Sunrise, Freeze Cores, and New Data

Woke up to an incredible sunrise this morning. We are back in the broken group - anchored just out of effingham island. For the last two days we've been taking faking freeze cores from both Effingham Inlet and Pipestem Inlet - both gorgeous places. A humpback whale was feeding last night, seals were playing in the water, and the water temperature in Pipestem was 19 degrees !!! A couple of the cores that were taken have the scientists very excited -- past cores have not included more recent 'mud/sediment', however it appears that at least a couple this time captured recent years -- they will now start analyzing based on weather, current, etc., data for the past number of years and see what they discover. There was also one core where a first look indicated potential impacts on the sediment from the March tsunami and earthquake from Japan, but again they will start analyzing. We've been doing (well, the scientists have been doing, but it's the royal we) CTD samples, measuring conductivity, temperature and depth of the water and analyzing salinity, and we've (the royal we again) been doing plankton tows where a small mesh net hangs in the water gathering dinoflagellates ..... so fascinating!!!! Weather is still gorgeous and we're hoping for a shore trip to Dicebox island today. Connectivity is still intermittent so I'll sign off for now.