August 6

We went into the pack ice last night. We are following an open water channel (= lead) most of the time but are breaking ice more frequently as the day progresses. We've had lectures about safety for cold, polar bears, and what we will do once we are in the ice. Two polar bears were seen yesterday in the distance. The ice, as it breaks, is sometimes brown "dirty" on top and almost blue underneath; the brown sediment or brown ice algae on or under the ice seen here in the pack ice, was also present in marginal ice zone.
We were all given blue fleece (= polar) warm jackets. We all wear them! However, we will have to wash them all because little blue fibers appeared in our filtered samples yesterday, which is not good. So, we have vacuumed and washed both labs, we all wear lab coats, we have restricted access to a single door. Gao (graduate student from Stockholm University) and Monica are even wearing hair nets!
At 1pm today, we are located at 81o 52.1N 04o 13.2E; it is cold with -1.3C air and -0.6C water temperatures and very windy. We are traveling at 2knots so it will take us 5 days to arrive at 89N where we will establish our ice camp.
Next will come some pictures!