Sun hover to sunset

Another up close and personal look at the beach cast polar bear from last week. Here you can see that bottom jaw split in half again. More importantly, you can see how terrifying it would be to get attacked by a polar bear! This is a great reminder that everyone needs to respect these amazing creatures and keep their distance when encountered!

The offshore crew arrived and here they are on the R/V Annika Marie dropping off samples on a gorgeous sunny day in Barrow. 

Here a local wildlife biologist from NSB department of wildlife proudly shows off her first chum salmon of the summer.

Due to last years success, we organized another family science day this year. The kids (and parents) really enjoyed looking at some of the tiny fish and crustaceans that live along the beaches of Barrow.

This might be my favorite picture so far... A young boy helps his sister who is too short to reach the oculars on the microscope by holding her up so she can see. 

Here, Sam George educates some local children on some critters we had on display in our touch tank.

We finished off family science day by performing a dissection on a fourhorn sculpin. Everyone was really excited to see that this sculpin had eaten 12 of the amphipods that they had all seen in the microscope. 

 When Barrow weather cooperates, it creates some beautiful never ending sunsets, or should I say 'sun hovers'?!

Another great sun hover...

Another picture of ARFie the Arctic Science bear in the field collecting data. This time he is out in the tundra with Marcela Estens, a field technician with Dr. Craig Tweedie's lab from University of Texas El Paso (UTEP).

Barrow is now a cruise destination. Here, you see a French cruise ship that departed from Seward and is bringing small groups of people ashore on a zodiac to explore the town. 

This week a new team member joined the crew, Stella Mosher from the NOAA Auke Bay Labs in Juneau, AK. 

Along with Stella's arrival came the giant hauls of capelin and sandlance that we experience a couple times a year. This was a long day of processing back at the lab!

We finished our sites early so we offered another science crew a helping hand. Here, I am driving Amorita Armendariz from the UTEP crew in our zodiac down a shallow creek that winds through the tundra to the lagoon. Along the length of the creek we collected some water samples and recorded various physicochemical parameters.