still in Christchurch

We got up at 4:15am to head to the CDC (Clothing distribution center) but got a call saying our flight is delayed 24 hours... not sure if it's weather or mechanical. Hopefully we'll get out tomorrow though. We're going to be flying on a C17, which is a big plane that only takes 5 hours rather than 7-8 to get there and apparently is more comfortable than the C130. The good news is that our bags arrived last night at midnight, so now I have my stuff plus some nice new Quantas pajamas. Dennis was going to use his little quantas bag as his boomerang bag (everyone else is using big orange duffel bags), which I'm sure the air force guys would have appreciated.

Last night we had a meeting with the biomechanics group and talked about our project. We're going to work on anchor ice. Usually ice forms at the surface where the air is really cold, but when cold deep water comes up, it can form ice on the bottom and on organisms. Basically when water is really really cold but is pretty deep, it doesn't freeze because there's too much pressure at depth for it to expand. But as it comes up, the pressure decreases and it can freeze and expand. This happens, for example, on sponges that can get huge clumps of ice stuck to them, then get ripped off the bottom and end up stuck to the bottom of the surface ice, which is obviously not good news for the sponge. We're going to try to figure out on what kind of surfaces this ice forms, like which organisms would be most susceptible to it, and how it affects them (does the buoyancy pull them up and how much force does it take?). We're also going to look for pteropods and anything else that might be biomechanically interesting.

I think the customs people cleaned my shoes. They’re wet and much cleaner than I remember them being. I’m glad that’s not my job.