Let me start by explaining that Heidi and I, with the exception of a small nap, have been working for 24 hours. It is all part of Heidi’s master plan to switch to the night shift so that we can get helicopter time when we need it. Ask us in a few days how we enjoy eating breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast. We really weren’t sure if we should have eaten a meal last night or not, and if we should, what time should we eat it at? Since I dropped some chemicals on Heidi’s snacks, we had to resort to emergency cookies. At our first lake I tested my skill as zooplankton collector and failed miserably. Never in my life would I ever imagined it possible to haul a zooplankton net and bring up ONE zooplankter. I thought my eyes were getting silly because it was ridunkulously late, and I should have been curled up in my sleeping bag (that I am slightly allergic to, damnit!), but, nope, that was by far, the most unsuccessful zooplankton haul ever.

Since we were working at lightning speed (go team!), we had a bit of time so we took our helicopter pilot friend Stephane to the fish fence so he could get his picture taken with one of the big fish. Heidi climbed up the fence and nabbed the biggest, meanest, wiliest arctic charr in the trap, and was skilfully passing it to me when it jumped out of the net into no-fish’s-land between the wings of the traps. Pretty much the worst place the fish could have jumped into. After they caught the fish, I shot a movie of Stephane with the fish…

Stephane (holding the fish): So, here we are, with the biggest fish here…(chokes on mosquito and sends a gob of spit flying…all caught on tape)…at which point Heidi and I hit the tundra laughing. We could roll around on the hummocks well because we were still wearing PFDs. In any case, we think Stephane enjoyed his initiation to charr wrasslin’.

Quote of the day/night: H: Who would have thought we’d be hauling boulders across the tundra (see earlier blog entry referring to anchors and their lack of hookiness)? M: at two o clock in the morning?!