Oden is now back in the ice-covered seas, which is nice. We’re back to the feeling of being in a small town slowly moving through a white landscape. With bumps.

In sunny days, the kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla) find Oden, and are harassed by the jaegers – we’ve spotted Long-Tailed Jaegers (Stercorarius longicaudus) and Pomarine Jaegers (Stercorarius pomarinus).

When melt ponds form on the ice, they are often underlain by ice, giving a really attractive bright blue color to the shallow ponds. It makes nice photos, but it’s such an intense shade of blue that digital cameras sometimes have trouble capturing it. (For the chemists reading this, the color looks like someone has poured copper (II) sulfate into the melt ponds!)



Yesterday, I noticed something dark and moving in a few melt ponds – fish! Small fish, about 12 cm long. Soon, though, the kittiwakes spotted them too. And soon there were no fish left in the ponds.





I’ve asked several people on the ship; so far, no one has been sure why the fish are in the melt ponds. They must come in from below the ice through cracks. What is in the melt ponds that attracts the fish from below the ice?

I should add, that because our air measuring equipment is on the 4th deck of Oden and we have windows facing forward towards the meteorological mast, we have a much better view of the landscape without leaving the lab than many of the scientists working on decks 1 or 2. We’re quite lucky in that sense.