Everyone agrees these last two days are extremely unusual in terms of weather at a place like Ingøya, which boasts the record greatest number of gale-force wind days per year in Norway (257). Very little wind and very flat water.
Yesterday, Maddie snorkeled in Sandenbai with mixed success. Cold was not at all a problem. Buoyancy was. We jerry-rigged a weight belt and that helped a bit, but the best solution was to remove the upper half of the two-part wetsuit to reduce buoyancy. Even then it was a tough fight to get to the bottom, leaving only seconds to explore the seafloor at just 3-5 meters depth. If we get another day of nice weather, we may try again, maybe with no wetsuit and definitely with better equipment. We did collect one dead articulated shell (both shell halves connected) and had a ton of fun.
Maddie geared up and ready to swim.
Maddie jumps in, discovers a bouyancy problem, is pleasantly surprised by the lack of discomfort, and collects an articulated dead Arctica.
Meanwhile, Mike, Julie, Sam, and Claire scouted Sanden beach and the Molo (Julia’s main site from last year). Today, they dragged the small boat that will be used for core operations up to the pond from the beach – dropped there by Al/Michael/Maddie yesterday. We all met at the pond this morning, some were dropped off by boat nearby, others hiked from camp. The hope is that sediment cores will capture the transition from marine to terrestrial as the landscape rebounded during deglaciation. This will help pin down the timing of relative sea level changes at Ingøya. The goal for today was to scout the depth of the pond and take some short sediment cores. They discovered that the lake was shallower than expected, less than a meter for the most part. The first core we took and extruded (very forcefully) showed we had a sandy gyttja (peat mud). The second and third cores were more successful in retrieving ~2 and ~2.5 feet of mud respectively. Mike’s suspicion is that there is a lot of sediment compaction happening during coring. The plan is to return and retrieve a long core in the next few days.
The infantry begins their work.
Coring the small pond above Sandenbai.
We were successful in capturing two short cores.
On the hike back from the pond, we stumbled across two interesting things. 1) A glacial deposit at ~20m above sea level. Mike was intrigued and added it to his list of puzzle pieces. 2) Cloud berries. These very special Norwegian berries are in short supply this year, but we happened upon a small patch near the radio tower.
Rub-a-dub-dub, try paddling this tub.
Cloud berries may be in short supply but mushrooms are growing everywhere!