You may want to sit down for this one...it's a doozy!

To start: I Can't believe It is almost AUGUST, the summer is just flying by! The last few days to end July have been frustrating, exciting and...entertaining. Amanda and I have just started the final stage of the project, as scheduled of course. However we have been encountering problems actually putting in a solid day of sampling!

Below are a list of some reasons why research in the north is sometimes less than what the average person would qualify as "care free" :

Step one...Getting out of bed.

Always of tough one, but I have to say we have been pretty diligent (plus or minus a few days) when it comes to getting up and getting to our 7 am breakfast. The Planktoneer's took very few days off! It is important to make it to breakfast on time, especially when there are so many groups here. If you miss your sitting then you have to squeeze into the next sitting. The cook usually notices too, and gives you a dirty look. Aside from making it to breakfast it's important to get up and assume that we are going out, since every day is a gamble as to whether we will actually make it to our site.

Step two....Getting to our site.

It's of course difficult to determine when all the wonderful sampling days are going to be and then book a truck accordingly. As of late, like Amanda mentioned before, there has been so much fog. It is unbelievable. Our guess is that since Hudson Bay is still partially covered in ice and is therefore contributing to large incoming fog banks. At first when the fog was here we decided it was just plain unsafe to sample. But then the fog stayed. We got desperate to do our sampling. So our rule is now: as long as we can see our truck from where we sample...we should be good.

Also, we had originally decided that if it was rainy, it was too slippery for us to go out...NOW we have decided that as long as we have our "bluff legs", and dress warm enough...we should be good. Even if the people we bring out with us those days, with promises of seeing bears, think we are crazy and hunker down until we are done.



And what about the last looming situation that would prevent us from sampling: Bears? Well we've made some mind frame changes about those guys. You see, with one simple rephrasing of what it is to work in bear country and with the security of "professional bear guards", we can ease our apprehension of bears on our bluff. Without of course, decreasing our vigilance. Which leads us to:

Step three...Staying at our study site to get sampling done.

We have decided to change the words "Bear Guard" to "Bear Monitor". I mean most of the bears we have seen have just scurried away from us when we go about our business. Usually when we see a bear we scurry ourselves...but when you think of a bear trying to mind its own business, as long as they see us and we see them, we can come to a mutual agreement as to what needs to be done. So basically to bear Monitor: we watch it to make sure it doesn't come closer, or we leave if it does.



For example yesterday a bear popped up over the bluff. We watched it as it minded it's own business, then it got into the water and then swam out some 5 + kilometers out to the ice. As we were resuming our sampling a car pulled up to us and asked if there was a way to drive down our bluff closer to the water, to see the three bears. We said "no there's not...and...what three bears?" Apparently these very... considerate, gentlemen saw three sleeping bears just on the other side of our bluff from where we were working (in our blind spot), honked their horn and chased them to OUR side. Some people are ridiculous! They were obviously not local. We have learned that people who live here have a simple respect for bears and don't disturb them unless it's necessary, because you really don't know whose on the other side of lets say a rock bluff that your going to disturb it towards.
Once Amanda, me and our trusty new bear guard established that the bears must have either taken off or laid down somewhere where there weren't going to be people honking at them.. we proceeded to sample.

But wait, that wasn't all the excitement. As we continued at a slightly faster than normal rate to process each pool (by "slightly faster" i actually mean like mach 3 speed ). We were not only constantly looking over our shoulders but swatting mosquitoes and black flies by the HUNDREDS! apparently with the abundance of bears comes the influx of BUGS. It was crazy! and of course, we forgot our bug jackets in the truck...

Just as we were finishing up the last 4 or so pools we heard a bunch of crackers being fired off on the OTHER side of the bluff and saw a conservation guy in a boat seemingly chasing, that's right...Another bear away from our site. hmmm....so what was the logical thing to do at that point now that there were 5 bears now in the area? well of course the obvious answer was to keep sampling....

Finally when we were done our sampling we scrambled back to the truck and jumped in. We were Safe! out of the killer monsoon of bugs and out of harms way of the bears. Just as we were regrouping a truck pulled up beside us and asked us if we were looking at the bear across the road by the tundra pond...So that was hmmm bear number 6 that was in the area??? all within 500 meters of us. Between the bugs and the bears, we felt like we were being attacked by both extremes of the food web,

This morning when we went to go out to the bluffs we had a hard time getting our hands on a shotgun. Of course it was a beautiful, non-foggy, windy (so there were no bugs), and above 10 degree day! But, with no protection and the fiasco we had yesterday...we were definitely not going out on the rocks with out a gun. To be honest, going through school for science, I NEVER thought a limiting factor to fieldwork would be a firearm and a zip lock baggy full of slugs...

We did get out in the afternoon with the help of Riley the volunteer. On the way there and on the way back to the study centre we had the pleasure of seeing a mom and cub hanging out at another bluff.


She was pretty skiddish and extremely protective. Riley said something to us which made the mom take this position in front of her cub. She didn't stick around too long and we didn't stick around to see where she would go.

Aside from the bears we have been entertaining ourselves in other ways in the evenings and when it has been impossible to get to our site.

I was fortunate to go on a tundra buggy ride this past weekend with the University of Guelph field course that's up here. It was great being on one. They are gigantic. Unfortunately for the first 5 hours we could not see a thing because of fog (surprise, surprise) We were lucky enough to get to see one bear though. But he didn't do anything, he seemed way to fat to even move. It seems that we encounter a much larger variety of bears at our study site than when we actively pursue them.




I was also invited to join some Guelph researchers on a zodiac to do some dredging for their bar coding project. We found some pretty cool things like brittle stars, starfish, jelly fish, belugas (we didn't catch those in the dredge though) and a gigantic bergie bit that we went to check out.







Despite everything that we saw, the bergie bit was something I will never forget. Mostly because it almost hit our zodiac when it broke apart when we were next to it.

Here's the bergie bit before...

And here it is after...


On a not-so-nice, rainy day a couple of days ago we went exploring in our truck after sampling. We were keeping an eye out for a beluga carcass that had apparently washed up on the shore and a gigantic bear that was seen near it. What we found were bears...two big bears. The almost unfortunate aspect of seeing the bears was that we had actually gotten our truck stuck before we saw them. Apparently rain and soft roads make even softer roads. It only took us a minute or two to push the truck out of the mud but in the process the three pushers (Amanda, our bear guard Katrina, and myself) got in the way of the spinning tires. Well one thing led to another and while Karen and Riley (the volunteers here that we bring out with us) were watching the bears we finally had had enough with being cooped up in the research centre and took it out on eachother in a good ol'fashion mudfight!

Here are some after shots...



And then we had to clean off in the river...it was chilly...




Another thing that has been occupying the researchers brain this week was preparation for an CNSC Olymp-athon. Amanda will give you the break down and reveal the results. But I think I will give you a hint in saying that one of the challenges was to "get our hands on" a particularly elusive creature of the north...the famous Ptarmigan

AND ON TOP OF IT ALL..Amanda fell into a pool today. I'm pretty sure it was mutual laughter but it was pretty funny :) Ingrid...recognize THAT pool...he he