Life Beyond the Beaker

  Here's a bit more of a detailed blog to show you what we have been doing on the cruise for the last 3 weeks whilst traveling up to 81.46' North; which I believe is the furthest that the JCR ship has been! Check out Celeste's blog for a photo of a Walrus and a cool photo of a minke whale!   http://celestethelion.blogspot.co.uk/  On a ship it's definitely easy to stay indoors so we all make a habit of sitting outside watching the world (mostly the wildlife) go by.   One of my best moments of the trip so far is just before we reached the ice at 2 am after a zooplankton net a few of us were outside enjoying the sun when we noticed humpbacks breaching. It was an astonishing site that actually made me cry with happiness because it was nature at it's best - how can something so big pull it's self out of the water like that. The biggest question is why do they do this? Scientists think it is to show an emotion, mostly likely happiness, which makes ...

After 2.5 weeks of no communication we are now back online as we have headed back South. For the last two weeks the RRS JCR has been sailing up the Barents sea where we reached 81 degrees North! I will upload a full science blog about all that we got up to in the next few days when the internet has fully recovered. For now, here are some epic shots kindly given to me by Johan (as usually I forgot my camera or just wanted to sit and enjoy the presence of such a big apex predator) of some polar bears we saw along our way ice breaking and transiting through the pack and fast ice of the Northern Barents Sea.  Their scientific name is Ursus maritimus , translating to maritime bear which as we saw is a very fitting name for them as they navigated around broken up pieces of fast ice, rotting pieces and also big areas of open water. They are very powerful swimmers using their front two legs for the power and their back legs as rudders to assist with steering. As y...