Some choose the plane, but we decided to drive the car to join the KOSMOS family in Espegrend marinbiologisk stasjon off Bergen.

Why? Our first motivation to drive was for taking along all the equipment for our study (microscopes, respiration system and small materials…), but did you know that our personal carbon emissions also were reduced (178 kg eq. CO₂ with the car vs. 420 kg eq. CO2 with the airplane)? As you probably know, the aim of this work was to investigate the effects of ocean acidification (See blog posted on 3.5.2015), and acidification and CO₂ are strongly linked. Is it not a strange coincidence?

Of course this was a long and endless trip of about 1400 km and required 2 days of time, but we crossed amazing landscapes and cities like Stockholm and Oslo…and passed 55 tunnels, in total. The mountain road was also the occasion for us to take a break and fall back into childhood. Isn’t this Jonna?

Road map- Google Maps

Snowballwar Finland against France

Dear Norwegians, we want to drive faster than 50..

Approaching Hardangervidda

Finally here we were !

Once the equipment was installed in the lab, we took the first samples of plankton from the fjord, and started to set up stuff needed during our stay.

After working late nights and consuming an uncountable number of Kviklunsj and chocolate chip cookies, we managed to collect 1387 Calanus and 1174 Temora with forceps for oxidative stress and respiration measurements. We also (re)discovered a huge diversity of planktonic organisms, such as copepods, cladocerans, jellyfishes, beautiful pteropods, appendicularians and fish larvae.. It is amazing what can be found in the ocean, compared to the brackish Baltic..

Copepods and stuff

Dorthe, Olivier & Jonna

Now, we have to analyse all these precious samples.

Finally, thanks to everybody for great company!

Special thanks go to Ulf, Andrea, Silke, Dana and Karsten, Jean-Marie & team and Misha & team, and last, but not least Dorthe, J-C, Paul and Serra for precious help and advice!!

Good luck with future work and hopefully see you soon in KIEL!

Olivier and Jonna