For my master thesis, I was lucky to get the chance to do a field study at the AWIPEV station of the German Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research

and the French Polar Institute Paul Emile Victor. This station is the northernmost station of Europe, located on Spitsbergen (Norway) at 78°N.

As if this wasn’t special enough, we planned our study to take place during one of the most enchanting periods up in the cold, right at the end of the polar night.

But before I’ll take you with me on this 8 week journey, let me introduce my colleague Dr. Silke Lischka, one of the few marine biologists brave enough to work with pteropods, also known as sea butterflies. You might ask – with good reason – why one would need to be brave to work with animals with such an unperilous nickname! They are not poisonous, nor do they bite. They also don’t have hairy long legs. They are actually quite cute. However, the problem with these little fellows is rather pragmatic: They don’t like to be trapped in little jars and as science most commonly involves a quirky academic, who’s favourite thing to do is trapping species in jars, science and pteropods just don’t go well with another. How Silke deals with that will be covered in another episode of sea butterfly science.

I always thought that my love for cold, rainy weather – as we experience it a lot up here in Northern Germany – was a bit weird. Of course I like the sun, but I also enjoy icy winds and hail on my skin now and then. Silke, however, takes the cake when it comes to loving the cold. Since her first visit to Svalbard in her early carrier, she used every opportunity to head north again. Her excitement when we planned the experiments and finally got on the plane was extremely contagious. I am really glad she took me with her.

I hope I was able to pass some of the excitement over to you and make you curious for what is still to come. Before we take our plane to Spitsbergen, I will talk about the ideas and experiments we had for my project. In a nutshell, you can look forward to tiny, hungry animals, that rest in a pool of acid.

Paul