A refreshing break

After arriving at Saint Pierre today we grabbed a case Oringina and a bag of Madeleines Coquilles and headed for a hill behind the town. We found an old dam, which was a suprisingly comfortable place to stop for a snack.

The Food Fishery

Although Cod has been under moratorium in Newfoundland since 1992? there is an Annual food fishery. During this fishery people are allowed to catch a limited number of fish for personal use. Generally people go out in small boats and fish a few Km off shore.

This year has been a bit strange, there was a massive amount of ice early in the year and this has effected our weather and I am sure will have some impact on marine ecosystems. The Caplin, a small very numerous fish used to spawn on the beaches around here in july, but for the past 10 years they have been getting earlier every year, now they spawn in june. This year they spawned in june, but are spawning again now in August. I am not sure what the impact of this is in the big scheme of things, I guess it is just their way of dealing with the changing ocean environment. what evey the case, it means that there are caplin near shore during the food fishery, and cod like to eat caplin. I figured that I'd try to take advantage of this. Lewis and I went down to middle cove and did a bit of beach casting. I figured that if I could cast out behind the schools of caplin I might stand a chance of getting a cod. Sure enough, after hooking a handfull of caplin (two on a single hook at one time) I had a big tug on the line and after a short battle I landed a nice cod, this was soon followed by another. Lewis caught a load of caplin, hopefully he'll get a big one next time we go out.

Tundra Flower

I have not been blogging much recently because I have no internet in my room.
Yesterday there was almost no wind so I went for a walk to photograph flowers, unfortunatly the slowers I was interested in are finished, butI found thid little one, These white flowers grow in aread where cryoturbation has braught "soil" or pulverised rock to the surface.

Thanks Merci

I'd like to say a big thank you to good people here in Raglan that made my Birthday one to remember. Being away from home and family is tough, any day, but especially on birthdays.

The shot above is of the notice board here in donaldson camp. It seems to be tradition here to post a birthday poster like this for every birthday in camp, just so every one knows. I was getting birthday wishes in both official languages all day.

To top it off only of the cooks made a fantastic Birthday Cake - very good!

Thanks everyone.


Je voudrais dire que un grand vous remercie à de bonnes gens ici dans Raglan qui a fait mon anniversaire un pour se rappeler. Être parti de la maison et de la famille est dur, n'importe quel jour, mais particulièrement sur des anniversaires. La photo ci-dessus est du panneau de notification ici dans le camp de donaldson. Elle semble être tradition ici pour signaler une affiche d'anniversaire comme ceci pour chaque anniversaire dans le camp, juste ainsi chaque sait. J'obtenais des souhaits d'anniversaire dans les deux langues officielles toute la journée. Le compléter au loin seulement des cuisiniers a rendu un gâteau d'anniversaire fantastique - très bon ! Merci chacun.

Mr Caribou

This Caribou was taking a break from migration and eating some of the nice lush sedges growing by the Bio Disk (Sewage treatment plant) quite close to camp.

Tundra Sky

It is now a month after the summer solstice and the Sun is setting at a more reasonable time and it actually gets dark at night now. Because the we are so far north the sun does not just slip down below the horizon, it skims along it, slowly sinking below it. This means that the rich evening light, a time refered to as the "golden hour" by some photographers actually lasts for more like 3 hours.

Donaldson Camp

A few nights ago I went for a walk on the hill behing camp, here is the view. Lots of nothing hey! Well there were some interesting rocks, Pillow basalts in particular - I'd have taken some photos, but my Camera battery died.

Caribou ( Tuuktu )

Lots of Caribou around here now, when it is not foggy I can see perhaps 100 from my window, but they are all moving, migrating north. These were part of a long string making their way across the tundra.

The weather was great when I arrived, about 25C and sunny, now it is about 1C, windy and foggy.

On the Road again

Left St. John's today, I'll be in Montreal tonight and off to Raglan Tomorrow.

Ant Macro

Ok, this is my second try posting this image - last time it showed up fine on my computer, but apparently didn't show up an anyone else's computer.

Yesterday I was building a rock wall in the garden, as I moved rocks I kept finding red ants warming their larvae under the rocks heated by the sun. As I disturbed them they would rush around to put the larvae in the shade, either under another rock or down a hole.Watching these I remembered my reversed lens and decided to have another go with it. The working distance is only a few cm and the depth of field is very shallow, but the price was right!

Torbay to Raglan

I have posted this map to clarify the location Raglan in relation to Newfoundland. While Raglan is not a lot further north than Northern Labrador it is significantly further North than most of the province, including the island of Newfoundland. Raglan is also at an elevation of about 600m so the climate is quite a bit harsher than that of Newfoundland.

This map was stolen from Google Maps

Pingualuit Crater Mystery solved

1.3 Million years ago a chunk of rock flying through space hit Northern Quebec with the force of 8,500 Hiroshima atomic bombs, Since then things have cooled down a bit and the crater has filled with water, there is no water flowing in or out of this crater, it has been catching rain for the last 1.3 million years. Along with the rain water it has also trapped pollen, from plants in the region, and dust from the atmosphere. These sediments have been keeping a record of our climate for at least 120000 years.
An international team led by Laval University in Quebec City has recently returned from the Pingualuit Crater and hopes to unlock 120,000 years worth of secrets about climate change. For more information on the research going on at this crater have a look at this article, recently published in the globe and mail. This article was published on may 25th - which is when my original post started to receive so much attention.

Melting

This was the View from my window a few days ago.

Snow Bunting

About 3 weeks ago these little birds started to appear up here in Raglan, now there are loads of them. They are apparently snow buntings. When they first showed up there was nothing but snow up here, I have no idea what they were eating - I guess they were probably just waiting for the snow to melt. Well now the snow is going fast, the snow outside my window had dropped about 5 feet, only another 10 feet to go!

My View

With the snow still up to the roof here most of my view is the inside of a snow bank, however there is a cave melted by the air rising from my open window. The view is always changing as new icicles form, sometimes gathering snow as storms blow by outside. The cave works well for letting light without it being totaly blinding, it also stops the wind, a bit, so I can have my window open even if it it windy outside.

Trailer-sickle

With the warmer weather our precipetation is getting wetter, two days ago we had a blizzard, but it was blowing a very sticky mixture of sleet and snow. This is a view of one of the trailers where the night shift workers sleep. As you can see, it is fairly well coated with ice. Just imagin weather like this in a city!

Internet dish

This is my link to the internet, how I am posting to this blog, checking my email, chatting to family and sending my data to the ofice. Now that the weather is warming up here the snow is getting more sticky and has been forming a layer of ice on the dish, so during storms when everyone is in camp and wants the internet the most some brave soule has to venture out onto the roof and scrape the ice off the dish.

Big day for Pingualuit Crater.

On May 25th I seem to have had a unusually large number of visitors to my blog, 125 in total, many, I think were looking for Pingualuit Crater, some specifically for pictures of said crater. I don't know why it is suddenly of so much interest. Any one visiting here looking for the crater leave me a comment - I'd be interested to know why you are interested in this crater.

3...2...1...

Sadly we are not doing anything as exciting as launching a rocket. Nick and Terry are conducting a probe test in a test loop we have laid out in Raglan.
We take readings with the probes in an area that we know to be free of conductors, this allows us to accuratly calibrate the probes.

Filtering

Last week We were testing some equipment, and enjoying a great spring day in the tundra.
I was messing about with my wideangle lense and got a rather interesting of Nick, the wid angle really exagerated the nose and chin.

I ran a high pass filter on a copy layer in photoshop, made the layer monochrome, and pumped up the contrast, then reduced the opacity of the copy layer. This filtering exagerates textures and variations in contrast.

As a side note: similar filtering it used in the processing of geophysical data, though not the kind we are producing here.