Most of Saturday and Sunday (6/25-26) were spent setting up our lab space and finding our way around camp. Saturday night we played trivia with friends we made during our van ride. Sunday night we had some rain and a beautiful double rainbow after dinner. Monday we took a quick hike near Toolik lake over some boardwalk, past experimental plots. That night I enjoyed the Sauna and a few dips in Toolik lake to cool off. I suppose that counts as a literal arctic plunge! Then we spent a late night sorting samples from lake Wolverine. Wednesday was a lab day, again sorting out Daphnia from other zooplankton in our lake samples. Yesterday (Thursday, 6/29) we made our way out to sample two lakes ourselves, N1 and N2. The hike was only about 1 mile one way, but the tundra is not easy to walk on. It's uneven and you tend to sink down with each step. There was a small stream we had to cross with decent water flow and depth but we managed both ways. All was well when we made it to the first lake and began sampling. I was holding onto the end of our sampling net when it accidentally slipped out of my arms on one of the throws. Oops. It was still close to us and thankfully had a buoy on the end. However it was still out of reach because the water was too deep. Luckily we were able to fashion a device to fish out our net. There was a random arrow nearby I had noticed on the hike down. We tied it to a pole with one of my shoelaces and tada! Equipment rescued. Needless to say we kept a tight grip after that. Other than the thick swarm of mosquitoes that followed us the entire time, there were no more issues on our adventure. Today, Thursday, was a lab day. We went through all our samples to asses if they were surviving. The Daphnia from lake N2 are the smallest Daphnia we've ever seen and gave us some trouble just trying to find them. The so dubbed 'MacGyver Pole'.
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For those who don't know, I am currently in Alaska at Toolik Field Station. I'm here helping a grad student collect and sort samples of zooplankton to bring back to the lab in Texas for experiments. You can follow this blog for updates during my time in Alaska! I departed DFW airport last Thursday (6/23) and arrived in Fairbanks, Alaska after a layover in Seattle. Friday morning we departed from the University of Alaska - Fairbanks in a van and headed north to Toolik. The field station is located north of the Arctic Circle and off of Dalton Highway, a long stretch of road from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay. The drive took approximately 11 hours with a few stops and varying road conditions. Here are a few snaps from the drive up! The mountains of Brooks Range, south of camp. We drove through them on the drive north.
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AuthorKaitlyn Howell Archives
October 2022
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