Arctic Waters – Day 1

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Field visit to Veikko Lampi


Anu collecting samples in Veikko Lampa

Team:
Anu, Brian, Jenni, Julie, Luis

plus from Second Order team:
Paz, Ellen, Jurate

Activities:

  • Hike to mountain lake. An approximately 14km round trip, half in the rain, half in the cloud, all under strong UV resulting in a special Field Notes glow back at HQ.
  • Drank tea, collected water and algae (“Microbial mats are a multilayered microbial consortia”) samples from lake (using plankton nets), waterfall and some surrounding ponds. On seeing the copapods visible in the samples, Jenni reflected on her vegetarianism as she’d just drunk a bundle of water dwelling critters in the tea we brewed.
  • Studied specimens under microscope in lab and got pretty over-excited about the mass of miniscule activity in the samples.
  • Marveled at aurora borealis.

Spottings:

  • Reindeer
  • Lemmings (alive, dead and petrified)
  • Red squirrel
  • Crows
  • Frog
  • Beetle
  • Berries – red, dk red, blue, black

Recordings:

  • Underwater sounds using a hydrophone
  • Sound
  • Video
  • Underwater video
  • Stills
  • Mental snapshots

Thinkings:
The day was experimental and informal, collecting samples on an ad hoc basis. The process of trekking to the location, wearing chest waders to enter the water and gathering samples using the plankton nets gave us a sense of purpose, even though we weren’t entirely sure how the purpose would morph.