Imagine sticking your thinly gloved hands into freezing water and then trying to manipulate your instruments, let alone a pencil or even just a bottle cap. We tend to wear rubber dishwashing gloves for sampling up here. Neoprene may be the way to go, but you lose a lot of dexterity. Next, think about nestling those little bottles of sample water for the dissolved oxygen tests right up under your arms, between the many layers you've wrapped yourself in, just to keep them from freezing up while settling. You struggle with a hydrometer that won't spin or float for all the ice that's rapidly forming in your sample and clinging to the sides of the cylinder.
Laughter keeps everyone happy and warm no matter what the weather.
Through it all there is a sense of awe at the pulse of life that is Kachemak Bay in the depth of winter, at its continually changing face and moods. Marine and terrestrial birds and mammals wander closer than during the rest of the year, the shades of green and brown in the forest stand out in stark relief against the frozen land, and the ever-changing expanse of sky bends and reflects the light over the winterscape, leading your eye to see the familiar in completely new and different ways. Find out how cold the water really is, how much oxygen it can hold when it's that cold, how quickly it begins freezing up in the open air even with all that salinity. We enjoy the friendship and endure the elements for the sake of the Bay that so clearly sustains us all. We never know who we'll run into each time we hike down to our monitoring sites.