My arbitrary milestone for the week is our 100th ice core. Katarina has sequentially numbered each core we have collected this trip and yesterday we surpassed 100. I'm in the lab now, filtering the melted samples from yesterday (another very late night) and I have to admit, this core was just like all the others. But knowing that we have collected and processed over 100 ice cores does drive home the number of samples that we have managed to collect during our time here. In addition to ice, snow, and seawater, we also collect percolate brine. Sea ice is formed from salty sea water. When sea water freezer, all the salt is concentrated into liquid brine channels in the now fresh ice. This is where the microbes we want to find live. At the start of each sampling day, we take a 1 m core and then leave the empty hole covered while we spend the next few hours collecting our other samples. Before we leave, we pump out all the brine that has percolated through the sea ice and collected in the hole. The hope is that this is the medium in which biological signals of interest will be concentrated and easily detectable.
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AuthorI am a marine molecular ecologist at the University of Washington. I'm excited to share my first Antarctica trip with you! Archives
December 2023
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