Thursday 30 July 2009
Tuesday 28 July 2009
Victoria
Victoria is Vancouver Islands biggest city and also surprisingly the captial of British Columbia rather than Vancouver. It is located right on the southern tip of the island and you can look out over the Juan de Fuca Strait towards the USA and the olympic peninsula. Our plan was to head into Victoria early Saturday morning to spend the day looking around, go out in the evening and then spend Sunday slightly up the island at the Sooke Potholes. Of course all good plans never work!!
We had planned to catch the 9.10 am bus into victoria which takes around an hour, but after Meggie decided that she didn't need her wallet for the weekend we ended up missing it. Fortunately she was on the ball and spotted an alternative bus that was just leaving so in the end it really made no difference.
Victoria has long been known as North Americas most English city with neatly manicured gardens, union jacks flying from every flagpole and where afternoon tea is a daily occurrence. This isn't entirely true any more as the young Canadians are claiming back their city but the English influence is still strong especially because of the empress hotel and regional government buildings which would not look out of place in Westminster (the clock even chimes like Big Ben!). The day was incredibly hot (around 31ish) so in the end we spent quite a lot of the time sitting down and chilling out. We spent a lot of time at the end of the harbour breakwater just chatting and watching the whale watching boats come in and out, the seaplanes landing and taking off and the locals fishing. It was such a nice view that a wedding couple had walked all the way out there, with the bride still in her dress, for their wedding photos!
We had booked a place in the Ocean Island Backpackers inn for the night which turned out to be a fantastic hostel. We stayed in a four person dorm were we met an Irish dude called Mihal (not sure about the spelling!) who had been cycling round the island for the last two months with a drama company who put on shows about climate change and saving the environment. We had to fill him in with what had been going on around the world as he hadn't been able to catch the news for his entire trip!
We had planned to go watch the Luminara (a paper latern parade) in the evening, but after one pint and a raging thunderstorm outside we decided that the pub was a much more attractive option. We stumbled pack to the hostel at some point in the evening or probably the morning and promptly collapsed into our bunks.
Our plan to visit the Sooke Potholes on Sunday was quickly shelved for another day as we didn't wake up till 10 ish, were slightly hungover and then found out that it took 2 hours with an hours walking to get there! Instead we headed to a diner called John`s Place for breakfast which was highly recommended by the Lonely Planet. Instead of the potholes we did the cultural thing and took a free tour around the legislative government buildings. What struck me the most was how British it was although to be honest I should have expected it. They, similar to us, have a speaker as well as a master at arms who carries the mace. Even the tradition of dragging a new speaker to the chair when they get elected is observed here.
On the way home we stopped at Beaver Lake for a swim before heading back to the house and an early bed ready for the next week at the IOS. I hope you are all well and the summer weather aint too bad. They are thinking of closing the labs here as the AC has broken the the temperature is getting up to 32 which is making working slightly uncomfortable.
We had planned to catch the 9.10 am bus into victoria which takes around an hour, but after Meggie decided that she didn't need her wallet for the weekend we ended up missing it. Fortunately she was on the ball and spotted an alternative bus that was just leaving so in the end it really made no difference.
Victoria has long been known as North Americas most English city with neatly manicured gardens, union jacks flying from every flagpole and where afternoon tea is a daily occurrence. This isn't entirely true any more as the young Canadians are claiming back their city but the English influence is still strong especially because of the empress hotel and regional government buildings which would not look out of place in Westminster (the clock even chimes like Big Ben!). The day was incredibly hot (around 31ish) so in the end we spent quite a lot of the time sitting down and chilling out. We spent a lot of time at the end of the harbour breakwater just chatting and watching the whale watching boats come in and out, the seaplanes landing and taking off and the locals fishing. It was such a nice view that a wedding couple had walked all the way out there, with the bride still in her dress, for their wedding photos!
We had booked a place in the Ocean Island Backpackers inn for the night which turned out to be a fantastic hostel. We stayed in a four person dorm were we met an Irish dude called Mihal (not sure about the spelling!) who had been cycling round the island for the last two months with a drama company who put on shows about climate change and saving the environment. We had to fill him in with what had been going on around the world as he hadn't been able to catch the news for his entire trip!
We had planned to go watch the Luminara (a paper latern parade) in the evening, but after one pint and a raging thunderstorm outside we decided that the pub was a much more attractive option. We stumbled pack to the hostel at some point in the evening or probably the morning and promptly collapsed into our bunks.
Our plan to visit the Sooke Potholes on Sunday was quickly shelved for another day as we didn't wake up till 10 ish, were slightly hungover and then found out that it took 2 hours with an hours walking to get there! Instead we headed to a diner called John`s Place for breakfast which was highly recommended by the Lonely Planet. Instead of the potholes we did the cultural thing and took a free tour around the legislative government buildings. What struck me the most was how British it was although to be honest I should have expected it. They, similar to us, have a speaker as well as a master at arms who carries the mace. Even the tradition of dragging a new speaker to the chair when they get elected is observed here.
On the way home we stopped at Beaver Lake for a swim before heading back to the house and an early bed ready for the next week at the IOS. I hope you are all well and the summer weather aint too bad. They are thinking of closing the labs here as the AC has broken the the temperature is getting up to 32 which is making working slightly uncomfortable.
Friday 24 July 2009
ADCP and Photos
Wow! We have just finished our first week and jeez time is passing quickly. It doesn’t feel like we have been here just over a week at all.
Our first week at the labs has been fantastic. Everyone here is really welcoming and they are genuinely interested in talking to us about what they do and what we get up to in Southampton. We usually work from 8.30 to 4.30 with a half hour lunch break. Most lunchtimes I have been playing volley ball with people from all around the institute which has been a great way to get to know everyone. After work the temperatures are still in the low twenties so we often end up sunbathing and reading on the decking outside the house or going for a swim. We usually head to the supermarkets in Sidney every other day to buy food for dinner. On Thursday we also had another look round the summer market before heading to the ‘Charles Dickens’ for a few pints. There are loads of micro breweries around here which make some fantastic beers, but most of them seem to be quite pale.
As I mentioned earlier, I have spent the week working on ADCP data using Matlab. An ADCP is an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler and as the name suggests is used to measure ocean currents among other things. It works by sending out a sound pulse which gets reflected off scatterers (e.g. plankton and zooplankton) within the water column which are presumed to be moving at the same speed as the water By using the time delay and Doppler shift of the reflected sound pulse the ADCP can compute the direction and magnitude of the current. It also uses sound speed to determine how far away the scatterer is and therefore can profile the entire water column. I was given the raw backscatter data from a three year ADCP time series in the Arctic and asked to correct for pitch/roll, spreading losses and sound attenuation before converting the raw data into decibels and plotting it into 3 monthly contour plots. The backscatter data is important as it is a very good indicator of plankton abundance, location and patterns of diurnal vertical migration.
The plans for this weekend are too head into Victoria, the local city, and stay there over night in a hostel. I shall give you all an update when I get back.
Our first week at the labs has been fantastic. Everyone here is really welcoming and they are genuinely interested in talking to us about what they do and what we get up to in Southampton. We usually work from 8.30 to 4.30 with a half hour lunch break. Most lunchtimes I have been playing volley ball with people from all around the institute which has been a great way to get to know everyone. After work the temperatures are still in the low twenties so we often end up sunbathing and reading on the decking outside the house or going for a swim. We usually head to the supermarkets in Sidney every other day to buy food for dinner. On Thursday we also had another look round the summer market before heading to the ‘Charles Dickens’ for a few pints. There are loads of micro breweries around here which make some fantastic beers, but most of them seem to be quite pale.
As I mentioned earlier, I have spent the week working on ADCP data using Matlab. An ADCP is an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler and as the name suggests is used to measure ocean currents among other things. It works by sending out a sound pulse which gets reflected off scatterers (e.g. plankton and zooplankton) within the water column which are presumed to be moving at the same speed as the water By using the time delay and Doppler shift of the reflected sound pulse the ADCP can compute the direction and magnitude of the current. It also uses sound speed to determine how far away the scatterer is and therefore can profile the entire water column. I was given the raw backscatter data from a three year ADCP time series in the Arctic and asked to correct for pitch/roll, spreading losses and sound attenuation before converting the raw data into decibels and plotting it into 3 monthly contour plots. The backscatter data is important as it is a very good indicator of plankton abundance, location and patterns of diurnal vertical migration.
The plans for this weekend are too head into Victoria, the local city, and stay there over night in a hostel. I shall give you all an update when I get back.
Tuesday 21 July 2009
The First Weekend and the Pacific Biologial Station
I have three weekends on Vancouver Island before I head up north so the plan is to use them to explore the local area/island as much as possible. So far we aim to spend one weekend in Victoria, the biggest city on the island and another up at a place called Tofino. Justin, who you may remember from the ferry, bigged the place up massively and we hope to possibly go scuba diving, ocean kayaking and maybe even see some orcas (Killer Whales).
For the first weekend (the one we just had) we spent Saturday exploring Sidney the local town which is about a 10 minute bike ride from the house. There is free Wi-Fi so we checked our emails and stuff and I was able to post the last update. Sidney seems to be a very quiet town and it seems that a lot of the people there are either tourists or elderly locals. Even on a Saturday there were very few young people around. I guess most of them must head to Victoria instead. The afternoon was spent doing some food shopping (food prices are very odd out here. Mushrooms are speciality items but 0.5kg of mince is around £1.50!), swimming in bay right outside the house and going for a run. We saw a Bald Eagle as well!!!
On Sunday, Terry picked us up and we drove to the Goldstream National Park to climb a ‘mountain’ called Mount Finlayson. Although only 420m ish tall the view from the top of the Juan de Fuca Strait and the Olympic peninsula (USA) were sweet. On the way home, we took a detour into the centre of Victoria so Terry could point out the things we should go and see. In the evening we had been invited to a BBQ at our land ladies house just down the road. Her daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren were also around and we spent a very nice evening in the sun eating BBQ salmon and chatting all about Canada and where we came from. We even ended up highlight our home towns on their atlas!
Our first proper day at ‘work’ was not in the labs as we instead headed up the east side of the island to Naiamo to visit the Pacific Biological Station. Her we were given tours around numerous departments including genetics, fish histology, aquaculture and fish ageing. We were also shown around the CCGS W.E. Rickker which is a research fishing trawler used for fish surveys and associated CTD work. We left Sophia and Guilia behind as they are spending the next three weeks on the Rickker completeing a sardine survey. Meggie and Kent are also on spending a further three weeks on the Rickker once the others have got back.
We start work properly tomorrow (Tuesday) so hopefully all will go well. In the next couple of days, I will post a detailed summary of the ADCP work I am doing for those who are interested. Hope you are all well.
PS. As an aside, I put in my last post that it seemed that Canada didn’t like paying foreign workers. As it turns out this is not entirely true and is only the case for federal government organisations of which the IOS is one.
For the first weekend (the one we just had) we spent Saturday exploring Sidney the local town which is about a 10 minute bike ride from the house. There is free Wi-Fi so we checked our emails and stuff and I was able to post the last update. Sidney seems to be a very quiet town and it seems that a lot of the people there are either tourists or elderly locals. Even on a Saturday there were very few young people around. I guess most of them must head to Victoria instead. The afternoon was spent doing some food shopping (food prices are very odd out here. Mushrooms are speciality items but 0.5kg of mince is around £1.50!), swimming in bay right outside the house and going for a run. We saw a Bald Eagle as well!!!
On Sunday, Terry picked us up and we drove to the Goldstream National Park to climb a ‘mountain’ called Mount Finlayson. Although only 420m ish tall the view from the top of the Juan de Fuca Strait and the Olympic peninsula (USA) were sweet. On the way home, we took a detour into the centre of Victoria so Terry could point out the things we should go and see. In the evening we had been invited to a BBQ at our land ladies house just down the road. Her daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren were also around and we spent a very nice evening in the sun eating BBQ salmon and chatting all about Canada and where we came from. We even ended up highlight our home towns on their atlas!
Our first proper day at ‘work’ was not in the labs as we instead headed up the east side of the island to Naiamo to visit the Pacific Biological Station. Her we were given tours around numerous departments including genetics, fish histology, aquaculture and fish ageing. We were also shown around the CCGS W.E. Rickker which is a research fishing trawler used for fish surveys and associated CTD work. We left Sophia and Guilia behind as they are spending the next three weeks on the Rickker completeing a sardine survey. Meggie and Kent are also on spending a further three weeks on the Rickker once the others have got back.
We start work properly tomorrow (Tuesday) so hopefully all will go well. In the next couple of days, I will post a detailed summary of the ADCP work I am doing for those who are interested. Hope you are all well.
PS. As an aside, I put in my last post that it seemed that Canada didn’t like paying foreign workers. As it turns out this is not entirely true and is only the case for federal government organisations of which the IOS is one.
Saturday 18 July 2009
We have arrived!!
So, we have finally touched down in Canada and wow this place is amazing! The flight over with Meggie and Kent was pretty standard, of course with the usual delays at Gatwick. We landed in Vancouver around 2 ish, and after answering some petty pointed questions at customs like ‘where are you working?’, ‘what are you doing?’, ‘are you being paid?’ (they didn’t seem to like foreigners entering for paid work!) we were allowed to enter the country and collect our bags.
Terry, our contact at the IOS (Institute of Ocean Sciences), had already emailed us before we left to tell us the once we had arrived we needed to get a taxi to the ferry terminal were we could catch the ferry to Swatz bay on Vancouver Island. We stopped at the information desk in the airport to double check there was only one ferry terminal. Much to our surprise we were promptly told not to bother with a taxi and catch a limousine instead! We trusted his advice so ended up having our first experience of downtown Vancouver and Canada from the back of a limo. Sureal is probably the best way to describe it!
The ferry terminal itself was about a 30 minute ride form the airport through standard North American downtown. Although I probably should have expected it, I was surprised by the size and number of cars here. The 4x4s and pick up trucks are simply enormous.
At the terminal we met a guy called Justin who was returning from the island after spending 7 years working in Holland. In his words he decided to come back because he couldn’t be ‘dutchified’. I don’t blame him from some of the stories he had!
The ferry journey took around an hour and a half. The route took us through what our known as the Gulf Islands before arriving at Swatz bay on the Saanich Peninsula. The scenery was stunning as the boat threaded its way between small, rocky, wooded islands which seem very similar to the Norwegian fjords. The weather here is awesome with clear skies and temperatures in the high twenties, low thirties. The locals don’t expect it to rain till at least September! Terry met us at the ferry terminal but not before I walked straight past him giving a fantastic first impression!
We spent the evening with Terry who took us to the landladies’ house before heading into Sidney (the local town) for a bite to eat and a look around the evening summer market. On the way back he gave us a tour of the local area although to be honest the jet lag made us rather unreceptive and I think we all just wanted to go to bed.
Our first day at the IOS started at 8.30 with the usually health and safety crap and form signing. The emperor and empress from Japan had just visited so we were shown round all the displays and sat in on a presentation/photo slide show of the visit. I met Humfrey my supervisor and we had a chat about what work I will be doing in the next two weeks and of course the cruise. I won’t go into all that now as to be honest I don’t quite understand it myself but it has something to do with ADCPs and Matlab. (For non-oceanographers ADCPs are a type of current metre and Matlab is programming software). In the afternoon we went into town to buy some steel toe capped boots. They are some seriously insulated beasts!
For climbers - we popped into the Mountain Equipment Co-op on the way home were they flog Camelot C4s and DMM 4CUs for like 30 quid a pop. Its insane!
Anyways that’s probably enough for now, I hope it’s not too boring! I hope you are all well.
Terry, our contact at the IOS (Institute of Ocean Sciences), had already emailed us before we left to tell us the once we had arrived we needed to get a taxi to the ferry terminal were we could catch the ferry to Swatz bay on Vancouver Island. We stopped at the information desk in the airport to double check there was only one ferry terminal. Much to our surprise we were promptly told not to bother with a taxi and catch a limousine instead! We trusted his advice so ended up having our first experience of downtown Vancouver and Canada from the back of a limo. Sureal is probably the best way to describe it!
The ferry terminal itself was about a 30 minute ride form the airport through standard North American downtown. Although I probably should have expected it, I was surprised by the size and number of cars here. The 4x4s and pick up trucks are simply enormous.
At the terminal we met a guy called Justin who was returning from the island after spending 7 years working in Holland. In his words he decided to come back because he couldn’t be ‘dutchified’. I don’t blame him from some of the stories he had!
The ferry journey took around an hour and a half. The route took us through what our known as the Gulf Islands before arriving at Swatz bay on the Saanich Peninsula. The scenery was stunning as the boat threaded its way between small, rocky, wooded islands which seem very similar to the Norwegian fjords. The weather here is awesome with clear skies and temperatures in the high twenties, low thirties. The locals don’t expect it to rain till at least September! Terry met us at the ferry terminal but not before I walked straight past him giving a fantastic first impression!
We spent the evening with Terry who took us to the landladies’ house before heading into Sidney (the local town) for a bite to eat and a look around the evening summer market. On the way back he gave us a tour of the local area although to be honest the jet lag made us rather unreceptive and I think we all just wanted to go to bed.
Our first day at the IOS started at 8.30 with the usually health and safety crap and form signing. The emperor and empress from Japan had just visited so we were shown round all the displays and sat in on a presentation/photo slide show of the visit. I met Humfrey my supervisor and we had a chat about what work I will be doing in the next two weeks and of course the cruise. I won’t go into all that now as to be honest I don’t quite understand it myself but it has something to do with ADCPs and Matlab. (For non-oceanographers ADCPs are a type of current metre and Matlab is programming software). In the afternoon we went into town to buy some steel toe capped boots. They are some seriously insulated beasts!
For climbers - we popped into the Mountain Equipment Co-op on the way home were they flog Camelot C4s and DMM 4CUs for like 30 quid a pop. Its insane!
Anyways that’s probably enough for now, I hope it’s not too boring! I hope you are all well.
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