The last three days have been a frenzy of activity as we break down our ship-based laboratories and prepare samples for shipping. We’ve been packaging over 2,000 diatom cultures with care so that they’ll return to Rhode Island alive and well. Meanwhile, we’re stowing away all of our important sea-going instruments and digitizing our datasheets. In the process of breaking down, the ship/lab scene looks wildly chaotic. Yet, in a day or so, we’ll need to have everything packed, secure, and ready to be shipped by sea and air from McMurdo to our home labs in the United States. The transportation of samples and equipment can take a couple of weeks to over a month. It’s a bittersweet feeling to break down a space that we’ve fine-tuned to our scientific needs over the past month. But that’s the beauty of a research vessel! The space has and will see countless scientific parties answering important questions about our oceans from different perspectives and using diverse technologies. We’ve been lucky to set up shop aboard the Nathanial B. Palmer over the past month. Time to break it down and head on home. Yet, the work has just begun! The samples and cultures we’re packing today are the key to answering our questions about the evolution and adaptive capacity of Southern Ocean diatoms. Stay tuned!

Photos provide a glimpse into the chaos and care it takes to package samples and breakdown a ship-based laboratory!