Posted by Kristen
Approaching this internship I had a clear idea of what I was getting into…well I thought I did. I was told we were sampling the lake on a research boat. Growing up on an island I think I had a different idea of what a research boat is. The first day we entered the mire and we approached the lake I spotted a row boat on the shore and every idea I had about what would take place on the lakes went out the window.
Now I grew up kayaking and whitewater rafting and assumed this would be no problem…wrong! Firstly we didn’t have an anchor, how are we supposed to stay in one spot to sample without an anchor? Well we have a 20 lb. grab sampler that does the trick, my arms are going to so ripped by the end of the month. We quickly also discovered that having arms with different strengths will just cause you to spin in a circle. Factor in the wind blowing steadily and yet again we spin in circles! By the end of our fourth day sampling we had the anchor and rowing down and it was time to move to our third lake where we had a different “vessel”. A rubber dingy.
Our first trial on this went pretty well I think especially since you can take away the warm weather, the sunshine, the third person helping and the 20 lb. anchor that would rip the boat to shreds. We managed to maneuver around the sharp edged boulders and get a few stations done successfully. In a few days we will add the sunshine and warm weather back into the equation and hopefully finish our first round of sampling. But until then Happy 4th of July to us we are gonna go eat hot dogs and sauna.
NERU abisko blog 