Monday, 24 July 2012

Don teaching us Jule, David, Hugues and George to shoot shotguns, photo: Boris Radosavljevic, Alfred-Wegener-InstituteFriday 21, 2012 was a bear-themed day for our group. In the morning, we went to the office of Parks Canada to learn proper bear etiquette, if by chance we happen to encounter one. The Ivvavik National Park area, where we will be soon, is the only place in Canada where you can see all three types of big bears: the black bear, grizzly bear and the polar bear. We learned to distinguish among those three, and also how to interpret their behavior. Part of the strategy of dealing with bears is knowing how to talk to them. Luckily (and amusingly) the video instructed us to say: hey bear, whoa bear, it´s okay bear, I´m not food bear, etc. The video also told us when to play dead, when and how to get away, and when to stand our ground and fight for our lives. Hopefully it will not get to this. We, and especially Steffi, hope not to see any bears at all.

 

Boris shooting at water bottles 30 metres away, photo: Michael Fritz, Alfred-Wegener-InstituteThe afternoon shotgun training would prepare us for the chance that things turned serious. Many of us have never fired a weapon before, and we all learned that it´s not easy to shoot a huge shotgun. It can be a very dangerous weapon. However, we were all brave enough to try it and surprisingly we were all very good at hitting the half liter water bottles on a range of 30 metres. We also learned to use other bear deterrents, like the so called bangers and bear spray. Although we are now well prepared, we still hope not to see any bears at close range.





The weekend was dominated by preparing food. Eleven hungry field scientists can eat a mountain of food over four weeks.

 

Jule organizing 19kg of pasta and 12kg of rice for the next 4 weeks, photo: Stefanie Weege.Everybody in our group was tasked to prepare a few meals so there is quite the variety of different foods: from Greek pasta, cheese soup, spare ribs, Hungarian goulash, to ratatouille and other delicacies. Over 40 kilograms of meat, over 15 kilograms of onions and 15 heads of garlic were used to create these great smelling foods in our two Aurora guest house kitchens. The copious amounts of garlic and onions should definitely give us enough vitamins for the next weeks to keep us healthy and strong, and maybe the smell will also keep the bears at a safe distance.

While part of the group was cooking, the other part made sure that our gear was ready for departure that was planned for Monday. In addition, Jule and Michael went on a field trip with Anika from the Aurora College to practice identifying arctic plants. While they were walking about they came across some fresh bear tracks just outside of the city: we definitely are in bear-country.

 

Packing almost 2 tons gear in the warehouse of the Aurora Research Institute, photo: Boris Radosavljevic, Alfred Wegener InstituteOur team is now completely assembled. Wayne Pollard, a professor at McGill University and our team leader, arrived Sunday. He is a specialist on ground ice and has worked in the high Arctic and Antarctica. Earlier today, Michael Krautblatter arrived, our last group member. He is a professor at the Technical University of Munich and is a permafrost geophysicist. Both of them will support us with their great knowledge. In total we will be eleven scientists and three rangers for the next weeks on Herschel Island.

However, there is a limit for the airplane load as the Twin Otter can load up to 1.2 tons and we have a lot of gear. We have to find the perfect mix of people, food and instruments to bring with each of the four scheduled flights. Although the first part of our group was scheduled to depart today it turned out that the airplane needed special tundra tires to land on the gravel beach on Herschel. Thus, the departure was delayed. Luckily, the airline informed us that they plan on taking four trips tomorrow. We hope that things work that way as we are all very eager to get to Herschel. Our next update will come from there.

Cheers,
Boris und Stefanie

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Main page of the blog "Yukon Coast 2012": http://page21.org/blogs/60-herschel