Monday and Tuesday, waiting in Cape Town

Monday 4^th January

We arrived well in Cape Town on Monday. The air temperature was +28 C, with a nice blue sky. Josef merged with us in Frankfurt, and Steve in Cape Town. At the arrival, Michel de Wouters met us and we also collected some equipment from him. The Zarges box with our equipment has arrived and will be put on the plane. The briefing at ALCI will happen on Tuesday, and the flight should leave on the 7^th January early in the morning. The arrival in Troll (Norwegian Station) is planned around 13.00. Arount 15.00, we will fly to the Princess Elisabeth Station with the Bassler. We all hope that the weather will be good.

The whole BELDIVA-DELAQUA team:

Tuesday 5^th January

Today, we had the ALCI briefing. The flight will be on Friday or Saturday morning. We are waiting for information. In fact, we cannot really complain. Steve says that Cape Town as well as Tasmania are the best sites to go to Antarctica. Steve has worked several times in Antarctica, but was waiting for the flights in the Falkland islands. The weather there is much worse by comparison to Cape Town and waiting for the BAS flight to Antarctica is not so pleasant as here.

In addition, we had a small meeting of the BELDIVA team. We discussed our plans and tried to establish a coordinated action. I will start with the installation of the Open Top Chambers on the Utsteinen ridge, to get an experience of the installation of these devices in real conditions. It is the first time that we will install them, and hope that we designed them well and that they will be easy to fix in the rocks. We also must install the sensors (linked to loggers registering the data) into the OTC, to monitor the environmental parameters. Then, we want to go to Pinguinane all together. Josef and me, we will make sampling and install other Open Top Chambers. Steve and Elie want to work there for several days. We can use their rock saw (with engine) to install the Open Top Chambers J!

After that, Josef and me, will visit Ketelersbreen and Teltet. These places are not too far, and it could be easier to install the Open Top Chambers, because there are more stones that could be used to fix the OTC. We will see on the spot.

During the second week, we will stay at the Station and make some measurements, like a daily cycle of the photosynthesis of biofilms and mosses. In addition, we will start to filtrate the air, to get an idea of the aerial transport of microorganisms in the air. Then, before leaving the Station, we will go back to all the OTCs to collect the data from the loggers.

Zorigto Namsaraev