https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1 daily 0.75 2024-03-27 https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/blog-post-title-one-m7wx5 monthly 0.5 2023-03-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/30fd2d9e-c046-4e2c-b42f-4aff6a7a1102/PXL_20230305_224120312.MP_2+resized.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Welcome to our WhatsApp - Make it stand out Hiking Avalanche Peak Trail, Arthur’s Pass National Park (South Island), New Zealand https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/958439ca-f696-420f-b299-bf578774ed84/IMG-20230306-WA0002_2.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Welcome to our WhatsApp - Make it stand out Bik Lab members (Tiago, Alejandro, and Mirayana) take a socially distanced beach road trip near Lyttleton, New Zealand (South Island) https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/blog-post-title-four-gbxc4 monthly 0.5 2024-03-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/9274bf6d-c83c-46b3-9e30-d0c8c3c666d1/WhatsApp+Image+2023-03-17+at+6.13.01+PM.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Mummified seals - Make it stand out Mummfied Seal in Antarctic dry valleys (photo courtesy of Alex Brett: https://www.instagram.com/alex.brett.underwater/ ) https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/blog-post-title-three-472he monthly 0.5 2023-03-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/3c79b2fb-9996-49d3-a175-e284c0eef1a0/nematode+Q3.png WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Why Antarctic Nematodes? - Make it stand out Stilbonematidae nematode with bacterial symbionts - image from Leduc & Sinniger 2017: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685411-00003126 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/7102b368-a0e2-432b-8fec-d590f978b53f/WhatsApp+Image+2023-03-16+at+6.26.46+PM.jpeg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Why Antarctic Nematodes? - Make it stand out The diverse body shapes of marine nematodes! https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/blog-post-title-two-t7zh9 monthly 0.5 2023-03-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/a9b61015-13e3-4b31-a782-e5af313ace9c/WhatsApp+Image+2023-03-15+at+6.18.57+PM.jpeg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Science intros - Make it stand out Hotel room at Sudima Hotel @ Christchurch Airport https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/still-waiting-to-board monthly 0.5 2023-03-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/97f36bfa-7292-4266-8770-10c0e825e63d/WhatsApp+Image+2023-03-18+at+7.32.13+PM.jpeg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Still waiting to board - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/f9c387d3-0251-484b-9be5-f1ebdd8562cd/WhatsApp+Image+2023-03-18+at+7.32.20+PM.jpeg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Still waiting to board - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/embarkation-day monthly 0.5 2024-03-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/bb290380-407e-4566-9c02-fe8d27953787/WhatsApp+Image+2023-03-20+at+3.03.26+PM.jpeg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Embarkation Day!!! - Make it stand out Finally boarding the RVIB Nathaniel B. Palmer!!! https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/escape-from-new-zealand monthly 0.5 2024-03-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/ff1a6481-281f-4449-933d-a20352f2aa13/WhatsApp+Image+2023-03-21+at+7.28.17+PM.jpeg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Escape from New Zealand - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/3b99ab3c-139e-44d4-82dc-2d67ed1185b2/WhatsApp+Image+2023-03-21+at+7.28.32+PM.jpeg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Escape from New Zealand - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/everyone-is-seasick monthly 0.5 2024-03-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/1679724090851-Z5BYZBGCT0RG30X2RJWA/download.png WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Everyone is Seasick - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/east-antarctica-is-special monthly 0.5 2024-03-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/61ce9496-bd52-48dd-af79-a822496dd080/WhatsApp+Image+2023-03-23+at+8.04.55+PM.jpeg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - East Antarctica is Special - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/c6a321d4-23c4-4beb-96ae-96e2468f8953/WhatsApp+Image+2023-03-23+at+8.04.43+PM.jpeg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - East Antarctica is Special - Make it stand out 1. Scientific expedition tracks! Through 2012, published in Oceanography magazine. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/bebb273d-67bb-47fc-b354-d45595209949/WhatsApp+Image+2023-03-23+at+8.05.06+PM.jpeg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - East Antarctica is Special - Make it stand out 2. and 3. These images are from yesterday, before I spent hours laying down trying to keep my organs in one place. Look at the position of the yellow bar on the left relative to the horizon in these 2 images- we had big swells left over from a storm I wish I could send you the video, but we hit the slow internet zone a few hours ago. https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/millionaire-internet monthly 0.5 2023-03-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/005dfd6f-2c87-4cb6-a3a2-c16ad4a0624d/WhatsApp+Image+2023-03-24+at+4.16.09+PM.jpeg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Millionaire internet - Make it stand out Take 2 with this map from yesterday- I don't think I made my point clear when I sent it. The red and blue lines are all known scientific expeditions around Antarctica by any scientific vessel that made their data public, through 2012. We are going the other way, where nobody goes- this is a really special expedition! https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/30-second-ship-tour monthly 0.5 2023-03-25 https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/to-the-bridge monthly 0.5 2024-03-14 https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/thar-be-storms-a-brewin monthly 0.5 2024-03-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/1710454212093-DJ7DYTBP978OJI5XB31L/2023.03.27_1_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Thar be storms a brewin’ - Make it stand out Our path and the storms we're darting between. The pointy part of the mouse is the front of our ship, and the tail is the path we took to get here. We started on the east side of the south island and curved around New Zealand's southern end, then shot straight west to at least get us near the longitude of our first sampling spot. We turned south this morning, to come down the back side of that big swirling storm on the right. The blue-purple in the middle of that swirl is 50 - 60 knot winds (almost 60 mph). See wind data for yourself at https://www.windy.com/ and track our position live at https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/shipid:426075/zoom:13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/249c9149-9371-4dba-af4f-4f6c47bde90c/2023.03.27_2_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Thar be storms a brewin’ - Make it stand out Our path and the swell data for those same storms. Think of waves as the curls at the top of the water, and swells as the big bumps that come across the ocean in long lines. Swells are really what make us seasick. The swells are around 12-15 ft right now, but look how they're more like 25 in that storm and they're not in long, organized lines- they're coming from all directions, like sloshy water in a tub someone's carrying. And as for "hiding in the ice"- see how swell heights are very, very low right on the Antarctic coast, even though the previous picture shows you that it's still windy there? : ) https://www.windy.com/ shows you a video of wind, wave, and swell movement by moving the little cartoon lines you see all over this picture- it's a great tool to use to see what we're going through. https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/welcome-to-whatsapp monthly 0.5 2024-03-14 https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/measuring-gravity monthly 0.5 2024-03-14 https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/our-drinking-water monthly 0.5 2024-03-14 https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/sciencing-has-begun monthly 0.5 2024-03-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/21fcc2c4-b9d0-4cf4-9d6b-62302944ddcd/let-it-snow.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - SCIENCING Has Begun!!! - Make it stand out Myself and Virginia on the ship's bow- it was SNOWING outside as we neared our first sample site, and it felt magical in a Disney princess sort of way https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/a93dcfb7-b300-4189-b235-e1b4d2683c43/IMG_0894.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - SCIENCING Has Begun!!! - Make it stand out View from outside our room this morning - we're in an area with lots of "pancake ice" on the surface, which is the actual name for these flat slushy patches of ice. Stay tuned for a LOT more fun facts about how we name different kinds of ice... it will blow your mind and make you laugh https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/24hr-sampling-ops monthly 0.5 2024-03-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/85e8fc56-e05c-48c4-9132-456a8ecb0e00/2023.04.04_2_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24hr Sampling OPs - Make it stand out Seals! Look about halfway down and a little to the right of center. This is the Instagram version, though- in real life we see little plorpy blobs on an ice chunk and then everyone screams, gets out binoculars or cameras with big zoom lenses, and we end up with something like this. The things I've seen closest to the ship come when I don't have my camera of course. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/f9e6ed74-6476-44c0-9abc-71f0292cfdd1/2023.04.04_1_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24hr Sampling OPs - Make it stand out My favorite tv channel. From top left and going clockwise: front view, back view, looking backwards down the left side of the ship, looking backwards down the right side of the ship. I have so much to tell you about ice! https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/magnetic-south-pole monthly 0.5 2024-03-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/078def40-959c-4677-b4de-0afddd192afd/2023.04.05_2_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Magnetic South Pole - Make it stand out But this is what the southern lights actually looked like- HA. Our phone cameras sense things differently than we see them, plus they’re programmed to make a pretty image sometimes more than return what it looks like in real life. I adjusted this image to be more like slightly tinted fog, which is how I experienced it. The thing I can’t share well and the reason everyone runs to the bow even without it being intensely colored in real life is the huge scale of it- it’s like an imax movie of organized fog that drapes across the very visible milky way and sunbeams all the way from the port to the starboard horizon. It changes so gradually that you almost don’t notice, and somehow also so fast that it surprises you if you look away and then look back. It’s the ultimate grand-scale nature experience. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/c16e40ea-bf13-4d02-aefd-93fe61363144/2023.04.05_1_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Magnetic South Pole - Make it stand out The southern lights, with me and Holly in the bottom right of the photo. Taken by Victoria Vandersommen. https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/fwtzoanqhl0wvfxcxwcxv54wa1aw73 monthly 0.5 2024-03-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/e94bb9e6-3342-4b49-b55d-50303662d1ab/2023.04.06_2_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Penguins ahoy!! - Make it stand out When they run they have their flippers out and back like they’re mildly panicked, and in that moment I would follow unsound financial advice from them if it meant these little boops would have a good penguin life. It activates every “take care of that cute baby” instinct that ever evolved in humans. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/7de1f773-7e00-42a1-bddf-880c3e823a45/2023.04.06_1_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Penguins ahoy!! - Make it stand out Adélie penguins live all along the Antarctic coast and are the most common penguin species we see. They’re only 2 feet tall! We spot them on iceberg pieces and they hang out until the ship gets pretty close. Then they run along their iceberg away from us and slip into the water to get away. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/705667ac-5509-4dba-aa43-dc6228bce0b8/2023.04.06_3_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Penguins ahoy!! - Make it stand out This majestic emperor penguin has assumed the weight of the world and is working on soothing everyone’s hurts- I can tell https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/its-gettin-cold-in-here monthly 0.5 2024-03-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/796404dd-5fe5-46af-9cbc-29fcabcd82a4/2023.04.07_1_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - ITS GETTIN’ COLD IN HERE - Make it stand out Moonrise over Antarctica. The moon has been coming up around 4:30pm ship time, when the sun is in its final 30 minutes of its 2-hour sunset. It’s nearly full right now and shows up as huge and glowing like the setting sun. When I first saw this happening, I thought it was a gap in the clouds reflecting the setting sun. I turned back around 3 minutes later and gasped like I was auditioning for the role of “shocked crowd” in a one-woman play. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/c2a4df26-2d5a-4fc5-976a-cb489a3bf146/2023.04.07_2_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - ITS GETTIN’ COLD IN HERE - Make it stand out Your question: “I'm super curious why the iceberg with the Adélie penguins on it was so dark-colored. Is that sediment or guano from a huge flock of penguins (or both?)” This is that iceberg, and it’s a piece of a glacier that has flipped upside down (the bottom of the glacier is now the top of the iceberg). You can tell it used to be a glacier because of the long grooves very close together on the top of it. Those are a classic sign of rocks grinding the glacier ice away as it moves. That grinding pits rocks, pebbles, and dust into the ice on the glacier bottom, which is why this glacier looks really dirty- it is! Fun fact: penguin poop is pink! You can see pink splatters on the left side of this glacier, on the smooth white part in the very left of the picture. Penguins eat krill, which have pink shells. I’ve heard penguins are actually pretty smelly and gross, in case you wondered https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/logical-but-not-familiar monthly 0.5 2024-03-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/4572199a-243d-482a-b8b9-ba32d78fcbda/2023.04.10_1_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Logical but not familiar - Make it stand out An iceberg field- those big ones on the horizon are at least 2 - 5x the size of the ship above the water. We don't go into the fields at all, the pilots say less because we might run into one of them on our way by and more because if they move they could box us in. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/338747ac-bbf6-4407-a4ba-03da928fc335/2023.04.10_2_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Logical but not familiar - Make it stand out We had 2 Easter egg hunts this weekend : ) And then during Easter dinner we had an impressive display of dessert trays, including decorated eggs. Someone grabbed one of those eggs and cracked it open to eat it, and raw egg spilled out onto their plate- it wasn't hard-boiled at all! Then one of the cooks came around the corner giggling to himself. https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/pock-eggs-amp-dinner-cheese monthly 0.5 2024-03-15 https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/land-ice-vs-sea-ice monthly 0.5 2024-03-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/bf72ab2e-d0e4-4fb4-9546-21c22a611528/2023.04.12_2_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - land ice vs. sea ice - Make it stand out This is some kind of crusty sea ice, maybe nilas? It's harder to tell them all apart than you might think! And there are all these other names for ice features, like the 5 shards to the left of center in this photo are called "fingers". The places where the ice looks white are from ice stacking up as it gets pushed together. And notice how different the color is on this photo- it's not a mistake or a filter, I took this one during a multi-hour sunrise where all the ice was a little pink. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/ae553330-a271-41cb-9516-8d1092bbf892/2023.04.12_1_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - land ice vs. sea ice - Make it stand out This iceberg was huge- multiple football fields in size. Nobody told me how much detail there would be on the glacier faces- I'm used to seeing posters of smooth, diamond-shaped, cartoon pieces of ice. I love the icicles and caves and some have big colored scars where it looks like they've been ground down by sandpaper in a giant's workshop. And white to blue is a whole color spectrum down here. https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/timelapse-ice-transit monthly 0.5 2024-03-15 https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/3am0ydscefowu0yugg3wnjwbtopl63 monthly 0.5 2024-03-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/3d2f28dc-d577-4fa2-9c13-aad122d8b7a0/2023.04.14_1.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - This ship has a hospital - Make it stand out The hospital! That one light doesn't turn off for safety reasons, which is my only complaint when I'm trying to sleep in the middle of the night, but I guess if it's for safety then I'm hateful grateful https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/2ff05790-db41-4719-b5ff-4e27219f39f9/2023.04.14_2.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - This ship has a hospital - Make it stand out Imagine me composing messages to you from this spot on the bridge, which is the only place I can function on transit days. My desk spot in the belly of the ship, by all the science labs, doesn’t have a great window and I get so distracted and anxious about missing seals and penguins that I can’t work. Someone asked how long the transit was in real time that I posted the video of yesterday- it was about 3 hours. https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/all-the-small-things monthly 0.5 2024-03-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/09451f7b-38ac-4328-a5fe-8fd84464ffc4/2023.04.16_2_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - All the small things - Make it stand out The satellite phone is called the “morale phone” https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/0426f7a5-244d-4945-b66d-cfd3b1ef65c3/2023.04.16_1_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - All the small things - Make it stand out Someone brought sassy adult coloring pages and we have a wall full of stuff like this https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/09db5f0d-9667-44bc-8918-e41536140591/2023.04.16_3_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - All the small things - Make it stand out We get the NYT crossword puzzles on about a 3-day delay and now there’s a big dictionary that lives in this lab https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/85b1c0d0-e5d9-40b6-9b29-c9778784734d/2023.04.16_6_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - All the small things - Make it stand out I have now seen some version of this sign on every continent. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/42f057ba-c35a-4bae-8676-80fbd287b845/2023.04.16_5_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - All the small things - Make it stand out Ha https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/9551b965-05f3-4c04-9319-eda0254c731c/2023.04.16_4_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - All the small things - Make it stand out I miss taking small bites of things https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/safety-drills monthly 0.5 2024-03-15 https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/east-vs-west-antarctic-seafloor monthly 0.5 2024-03-15 https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/24hrs-of-science monthly 0.5 2024-03-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/73f81084-7dca-42fb-aa65-1bc911d57255/2023.04.21_05_small.png WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 10pm: The ship is slowly moving forward and paying out the cable for the sled, to lay it out on the seafloor before coming to a stop and pulling in the wire. See the sunset stripe in the middle left of this picture? It felt like sunset in the 6pm picture! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/aad121f7-b417-46ce-b71d-ae1bdb83bd29/2023.04.21_08_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 1am: The trawl is up! Sponges and sea stars and worms slosh into this giant box and the team sorts as fast as they can as detailed as they can. The "A" bucket in the bottom left has big spiky worms in it and the bucket in the bottom center is full of sea stars. There are about 20 other buckets off-screen to the left. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/5686b8f4-ed4b-4ea6-9589-54a58c62600f/2023.04.21_19_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 12pm: IT'S HAPPENING- surprise science!!!! We stopped a few times today during our transit and this time they said they think we can get mud. So we're sending down the megacore! But the gears and other mechanical parts are frozen because the windchill is -30. The techs usually have some lead time to warm it up, but not today! Right now they have a heater and hair dryer on the back deck trying to get the instrument into the water without it all freezing together. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/f1262565-79a6-4a73-9705-054f4ebcf1b9/2023.04.21_03_small.png WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 8pm: The chief scientist and the science crew are in aft control (just off-screen to the right in this picture), watching and directing the seafloor camera (on-screen here) and talking about how to sample this site. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/f2249998-af02-407f-9806-ea540a763811/2023.04.21_10_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 3am: It's happy chaos in the trawl team's lab- they have great speakers set up in there. Their sorting becomes more detailed, down to species if they can get there, using glossy posters and 3-ring-binder guides they've made from pictures of stuff they found on earlier expeditions. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/ba5b140a-5278-49bd-bf1e-c7d9178dc844/2023.04.21_14_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 7am: We just wrapped up finding out how much we don't know about our next location (conclusion: we could start doing science at any time, as soon as we run across a spot with our target depth). We spend a lot of time staring at this screen, which live-updates the time to our next approximate station based on our current speed and direction. But we also ask around to see when the last time was that the captain and chief scientist talked. There's real tension now between avoiding storms, staying in a safe bit of ice, and maximizing our remaining science time. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/578a638e-d29e-4469-8b22-d91b75f8dad3/2023.04.21_16_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 9am: I'm working on a photo project now. Some of the scattered folks are playing games in the 03 lounge. We have about 18 h until a storm hits us, so we're looking for a good spot to get some cores for the mud teams before we have to do storm safety things. We thought we were headed to a spot with good depth, but then the continental shelf dropped out from under us. ETA is now ??? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/e487970e-b4a3-4161-bbf0-9dd0730a0876/2023.04.21_22_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 3pm: Change of plans- we're preparing for rough seas now (including busting out the crane on the back deck). I don't envy the Captain, pilots, or anyone else doing the tough work of keeping us all safe out here, and I sure do appreciate how well they're doing it! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/dea09fda-0d55-4636-bc27-7497605e7f6d/2023.04.21_13_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 6am: We're moving full-speed now to the next station. The trawlers finished their sorting sometime in the last hour and their lab is totally cleaned and deserted. It took about 5 h for their team to deal with the trawl from start to finish, and they had about 6 h of on duty time (when they needed to be ready to jump into action). They're still on-shift and technically on duty, but this is why the 12 h shift works well for our teams. Even when we have stations close together, it's unlikely that any one team will have to do intense work for more hours than are in a typical workday. And somebody's awake all the time so we can start science any hour of the day and do as much science as possible. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/3b01f577-6361-44d3-ad51-81bfd13489be/2023.04.21_20_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 1pm: They're still heating up the megacore : ) We just held a graduation ceremony for someone who's missing theirs back home this weekend. I don't have explicit permission to share their private moment with you, so you'll have to imagine it based on this doodle, which somebody used to prep for making them a lovely card. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/1919fd8b-7c13-4a7a-a21f-9824c27427f1/2023.04.21_23_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 4pm (late because hey, it's a miracle we even have internet!): I was out taking head shots on the bow. SO many scientists have old pictures of them on websites, but not Holly's group! (starting when we can upload these after we get back LOL) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/038d9565-21eb-456b-8b6b-d4374890046e/2023.04.21_02_small.png WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 7pm: I’m headed out on deck to film the seafloor camera going into the water. We just finished our detailed mapping of the seafloor at this station, which we do first at any potential sampling spot. The green lines on the top screen are flat- we like flat sites because it means everything happens at our target depth and our equipment is less likely to get stuck underwater. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/adaf1b16-5335-498e-bbba-3506a7073388/2023.04.21_09_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 2am: The trawl team has brought all their buckets inside so the ship can reset again, this time in an ice-free-ish area. We're staying still now to put down the giant circle of gray bottles in the center left of this picture, behind the silver bars. That machine opens the gray bottles one-by-one at different depths in the water column, so we get really good background information on the water at this site. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/175dbca2-6e8e-45f6-8439-ca10ed9f4e50/2023.04.21_21_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 2pm: Still a beautiful day, still waiting for the megacore to heat up. I heard from someone who overheard part of a conversation that maybe we're going to try and ride out a storm here, so maybe we're not supposed to feel like we're in a hurry? One of the science crew is having a very warm and confident talk with a scientist about how being humbled by the elements sometimes is just part of working out here. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/846086ed-e3f7-482d-a3b2-430383a41d78/2023.04.21_24_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 5pm: We're on the move, but we're not sure where. Folks have started taking seasick medication so it's in their system whenever we might hit some waves. We're all still scattered, doing our own waiting activities, so I'm sharing our loved ones collage with you- I've been waiting for an excuse to show you this door ❤ https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/6f32b7c3-5981-4f65-9a2a-364cc0ce9205/2023.04.21_15_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 8am: Now that we're in transit, everyone has split up. We get the NYT crossword on a multiple-day delay- this one is a Sunday puzzle and is taking us longer to finish than normal. Other folks are writing, analyzing data, or taking a break- I've seen a Harry Styles coloring book out recently. (Note that all these updates are for scientists only- I don't want to invade the crew spaces because they have different schedules than us and live on the boat in a full and different way) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/d70bdda4-e2ea-418a-86c6-8bd9a91e6a88/2023.04.21_12_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 5am: We didn't get cores! How long do we keep trying before we give up? That depends on the why: do we think cores didn't come up because something went wrong with the machine, because it's difficult for the tubes to jam into the seafloor, because the seafloor leaked out of the tubes once they were jammed, or something else? Today we decided to move to another station while someone looks at the camera footage to figure out the why. We don't think it's machine failure since that hasn't ever happened before, so it's not likely that trying again to get mud would work any better. Holly's team collected a few lumps of seafloor that came up, because some sample is better than nothing for them. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/d605c5aa-0e6a-4f28-87cf-e730d29d48db/2023.04.21_07_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 12am: It’s shift change time, just after the midnight meal, and many people are awake. They’re all waiting for the sample work to start- it will be an hour until the trawl net comes up and needs to be processed. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/dc027dc1-44eb-41ea-ba53-ac741697eb54/2023.04.21_06_small.png WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 11pm: The sled team is processing the samples that just came up on deck (small, delicate, alive things). The ship is headed back to the top of the science runway so they can put the net in the water to see what bigger things are hanging out on the seafloor. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/676c9244-ddf3-468a-b6ac-e0eda145e4c5/2023.04.21_18_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 11am: The ship has split into 2 groups: those of us who function normally when we don't know the plan, and those of us who MUST KNOW THE PLAN TO FUNCTION (). I assume the calm people are in the 02 lounge watching a movie. I'm walking too fast between looking at the ice (why are we stopped??) and listening to the ship's radio from my desk (why did they just call her to the bridge??) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/a88ce3d0-ed46-4b08-aaa4-84a9156872ce/2023.04.21_04_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 9pm: I’ve just filmed the camera coming out of the water and I'm above the back deck, waiting to film the sled going in the water. The ship is transiting back to the beginning of our science runway. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/70aa9c4b-0a3b-4f88-8d9f-3f8567140f16/2023.04.21_17_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 10am: Sunrise! Another disgustingly gorgeous day. It's so, so nice to see the sun after a few days of clouds. And every ice landscape is new and full of details to love like I haven't loved from any other so far. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/adf7add5-5c6e-46f0-aea4-6fa140c7b3d4/2023.04.21_11_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 4am: They're getting ready to put down the "megacore" (not to be confused with the "multicore", which has a smaller number of smaller tubes). It's another sit-still situation for the ship, because this thing has to go straight down and neatly jam its tubes into the seafloor. Cylinders of muddy bottom stick inside the tubes exactly as they were organized in the ocean, so we can look at the difference between the top of the mud v. inches into the seafloor. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/13d25140-0927-40e1-b873-2d142928db20/2023.04.21_01_small.png WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 6pm: I’ve just finished dinner. The ship is slowing for arrival at station 22 after an afternoon of transit. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/ecfcb754-4921-402e-8db6-5a39b337c159/2023.04.21_25_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - 24HRS OF SCIENCE - Make it stand out 6pm: I did it- 24 hours of hourly posts! It is so energizing and so exhausting to have a once-in-a-lifetime experience this intensely ALL THE TIME. A bunch of us went out to the bow for sunset. Since we don't know where we're going yet, we don't know how much ice we'll wake up to. I got sad wondering if it's our last day in the ice, but dinnertime was a nice consolation Good evening and goodnight, everyone! I may take the weekend off to recover. I'll get you some videos next week. Virginia contact@VirginiaSchutte.com https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/ice-and-confusing-maps monthly 0.5 2024-03-15 https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/cameras-on-the-seafloor monthly 0.5 2024-03-15 https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/trash-amp-storms monthly 0.5 2024-03-15 https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/lab-intros-goodbyes monthly 0.5 2024-03-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/fc0909a3-6d99-462c-ba07-0188f9d00365/2023.04.29_04_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Lab Intros + Goodbyes - Make it stand out Andy Mahon and Ken Halanych combined teams to sort through the bigger stuff hanging out on the seafloor, which they brought up with a trawl net. They’ve both been to Antarctica many times but of course never studied in this area, so they were telling me excitedly about how different their results are from this side of the continent compared to what they usually see. They want to know how connected (or not) the groups of animals are that live in different areas of Antarctica. Different, say their results, but they also found very different animals from site to site over here. They also post about their work through https://IcyInverts.com/ https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/8c0e5a53-8daa-4efe-9359-400fcc8309de/2023.04.29_01_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Lab Intros + Goodbyes - Make it stand out Holly’s lab has never been to Antarctica before! They put down tubes to grab cylinders of mud from the seafloor, then they sift nematodes (microscopic worms) out of the mud. The samples they got here will hopefully establish an entirely new branch of Holly’s research program. She says they definitely found new species, and one of them has a totally different body plan than any nematode she’s seen before. You can get to Holly’s social channels and results announcements at https://www.hollybik.com https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/0486a659-ae10-4e7e-9ae2-fe5925317454/2023.04.29_02_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Lab Intros + Goodbyes - Make it stand out Kevin Kocot’s team used a sled to very gently collect tiny, delicate organisms. They found so many that Kevin says he’ll need to hire more people just to finish processing all their samples. His team also found the “holy grail” of the species were looking for (this picture is them telling him about it as he's coming on-shift), and they’ve documented species with unexpected behaviors and reproduction strategies. Kevin writes fun blog posts on https://IcyInverts.com/ https://www.hollybik.com/nbb2303whatsapp-1/our-expedition-is-at-an-end monthly 0.5 2024-03-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/27421029-1a78-4398-82c4-ebf2eefb87f4/2023.04.30_3+PXL_20230421_181930913%7E2_small.jpg WhatsApp Community Archive (NBP23-03) - Our Expedition is at an End - Make it stand out Virginia contact@VirginiaSchutte.com https://www.hollybik.com/home daily 1.0 2022-07-22 https://www.hollybik.com/research daily 0.75 2022-07-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/3d30b6fd-0d82-45f6-be46-f5c5b37bf033/nematfig1.jpeg Research - Ecology & Evolution of Deep-sea nematodes What can nematode worms teach us about the origin and persistence of animal life in the deep ocean? Nematode worms (roundworms) are microscopic animals that inhabit nearly every type of soil, sand, and mud found around the world - from high-altitude volcanic slopes down to the deepest ocean trenches. Free-living nematode species are generally less than 1 millimeter in length, and their biodiversity is purported to rival that of insects (millions of species). This important group of worms is notoriously understudied, and to date, taxonomists have described less than 5,000 total species from marine environments. Most scientific research on nematodes has historically focused on terrestrial species (agricultural pests such as root-knot and potato-cyst nematodes), parasites of human and livestock (dog heartworm!), and the model lab species Caenorhabditis elegans. My research aims to rapidly describe new marine nematode species from around the world — focusing especially on deep-sea ecosystems — using a mixture of DNA sequencing, evolutionary trees (phylogenetics), and formal taxonomic species descriptions (via high-resolution microscopy and imaging). Deep-sea habitats cover 91% of the earth’s surface (sediments > 200m depth), but our current understanding of deep-sea nematode species is based on a cumulative sampling area less than half the size of a tennis court (sediment cores totaling 60-70 sq. meters of seabed). I am especially interested in the concept of marine nematodes as "evolutionary commuters" that can colonize new habitats on short timescales due to their simplistic body plan and cellular physiology. (Photo from De Ley 2005, WormBook) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/03f72267-793e-43fc-8200-c5a200edc1dc/Screen+Shot+2022-06-29+at+3.19.41+PM.png Research - Invertebrate microbiomes What governs the community assembly of nematode microbiomes - microbial metabolism, natural selection, or chance? Over the last decade, an explosion of scientific studies have revealed the critical biological importance of animal-associated microbiome taxa (species of bacteria, archaea, protists and fungi). However, our knowledge of invertebrate microbiomes is still relatively scarce compared to studies of vertebrates. Unlike more complex animal groups such as mammals, invertebrate species do not appear to exhibit "phylosymbiosis" where microbiome taxa mirror the evolutionary tree of the animal host. Yet, invertebrate species still seem to harbor microbiome communities that are definitively distinct from the mixture of microbes present in their environmental surroundings. My lab is helping to drive forward the emerging research area of nematode microbiome studies. Recent evidence suggests that closely related nematodes species may maintain separate microbiome niches to avoid competition, and other studies have further detected seasonal turnover in dominant bacterial symbionts of marine nematodes. I am broadly working to characterize the species composition and functional gene content of diverse nematode microbiomes, in order to understand how host-associated microbial communities may help to drive the evolution and ecology of diverse marine nematode species. (Photo from Bellec et al. 2019, Scientific Reports) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/1656530739034-2CLA1TZP1HL8JKVKU1MY/unsplash-image-lqcHCkIk4Z0.jpg Research - Antarctic MaRine Biodiversity Are Antarctic marine sediments “hotspots” of biodiversity for microscopic animal species? The Antarctic continental shelf is the only known marine ecosystem where deep-sea fauna emerge into shallow waters. This is most likely a result of the extremely dense, cold, and salty ocean waters in the Southern Ocean which allow easy migration up from the depths (versus other parts of the world where warmer temperatures in the shallows act as a formidable barrier). Antarctic marine invertebrates appear to have wider depth ranges compared to their close relatives in other ocean basins, and the Southern Ocean is home to high numbers of endemic species not found anywhere else in the world (most likely due to the remote geographic location and relative isolation of this water mass as a result of the ferocious circumpolar current that encircles the entire Antarctic continent). Historical cycles of glacier formation and ice shelf melting in Antarctica have also contributed to unique evolutionary and ecological conditions not found in any other marine ecosystem in the world. I am interested in applying modern genomic tools to study microscopic animals (and their microbiomes!) in Antarctic marine ecosystems. We do not have robust DNA sequence databases for most small invertebrate species in Antarctica, with very little molecular data in existence for species-rich groups such as nematode worms. This lack of baseline information about Antarctic ecosystems is a critical issue given the rapid warming of the Southern Ocean and the imminent threat of climate change in this unique marine ecosystem. (Photo via Unsplash) https://www.hollybik.com/faqs daily 0.75 2022-07-09 https://www.hollybik.com/media-press daily 0.75 2024-03-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/d7d3c95b-1e25-489d-bb9a-f23c827b444e/2017-05-26+02.35.14+%281%29.png Media Enquiries https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/f8453242-b208-460d-9df6-6494b8d83612/Screen+Shot+2018-05-23+at+11.08.01+AM.png Media Enquiries https://www.hollybik.com/outreach daily 0.75 2023-03-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/1656022481834-HXGRUA2UP31R1FOCV8RM/Screen+Shot+2022-06-23+at+6.14.24+PM.png Outreach https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/1656092238879-6GI6EFVIT5EGVVK95KXL/Screen+Shot+2022-06-24+at+1.36.48+PM.png Outreach https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/1656092288837-TC2AOJTNKU684573GZS5/Screen+Shot+2022-06-24+at+1.37.56+PM.png Outreach https://www.hollybik.com/contact daily 0.75 2022-07-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/05dcf611-b92d-4399-85ba-a5e2391f87f9/2017-05-26+02.18.14.jpg Contact - Contact me. For any media enquiries, interview requests, or speaking invitations, I can be reached via email at contact@hollybik.com For questions regarding my academic research, please review the information on my research group website before getting in contact: https://www.biklab.org For general questions about science careers please review these Frequently Asked Questions. Other places you can find me: Twitter: @hollybik TikTok: @deepseabiologist YouTube: Bik Lab https://www.hollybik.com/writing daily 0.75 2024-03-01 https://www.hollybik.com/about daily 0.75 2022-07-22 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/2634d0f4-ee21-4966-a664-986795efa033/Holly-brooklynbridge43park.JPG About - About Me (professional Bio). Dr. Holly Bik is a deep-sea biologist who studies a variety of questions about microscopic species (worms, bacteria) living in ocean mud. She currently holds the position of Assistant Professor in Marine Sciences at the University of Georgia, where she also maintains a joint appointment with the UGA Institute of Bioinformatics. Throughout her career, she has focused on research topics encompassing evolutionary biology, benthic marine ecology, host-associated microbiomes, genomics, and data visualization. Alongside her academic research, she is an active science communicator who uses digital media platforms and popular science writing to disseminate her work to diverse audiences. You can find her on Twitter @hollybik. https://www.hollybik.com/antarctica-2023 daily 0.75 2024-03-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/e45e4b70-d691-4ec1-a251-f1222f9329f9/Antarctica_Nathaniel_B_Palmer+%281%29.jpg Antarctica 2023 - Realtime expedition updates WhatsApp Group We’re trying a new approach to science communication from this remote region of the planet - join our WhatsApp group for daily updates: https://chat.whatsapp.com/BZwq4D7FF847sUsxTGTgHY Past WhatsApp updates are also archived at this link (note: web archive may be delayed due to internet bandwidth limitations while we’re at sea) https://www.hollybik.com/expeditions daily 0.75 2024-03-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62aa41e1860e7d77815b4c7d/bf45521e-8126-44b2-97d0-b8ddd26e6b9e/DSCF1070.JPG