This week Tate added "guest lecturer" to his ongoing resume of:
-Full-time Ph. D. student
-Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor
-Ironman
-Designated roach killer
-Featured gas pumper
-Strict budget enforcer
-Skilled taco maker
Ok, maybe that is not his "official resume" but they are all equally important titles around this household. Actually, to be completely honest with you, I hold the later titles in much higher esteem than the others. Without him I'd have to squash bugs, pump my own gas in shady neighborhoods, and work off my potential unending debt to Target.
Anyway, I digress...
After word got out of his summer Arctic adventure, a world renown environmentalist {a.k.a. his advisor} at a prestigious university {a.k.a. Baylor} asked him {or told him} to lecture {well, more like show a power point} to her class. He amazed them...no duh. He told them of how Baylor sent him on a grant to magical place called Barrow, Alaska. He spent his summer at the tip top of the Arctic Circle, the most northern North American city to be exact, in order to set up and run an air sampler for a research project. This sampler will measure carbon aerosols in the air {yuck}as well as serve as the hot topic of his dissertation. Now, I know what you are thinking, and yes, Barrow is the same city that is in that movie 'Big Miracle,' where Drew Barrymore and Jim, from The Office, save those three precious whales. Tate didn't save any whales, but he eat some. Here, I'll just let him tell you about it...
Barrow is unlike anywhere I have ever been in my life! I guess you could draw some sort of comparison to Barrow and Amarillo, where I grew up, because they are both flat and in the middle of nowhere, but that is where the similarities end. I left DFW and the 100 degree heat, and arrived in sunny Barrow, AK, which was 30 degrees. I was the only person on the plane with a big jacket!
The first stop for any visitor in Barrow is the local AC grocery store. This is just like any other grocery store you have been to, other than the fact that a bag of Lay's potato chips is $11 and Tropicana OJ is a measly $18! They also sell 4-wheelers and snowmobiles! Everything is so expensive because no roads lead in or out of Barrow, and everything must be brought in by plane.
Many atmospheric researchers flock to Barrow because it offers a place to study the atmosphere in an environment that is pristine and should be free of human impacts. I went to Barrow to kick off a year-long sampling campaign trying to quantify the effects of black carbon on snow albedo and climate change. We are taking week long air samples for an entire year, as well as collecting various snow samples for analysis back at Baylor. I know this seems pretty boring to most of you, but these are very exciting and important things to people interested in trying to assess human impacts on the environment and climate change.
There are only a handful of restaurants in Barrow, and the most famous is Pepe's, the northernmost mexican food restaurant in the world. My favorite was the "Polar Haven" of Osaka's! I ate there several times while in Barrow and became pretty good friends with the wait staff, which isn't very hard when you are the only person wearing a coat and beanie in the restaurant. One of the best things I ate was reindeer sausage, that's right, Santa sure knows how to make a sausage link! However, the reindeer sausage wasn't the most interesting thing I had in Barrow, more on that later...
Like I said earlier, Barrow is in the middle of nowhere, literally. It is surrounded by the Chukchi and Beaufort seas on either side. It is as far north as you can travel before falling into the Arctic ocean. The picture above is a sign on the road to the research station where we set up our samplers.
I was greeted at the airport by scientists who live in New Mexico but work in Barrow for a few months out of the year. They told me that we were heading out to the research site because they don't like to stop working until the sun went down, the only problem is that during the summer, the sun never sets, it stays about 40 degrees all day. The pictures above were taken outside of my apartment at midnight! No wonder Alaska is know as the "Land of the Midnight Sun."
Danielle referenced the "Big Miracle" that took place years ago in Barrow, and the people of Barrow truly do care about their whales. They, just like the rest of Americans, want to save the whales...they just want to save them for dinner.
The local Barrow culture revolves around the bowhead whale and the locals still use traditional methods to hunt the bowhead. Wooden frame boats are covered in skins from seals and then taken out past the ice to the open waters. Following a successful whale hunt, a festival is held and people from all over northern Alaska come to celebrate the hunt. This festival is know as a Nalukataq and was going on while I was in Barrow!
The blanket toss is the main attraction. The seal skin coverings from the whaling boats are held like a parachute and a person is tossed in the air, while doing flips and throwing candy to the kids. The blanket toss is an homage to the traditional hunting ritual of throwing a person up in the air to spot whales out past the ice. Once a whale was spotted, the whalers would travel out to the edge of the ice and the hunt was on. I asked if I could take a turn, but for some reason they wouldn't let me. The Nalukataq is also where whale delicacies are given out to the community. Luckily, I escaped having to eat them at the festival, but I couldn't hide forever. On the plane ride out of Barrow, I was surrounded by locals and offered, muktuk, which is a thin piece of whale skin an blubber. To make it even more appealing, it was pickled in some various spices and vinegar. I had no other choice but to pretend it was a big gummy bear, and choke it down. I only gagged once, and promptly asked the flight attendant for a glass of water while all of the eskimos enjoyed their free entertainment!
I will be returning to Barrow later this year to collect some snow samples and to continue our air sampling campaign. We are also working on a proposal to extend our campaign to coincide with the new drilling operations in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, so I may be spending a substantial amount of time in Barrow. I will have to have Danielle come with me so she can write the next blog!
