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Today I got to go out with one of my marine ecology lecturers and another student to collect plankton for our lab this afternoon. My life jacket and boots were so big that I probably looked like a joke, and it was a cold and windy day, but that turns out to be optimal weather for albatrosses, so while we floated at the mouth of Otago harbor in our little boat (with its 140-hp engine, which I only note because "little" in the ocean is relative), mollymawks and albatrosses soared around us and landed on the water nearby, I think hoping we were fishing for something a little bigger and tastier. We also saw fur seals and shags (cormorants), and got a quick tour of the marine lab, where we got to poke Antarctic starfish (in the extreme cold, it's harder to produce a calcium-carbonate skeleton, so they're squishy).
For once, this blog is living up to its title.