People have to make several adjustments to work up here in the Arctic. One of the quirky little adjustments I’ve had to make is to throw out many standard ways to describe when events occurred. For example, I can’t write “the mission happened overnight,” because there was no “overnight.” Saying “during the day…” doesn’t narrow down the time period for readers at all. For this dispatch, I was going to write: “The day began with a blissfully easy recovery of a yellow underwater vehicle from the seafloor and ended with the recovery of intriguing fluffy yellow material on the seafloor.” But when do days begin when they never really end? Days seem endless, only date changes. The expedition has not found hydrothermal vents on the seafloor beneath the Arctic Ocean, and only five or six days remain. Or should that be “dates”?
Read on about our adventure in the slideshow below. Can't see the slideshow? Get the Flash plug in »
