We left the Polish Polar station on August 3rd. Our dear friends gave us a grand send off– firing signal pistols in the air!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Final goodbyes on the beach. In back: Marcin, Andrzej, Mateusz, Witek, Krysztof. In front: Nell, Derek, Nina, Zach.
We were picked up by the tourship Polar Pioneer and had a few days of luxury before we landed back in Longyearbyen.
The Polar Pioneer.
The expedition leaders Henrik Lovendahl and Sue Werner of Aurora Expeditions could not have been nicer! We went on a tranquil zodiac cruise of an ice choked lagoon in front of a glacier and then went to visit an old whaling camp where they used to hunt beluga whales.
A zodiac in front of the glacier.
One of the nice surprises was that Dr. Alan Burger, from University of Victoria, a seabird expert and old friend, was on board as a naturalist.
Alan explaining how beluga whales find food.
In Longyearbyen we reunited with Allison Bailey ‘07 who took Zach, Nell, and Derek on their final Arctic adventure along the cliffs above town.
Zach, Derek (note new facial hair configuration), Allison and Nell in the restaurant Kroa (cozy place at the end of the world).
After repacking and a couple hours of sleep, Zach headed off to Scotland and Ireland with his fiddle, Nell went home to Germany, and Derek went to Copenhagen. Nina stayed in town an extra day to return our rented firearms and to take care of the samples that we collected.
The Greenland team is still hard at work. Mary-Anne, the high school teacher from Chico, CA gave a live podcast from Greenland.
The Magdalena Fjord team (Kasia, Darek, Lech) had a successful field season. This was their first season at this site. They say that the colony is really steep but that they managed to do feeding watch observations after figuring out a way to put a chair on the cliff. The weather was great despite being so far North. They had a few polar bears visit their camp but all is well.
Harold Steen in Bjordalen had a sucessful season and the birds from there have already left. He had 10 nests being monitored with PIT tag readers!
Jorg Welcker in Kongsfjorden reports that the chicks there have also fledged and he is packing up his camp now.
More posts to follow as we get updates from the other teams in the field!!!
