Besides digging, seismology requires lots of batteries. Even though our seismic stations draw very little power (less than a bathroom nightlight), they need to run over the entirety of the dark winter down here when there is no ability to recharge the batteries from the solar panels we install. So, that means we use a lot of batteries. Each battery has to have connectors attached to the terminals, then be charged up.
Before . . . each box contains an 85 lb battery
After a few hours work . . . all the batteries with connectors and charging. Happy little batteries!
Surprise! More batteries. Then it was time to help with cargo. POLENET is getting ready to head to the field, so it’s time to load lots of stuff. We pack boxes, load boxes in a pickup and haul them over to the cargo area. Then we carefully strap all of our boxes to pallets, get them weighed, hand off boxes to the super-chill cargo folks, complete the paperwork, repeat. We spent some time in the lab catching up on e-mail, too.
I neglected to take a photo of the cargo. So instead I’ve included some photos of the Ob Tube. The Ob Tube is a 20 foot tube inserted through the sea ice and down into the water. The top 15 feet of the tube are solid steel. The bottom 5 feet of the tube is glass. You squeeze in, climb down, and are amazed. These photos were taken at almost 11 PM. The sea ice will start to get thin pretty soon, and this was the last day to use the Ob Tube.
Under the ice. Thousands of tiny fish. If you are lucky, you can hear the seals singing.
