Whale Watching, or Alex is a complete land lubber

One of these days I need to learn that I should really just stop going out on the ocean.

My problems with motion sickness started at age one when I threw up on an airplane.  Later in life, around 3 years old, I had problems with looking at picture books in the car.  Since then I have become motion sick on carnival rides, IMAX movies, the Mississippi, an elephant, and on a whale watching tour in spectacular fashion.  That was in Maine, when I was maybe 10.  My whole family went out to see some whales and ended up being on this boat in the fog for four hours while Captain Ahab (as we affectionately dubbed him) kept us out long beyond the schedule tour time because the company had to refund our tickets if we didn't see a whale.  The weather was not good at all, and the majority of people on that boat were sick.  I remember clutching a paper bag the entire trip and using it several times until we finally saw the back of a whale and went home.


Neither I nor anyone in my family has been whale watching since that trip, but Iceland is a fantastic place to go whale watching, and my family wanted me to check it out and make sure it wasn't as horrible as that last trip before they come to visit in August.  I was really excited to see some whales, and I brought along quite a bit of dramamine, so I thought I'd be okay.  The way out from the harbor was fun! We saw lots of gulls and terns and also some puffins!

Picture by Patrick

Puffins are awesome.  Besides being adorable and funny-looking, they can dive up to 70 meters and drink saltwater.  Who knew such an awkward bird could be so cool underwater?

But the farther out we went, the more the motion got to me.  In case you were wondering, the non-drowsy formula of dramamine did not work, at least for me.  I made the questionable decision to take two additional real-formula dramamine and moved to the back of the boat where the guide had said there would be less motion.  A few minutes later, a whale was spotted!  We saw four humpback whales pretty up close!

Picture by Patrick

At that point, however, I was less interested in whales and more interested in not losing my lunch.  I did not succeed.  Our guide had given very specific instructions before we left harbor that if we had to upchuck, we should do it over the side, not the bathroom, since he had to clean that.  I made use of the side of the boat.  Twice.  Even though it was really cool to see whales, I did not have an enjoyable experience.  It didn't help that we got soaked on the way back, especially during my second vomit.  It's not easy to dodge waves when you're emptying the contents of your stomach over the railing.  The Arctic Ocean is as cold as it sounds.  But they had jumpers for us to wear, so only my feet and head got really wet (also, the fly on my jumper was not waterproof, so I came out looking like I wet my pants). And I couldn't even have my complementary hot chocolate and cinnamon roll.

In short, I would recommend the whale watching if and only if you know your stomach can handle boats well.  But personally, I was the first person off that boat, and will not be doing that again.

Also, thanks to Patrick for his pictures, as I was in no state to take any.

Icelandic Wildflowers

 To offset all of those wordy posts I've been doing, I thought I'd post some pretty flowers for you all to look at!

Moss campion

Alpine bartsia

Marsh marigold

Cuckoo flower

Water avens

Not sure what this one is.

Thrift

Mountain avens

Independent Projects

In my last post, I mentioned that Summer, one of the undergraduates here, has an independent project.  By this point all four of us undergrads have our own projects, although they are very different from each other and serve different purposes.  Summer and Elsemarie are from colleges other than UW-Madison and are interning with the lab group through the National Science Foundation.  As part of that, they are required to complete an independent project and present on it at the end of the summer.  Patrick and I are both UW-Madison students and went through our school's study abroad office to get this internship.  We aren't required to do a project, but they sound like fun, and it was my best chance to really work with some microbes! (Which we all know I love. a lot. I miss my microbes back in Madison).

Summer and Elsemarie have already started their projects - as I mentioned in my last post, Summer is working on the movement of zooplankton in relation to the amount of sunlight, which is expected to be different than normal because of Iceland's extended day time.  Elsemarie is experimenting on spider behavior to see if spiders change their diet when the midges emerge from the lake.  Patrick and I have just finished planning out our projects.  Patrick will be studying the amount of productivity in the many ponds near Myvatn to see if there is a common factor among the high productivity ponds, like distance from the lake, distance from farms, or bird usage, to name a few. 

I will be studying the activity of soil microbes in different productivity gradients.  Remember those fertilization plots we set up?  Those are placed in different productivity gradients around Myvatn, and that's where I'll be getting my samples.  Productivity gradient is just a fancy way of saying different types of landscapes, with different plants and different amounts of growth.  On the low end of our gradient is a lava field, which is sandy and contains patches of plants.  In the middle are two types of heathland, one dominated by lichen and the other dominated by small trees like dwarf birch and dwarf willow (they come up to about knee level).  High productivity is represented by a grassland. 

Previous experiments have shown that high productivity is associated with high numbers of midges, presumably because the midges add nutrients to the soil.  But midges don't spontaneously turn into nutrients - they are decomposed by soil microbes!  We can measure how much decomposition is going on by measuring the respiration rate of the microbes.  We know how much microbes respire because they release carbon dioxide while they're doing it.  So the experiment is to collect soil from these different sites and to put it in a container and let it sit for a bit (fancy science term for letting things sit = incubation).  We'll pull out some of the air in their containers and put it in sealed vials for analysis back at Madison.  Sadly we can't get the results here because you need a big expensive machine called a gas chromatographer to measure the amount of carbon dioxide.  The hypothesis is that there will be higher rates of decomposition where there is higher productivity.

I'll also be helping with soil lipid analysis while I'm here.  This is a way to get an idea of what microbes are in the soil based on what lipids they produce.  Lipids, otherwise known as fats, are organic compounds composed of three long carbon chains, which can have a lot of variation.  Different species (including us!) have the ability to produce different types of lipids, so you can tell what organisms are present by the types of lipids in the soil.  This is a great way to find out what's in there without doing DNA analysis, which is more expensive and takes longer. 

Hopefully I will be starting my experiments next week!  There is also the possibility that I could present on my project at a symposium when I get back to Madison, which would be really cool!

Boat Safety

The last few days have been incredibly busy, so I apologize for not posting.  I also apologize for not having any pictures in this post.  I don't have pictures because all the interesting stuff I've done in the past few days has been on the boat in iffy weather, so I didn't want to risk losing my camera.  I helped collect emergence traps, which form a bubble submerged in the lake that midges get caught in when they fly out of the lake.  I got my first lesson in how to drive the boat that day!  It was pretty fun. 

Then we had a hectic 24 hour period where a different experiment, zooplankton movement traps, had to be sampled every 8 hours.  This is an undergraduate independent project headed by Summer, and it is based on the known fact that zooplankton in most lakes drift up and down depending on the amount of sunlight.  They're photosynthetic, so when there's a lot of light, they want to be near the surface, but on the other hand, that makes them an easy target for fish to eat, so they move to the bottom at night.  But Iceland has no night in the summer - what do the zooplankton do then?  Hence the sampling every 8 hours in a 24 hour period.  If 8 hours doesn't sound that bad, you should know that it takes an hour to prepare the boat for launch, one to two hours to do the sampling, and another hour to process the samples for storage.  And that the first and last time points were at midnight. 

I went out on the afternoon and the second midnight run.  It was pretty windy the first time I went out, almost to the point where we wouldn't be able to go out at all (when we see white caps, that's the cut-off).  There was no problem with wind, except that the waves made me start to feel seasick while sampling!  The midnight run was also in high wind conditions, chillier but still light out, with mist coming off the water and a distant fog from the ocean rolling over the mountains.  I distinctly remember commenting on how beautiful the fog looked before we left shore.  Once out on the lake, sampling went pretty smoothly despite the wind, and I had brought dramamine along and felt better this time. 

We weren't paying any attention, but while we were working, the fog had reached Myvatn.  By the time we were done sampling, we couldn't see the shore, although it was clear in the middle where we were.   We knew the general direction to head back in, but once we got into the fog bank, it was difficult to tell where we were - Myvatn has a lot of islands.  With some good luck and some good boat driving by Summer, the second island we found was the landmark for the turn into the bay where we park our boat.  That island has a rusty old cannon on it.  I don't know why.  No pirates on Myvatn as far as I'm aware.  Anyway, we knew that there was land about fifty feet from the cannon island, but while we were headed in that direction, we completely lost sight of all land.  It was pretty scary actually.  We took the shortest distance to shore and drove along land until we found our car with no problem. 

The next morning, we were informed that any time fog is in sight, the boat should not be out on the lake.  The fog rolls in quickly and with all the islands in Myvatn, it is very easy to get lost and we were in a dangerous situation!  But nobody blamed us - no one had told us about fog safety.  Now we know.  Believe me, we'll be careful about the fog next time.

Winner, Winner, Icelandic Dinner

The other day we had dinner at the research station and were served authentic hangikjot, lamb smoked with sheep dung.  The lamb was purchased locally and was a two-year old castrated ram, we were informed (just in case anyone was curious).  The hangikjot was .... significantly more pungent than the hangikjot sandwich meat we purchased at the grocery store.  We were also served potatoes in a white sauce, red cabbage, and a drink typically served with hangikjot which was Fanta mixed with malt extract (it was surprisingly good!).  It was great to eat an authentic Icelandic meal!

Another thing that is great is winning. Several weeks previous, I had been handed an entry form for a drawing contest hosted by the Green Cross, an organization headed by the research station manager's ten year old daughter and her friends.  The Green Cross is like the Red Cross but for the environment. 

Using my extensive knowledge of things 10 year old girls like and things that I loved to draw at age 10 and have since gotten pretty good at, I chose my subject matter wisely:

After dinner, the drawings were all awarded points from 1 to 13, with 13 being the highest, Eurovision style.  With much pomp and circumstance for each of the 13 entries, I was announced as the overall winner!  I was greatly honored, and would like to thank Mark Kistler of the Imagination Station, whose PBS show I loved with a passion as a kid, and also my boyfriend for sending me colored pencils.

My prize!

Frolicking in Kalfastrond

After our summer solstice adventures, we slept for about two days.  We also brought one of our two cars to the local mechanic since the pressure in the brakes was slowly diminishing... turns out it has a leaky pipe and will be in the shop for a few days.  In the mean time, that leaves us with only a five-seater car for 6 people.  So today, the rest of the group took the car and did the Northern Lakes route while one other person and I biked 7 km (about 5 miles) to the research station, counted bugs, and then biked back.  That's about 10 miles more than I normally bike so I'm pretty tired and sore right now, but it was a lovely bike ride!  The day previous, another group had taken the car to Akureyri, so a group of us stayed at Kalfastrond to clean and read some scientific literature.  By late afternoon, we had all gone a little stir crazy and decided to go for a walk around our peninsula.  The wildflowers are in full bloom and it is gorgeous weather yet again!

Frolicking flannel friends!

Barrow's Goldeneye through a binocular eyepiece

Click picture for larger image!

Who needs sleep?

The day started off bright and early to act on an invitation to go birdwatching with a visiting ornithologist from the Icelandic Institute of Natural History in Reykjavik.  We saw a gyrfalcon, which was pretty cool! It's a surprisingly large bird and likes to eat ducks, among other things.

Then we decided to get brunch at Vogafjos Cafe, which translates to the Cow Shed. Here's why:

The cafe is also a dairy farm with a small herd of cows.  We had a glorious buffet with all kinds of bread, cheese, smoked trout, baked goods (one made of moss!), and the best selection of fresh fruit I have seen since coming to Iceland - they had watermelon and kiwi!  It was pretty exciting.  I took full advantage of the buffet.  There was also this gem:

That's fish oil.  Good for whatever ails you, but tastes pretty fishy and feels slimy going down.

CRAZY COW DOES NOT LIKE PETTING. DOES LIKE LICKING PEOPLE.

Next we had to get to work on bug counting, but there were a couple of surprises at the station.

1. A lake ball!  Also known as marimo or kuluskitur, these are spheres of filamentous green algae.  Colonies are found only in a few lakes in Japan, Estonia, Scotland, and of course Myvatn in Iceland.  There is a lot of concern over the fact that Myvatn's colony is drastically shrinking, but someone brought one lake ball back to the research station.  They can be kept in aquariums for several years!

2. A rainbow!  Awww!

But our day was not yet over.  Not even close.  You see, yesterday was the summer solstice, and we decided to drive north to the coast to get as close to the Arctic Circle as we could to watch the sun not set.  It was absolutely gorgeous!  We had a bonfire on the beach and at the proper time (one in the morning since Iceland is an hour off somehow), the sun started rising before it had even halfway set.  We also saw a seal swim by!

 I took a picture every 10 minutes while we were there - here's a rough time lapse of the sunset/sunrise over the Arctic Ocean.

 After that we drove home and went straight to bed after having been awake for nearly 24 hours.  It was a long day but definitely worth it!

A Day Off, Part 3: Horses!

Icelandic horses are special, partially because of a unique gait that allows for a smoother ride over uneven ground, mostly because they're pretty.  We stopped to meet some horses on the way home from the waterfalls!

A Day Off, Part 2: Aldeyjarfoss

Next we went south to a smaller but no less impressive waterfall called Aldeyjarfoss.  It is off the beaten tourist path and the road there was pretty rough, but it was well worth the drive!  It is in a desolate volcanic area, which makes the waterfall even more gorgeous.

The rock formations are basalt columns

There's even flowers in the lava fields!

Click on the picture for a larger image

A Day Off, Part 1: Godafoss

All bugs are counted, all spiders are on hold until their food grows big enough to run experiments, and everything else is just waiting to be sampled, so today we took the day off and saw some waterfalls!  The first was Godafoss, the waterfall I saw on my first day in Iceland, but it was great to see it again on a lovely day!

National Day

Today is National Day, Iceland's independence day!  Iceland gained independence from Denmark in 1944 and this is celebrated every June 17.  We weren't sure how National Day is celebrated, but we were told that there would be a parade in Hofdi (the park with the trees by our house) that afternoon.  Everyone met by the entrance to Hofdi, where we felt a little awkward being the only foreigners there but luckily ran into someone we knew.  Everyone then processed to the open green space in the middle of the woods and took a seat on the ground; a podium and microphone were placed in the middle.

Then there were speeches, which were all in Icelandic so I couldn't understand a thing, but as far as I could tell, the priest opened ceremonies and said a quick blessing.  Then I think someone read some history from a book.  Next a woman in a gorgeous dress stood up and recited a poem.  I later learned that she is dressed as the Woman of the Mountains, a personification of Iceland.

Finally, it was time to play games!  I was too much of a wimp to participate in games when I couldn't understand the instructions, but Tony and Elsemarie played and it was great fun to watch! The first game involved everyone finding a partner and lining up two by two.  A single person stood at the front of the line and yelled something along the lines of "one, two, three, go!" and the two people at the back of the line split up and ran forward along opposite sides.  The goal was for the two people to reach each other again before the one person at the top of the column could tag them and take someone's place.

Next came the most epic relay race I have ever seen:
1. The first person runs to the opposite side of the field, runs around a pole three times, and runs back.
2. The second person runs to the opposite side of the field, finds a goose egg that has been placed in tall grass, and runs back.
3. Two people run across the field and back holding a ball between them with no hands.
4. Two people do a three-legged run across and back

Elsemarie and her new best friend

5. The last person runs to the opposite side, hammers a nail, and runs back.

Finally, a form of duck duck goose was played.  It was really neat to see the town get together to play games!  I haven't really seen anything like it in the States.

Out on the Boat

Yesterday I got to go out on the boat and help with some aquatic sampling!  I really lucked out and had gorgeous weather yet again - the lake looked like this:

Myvatn isn't supposed to look like that. This is a lake in northern Iceland that is usually windy and spawning large numbers of insects.  I'm not going to complain about it, though. 

Tony, one of the professors

We had some routine sampling to do at a spot in the middle of the lake called Station 33.  First off was the benthic sampler.

The benthic sampler collects small creatures that live at the bottom of the lake.  It had been left on the lake floor for 24 hours and it was our job to pick it up.

This is what was in the benthic samples after it had been filtered and all the good stuff put into a small tube.  It's mostly zooplankton, although I did see at least one wormy type thing squirming around in there.  I'll have to learn how to identify aquatic life next.

We also sunk a frame with a camera attached to take pictures of the bottom at different wavelengths, and collected these lovely cores:

Mmm, sludge

These samples were wrapped in varying layers of mesh to produce different levels of sunlight and then incubated in the lake to allow photosynthesis to occur.  This was done by hanging them from a floating rack just off shore and measuring the amount of oxygen when we put them in and after a few hours.  If photosynthesis was occurring, the oxygen levels should have increased, since the first step in photosynthesis is splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen in order to obtain electrons. 

Last night we saw a stunning fog roll in from the sea.

Fog over Vindbelgur

View from our house

And tonight was bacon night.  Due to mass quantities of uneaten bacon packets in our fridge, it was decided that every dish served tonight must have bacon.  As side dishes we had bacon and brussel sprouts as well as oven-baked fries with bacon sprinkles.  It was delicious!

Beats sheep head