is important).  On the way we visited the Global Seed Vault, a structure using an old coal mine system designed to be a repository for all the planets plant seeds. These seeds are kept at a constant 4 degrees C and maintained in case of disease, mutations, or loss.

Jason and Anders at the entrance to the Global Seed Vault.

Visiting Bjørndalen getting coastline fixes.

 We spent a couple hours hiking up the valley, had a great lunch and we saw the first Svalbard reindeer of the trip.  We gave a ride back to UNIS to a student from New Zealand and learned about her graduate work on the color of polar poppies.  After dropping her off, we headed east of Longyearbyen up Adventdalen (Advent Valley), visiting the last active mine (Gruve 7), a radar site, the northern lights observatory, and enjoying the vistas back down the valley from 400 meters off the valley floor.   

Jason and Anders next to an abandoned mine.

Summertime in Bjørndalen.

Anders and Nicole enjoy lunch in Bjørndalen.

Svalbard reindeer calf feeding on grasses, mosses and lichens.

Anders and Jason found a reindeer antler.

Largemale  Svalbard reindeer foraging along the coastline.

This week was marked by another tragedy here in Longyearbyen, the death of a tourist by a polar bear attack.  This was a group of 80 UK students and teachers (not associated with UNIS) camping out in the next fjord to the east of Adventfjord (where Longyearbyen is located).  There were also 4 seriously hurt in the attack.  I heard the rescue helicopter passing by the house that morning and I commented that it probably wasn’t good news. Given my minimal training here, I cannot understand how this could have happened if the usual precautions were taken (continuous polar bear watch, a plan if there was a problem etc.).  There will likely be more information available later.

A great shot by Nicole of the upper end of Adventdalen.

Next week I will be heading to Oslo for the Fulbright orientation, to meeting the other participants and the US-Norway Fulbright staff.  Stay online….