Changes in Latitudes

Today I had a field trip out to the Biological Station again for my Marine Methods course. The course teaches you different sampling methods for various substrates and depending on the aim of your experiment. Previously we did the typical rocky shore intertidal sampling with the squares, but today we played with trawls and dredges. It was cool being on the boat and the weather was perfect!! I have just been so lucky this semester with great weather on all of my field trips. We pulled up different organisms based on the device used. The first was a grab, which we used on soft sediment, only home to a few worms and broken shells - not a very exciting start to the day. Next we used the bottom trawl. We pulled up mostly sea cucumbers and hagfish (gross!!), and even quite a few small sharks (one variety is bioluminescent), a skate, halibut (one adult, and some juveniles - cool stuff), and some other fish species. Finally we took three samples with the triangle dredge. The first going up fro...

Yesterday was the big day! The much anticipated Stoltzen Opp - the steepest race in the world! It was quite an event!! Marius, Knut and I all participated. 1000 people raced on Friday, but approximately 5000 people raced on Saturday! When we got there, so many people looked like very serious runners with their spandex apparel. Most were doing an intense warm up, but I did one little warm up jog and then watched all the more serious runners. It was pretty funny. The first people up started Saturday morning at 9:15AM, and from then on, the next runners were released every 10 seconds until 6:30PM. The whole way up the track there were numerous photographers, and halfway up there was a video camera. I had enough energy then to send a wave and some smiles. To keep myself going I had my iPod with me playing I Won't Back Down (Tom Petty), Lose Yourself (Eminem) - a great running song, and some other songs to keep my pace steady the whole way up. In retrospect, I wish I had turned down the...

Hello everyone, If you're up for a laugh and watching me struggle up a mountain. Check out this video around 10:33-11:00AM EST (16:33-17:00 Norway time) of the Stoltzen Opp on September 24 (tomorrow!). Go to this --> LINK

The past month, Marius and I have been trying to give the apartment a touch of 'us'. So we took down the yucky wall trim and old wall paper, and painted one wall red. The other walls are going to be white. But I started painting eggwhite on the walls, and I'm not a fan; (1) because I can't see if I missed a spot, and (2) it just looks so plain and boring. So we'll pick out a new color this weekend. Marius' dad, Tron, is coming to visit us this weekend as well since he will be in Bergen for some meetings. He is going to help us with lowering the ceiling and whatever else Marius has up his sleeve.

The title of the blog has been changed, yet again. I feel that this title is a bit more fitting, for now. It's not only the title of one of my favorite Jimmy Buffet, but also, considering the cultural views are a bit different from that of New Zealand, it works. For example, whaling. Kiwis hate the idea, Norwegians don't.

[Water team, ASSEMBLE!] [Starting to get really cold as the rain comes in - numb fingers and toes]

The Bergen Kommune has recruited one of my classes to test the water quality at various areas around Bergen. The class is divided into groups to test treatment plant outputs, swimming beaches, and river systems. My group was selected to test three different beach sites in an area north of the city called Arna. Yesterday, I woke up at 5:45AM to get to the campus by 6:45 to be at Arna by 7:30 and finish our sampling before noon so that the E. coli samples can be examined. I did the intertidal biodiversity sampling, since I knew I would be efficient at it thanks to all my experience in Auckland. I sure know my alga!! I wanted to try to use the waders and take water samples for the phosphate and E. coli , but we would have used too much time to change the waders from person to person, and we were on a time crunch. Even though we don't know all of the results of our data, from what we could see, the water didn't look tooooo clean at one of the sites, especially. It was right next...