25th March, 2010
Today the weather has been mostly gloomy and still is. We undertook rifle training course today and tomorrow we head off to the shooting range. You will wonder why? Well simple reason..... polar bear. Plenty of them around and their density is one of the highest in and around Svalbard. So its a precautionary measure. Lets talk a bit more about the science now. I will be sampling in the Kongsfjorden, a fjord 100 metres away from our research station. Plan is to filter as much as water mostly from the surface and subsurface region and filter water from melted ice. Then I bring those filtered samples back in India and using genomic techniques we will understand how tiny microscopic organisms are adapting to this cold climate. The water sampling is scheduled in a week's time because the fjord is almost icy. One of the coolest thing here is we have an international arctic scientific research station run by Kings Bay, the agency which is in charge of Ny Alesund. From breakfast to dinner we are taking there, also we have a fully functional gym, library and common lounge...So you can never feel you are away whilst being at 79 degrees N- here the folks say it is the northernmost community..
More to follow later..