Helen FieldsScience Writer

If you’re following my facebook updates, you’ll know that I am not, in fact, immune to seasickness. Ah well. It takes a very unusual form: I feel off balance when the ship gets to a sampling station and *stops* moving. My inner ears apparently can only deal with life when we’re actively on the move, breaking ice. Lame, huh? No nausea, though, so I can’t really complain.

The woman who runs the CTD (a standard oceanographic sampling instrument) is a knitter. Awwww yeeeahhh. That makes two I’ve found hidden in the science party, and I’ve heard rumors of two more – both men – in the Coast Guard.

We’re not far from St. Matthew’s Island and several people have seen a McKay’s bunting, a little finchy bird that nests here and nowhere else. One was hopping around while people were working on the ice yesterday, and one was hanging around the ship this morning.

I saw a bunch of seals yesterday but they were all really far away. The way to see seals up close is to hang out on the bridge all day. Too bad I have other work to do.