Questions from schools taking part in the Spring Bulbs for Schools Investigation

www.museumwales.ac.uk/scan/bulbs

Woodplumpton Primary School
Q: We heard on the radio that someone had seen crocus bulbs that had begun to grow. They said it was very early and a sign of global warming. We were very interested and talked about how we probably would not have taken any notice if we weren't part of the project. We were also a bit worried because there is no sign of life with our bulbs!

Ans: I'm delighted to hear that you are discussing global warming and linking it to the bulbs you are growing in your school and the reports you hear on the radio. Global warming can seem like something far awar and remote, but by studying our wildlife and flowers carefully we can see that it is happening in our gardens and very relevant to us all. Don't worry about your bulbs, they shouldn't be coming up yet. Thanks Prof. P.

Bishop Childs C.I.W Primary. Q:How are we doing? Ans: You are doing really well Bishop Childs - keep up the good work! Prof P.

Ysgol Bro Cinmeirch. Pawb yn mwynhau! Falch i clywed! Athro'r Ardd.

Stanford in the Vale Primary School
Third week....crazy week of observations...warm,cold, warmer!

Woodplumpton Primary School
Q: We are very surprised at how little rain we are getting and are a bit worried about the bulbs getting enough water. Ans: If the soil becomes very dry please water them. Thanks Prof. P

Sherwood Primary School
We have just had a terrential downpour just before we sent the records - that is why Friday's rain may seem high!

Westwood CP School
Very mild since started recording. It won't be long before the crocuses start pushing through! Ans: They should start to appear in January. Prof. P

Sherwood Primary School
School was shut on Wednesday for the National Strike, so Thursday's rainfall results may be inflated. We planted a few spare daffs and they have begun to shoot! The children are excited! Ans: Wow this is early - many flowers are appearing across the country. Prof P.

With the tides being so poor at the moment I decided to forego this morning’s tide in favour of organisation for the rest of the week and of what I have done so far. That’s my excuse anyway and I’m sticking to it.

One job that needed to get started was to transfer my large number of samples from formaldehyde to alcohol. Formaldehyde is great for ‘fixing’ the specimens initially but is not good for long-term preservation and vice versa for alcohol. Also, formaldehyde is an acidic solution and this is very bad for those animals that build calcium-based tubes as it starts to dissolve the tubes making them weak and difficult to observe. The formaldehyde has to be poured out of the pots (through a sieve so as not lose those precious worms) and then replaced with water for a short time to help remove salt crystals from the seawater before being moved to 70-80% ethanol. I managed to get through the first two weeks samples before stopping.

Other mundane activities that needed doing including getting some cash out. Not as simple as it sounds as not a single ATM exists on these islands! A trip to the one and only bank is required to be supplied with Falkland Islands pounds.

Then the excitement of picking up my next car, not borrowed this time but hired for a few days. This time I have the luxury of a Mitsubishi Shogun to drive around. A bit bigger than the landrovers but surprisingly not as nice to drive although electric windows are always appreciated. Of course, being a Japanese car this means that every time I want to indicate a turn I now turn the windscreen wipers on instead followed by muttered curses as I indicate late and then try and turn the wipers off. And yes, I did do this every single time today. Hopefully tomorrow I may remember which side they are on and then undoubtedly I’ll do the same in my own car when I next get back in it. It also came with that Falkland Islands signature feature, a large crack in the windscreen. This might have been disconcerting at the start of the trip but since I haven’t seen a single car windscreen here without a similar crack, you have to accept it as a fact of life that comes with driving over loose gravel roads all the time.

Mobility reinstated I went back to the Fisheries department for more land ownership investigations and permission requesting for the next few days localities. So a quiet day compared to most of the others and sadly nothing that generated exciting photos for me to post. Instead I have added a couple more wormy pictures from earlier days for your enjoyment and a gratuitous picture of a crab because I like it.

My first public talk (photo 1) is now out of the way. Quite a relief actually. It was meant to be a ‘community talk’ so a general introduction to who I was and why I was there really. Having it towards the end of my visit also meant that I was able to include more interest in the form of a map showing where I had been sampling as well as photographs of some of the animals I have collected. Adding all of these at the last minute does not lower your stress levels. It did add a bit more relevance though than using some of the stock photos I have of UK animals which was what I had in there first of all.

It wasn’t a large audience but I am not the most natural or confident of speakers and the addition of Falkland Islands TV filming the talk did not bolster my confidence any. Feedback was good though and comments included being pleasantly surprised at how interesting it actually was. Always good to hear!
I have another to do at the Fisheries department next Monday which will be to a more scientific audience and therefore a bit more technical about the worms themselves. Hopefully that will be considered surprisingly interesting too.

I was on my second borrowed car this morning which enabled me to get out for the morning tide. I had wanted to go back out to the shore by the Lady Elizabeth, not far away, as the last time I had gone down only just before low tide and had not had much time to sample and then of course found lots of interesting animals. Unfortunately today was a neap tide that stayed about half a metre higher than when I had been there previously. As this shore shelves very gently, this meant that the sand bars I particularly wanted to get out to remained stubbornly underwater. I still managed a little digging through the few inches of water to get some animals and also did more on the high shore than I had previously but it still felt disappointing.

On the way back I also decided to stop by the marina which had a patch of sandy mud that looked interesting. However, the nearby sign that declared the area believed to be free of mines but that one might get washed ashore from elsewhere put me off digging. Can’t imagine why. Instead I went across to the other bank of the inlet which was rocky (nowhere for stuff to wash ashore) and dragged in some shallow Macrocystis kelp to look at the holdfast (photo 2). I had a brief thought that it might have attached itself to a landmine that was being washed ashore but luckily this was not the case and I spent 10 minutes pulling it apart and shoving it in a bucket which it only just fitted into (it was only a baby holdfast in comparison to those offshore). I did wonder how exactly I was going to deal with this monster back at the lab as holdfasts require a lot of time painstakingly going through each piece to pick off the animals. These structures are a habitat feature of their own with a large community of animals generally associated with them that makes it essential to sample them. The answer came in the form of 6 very large pots which the holdfast was duly separated and pushed into for a later date. That is probably going to be at least a week’s work on its own!

The samples from the Lady Elizabeth turned out to be more successful than expected when I found several specimens of Spiophanes (photo 3), a worm I had only had a badly mashed glimpse of before, so this was very pleasing.

All in all another successful day. I have hired a car from tomorrow for a few days which will get me around to my last few shore visits and then hopefully I will get the chance for a bit more diving at the weekend. Still finding new stuff though so there must still be lots more out there to find!

I will be running an arts and crafts session on Saturday 17th December and we'll be making Christmas decorations! whoop!

I've been busy creating some samples of what we will be making, so if you like what you see come and make them with me! It's a drop in session and is suitable for both children and adults, we'll be making tissue paper pom poms, crepe paper chains and gingerbread men out of felt - i'll also try and remember to bring some christmassy playdough for the littlest ones and some colouring sheets too.

I've taken inspiration from decorations from the 1950s and have a few decorations from that date to show you! (will take pictures and blog about them too). We're also keen to collect some information from you - what decorations did you have as a child? let me know here or fill in one of my forms on the 17th.

The gingerbread man in the photo is from our collection and dates from around 1912. Inspired by this, I thought it would be fun to make some gingerbread men felt tree decorations too (and, yes, I realise I'm not sticking to my theme!).

Staff are busy decorating the historic buildings in St Fagans: National History Museum as we speak, so on the 17th you'll be able to get some first hand 50s inspiration for the 1950s decorations by visiting the Prefab and the 1955 Rhyd-y-car house.

go here for more information or email me if you have any questions regarding the session.

Friday 18 November

It’s just over a hundred years since Captain Scott’s ship, the Terra Nova, sailed from Cardiff for Antarctica.

Scott designated Cardiff the home port of his ship because of the support his expedition received from Cardiff and South Wales. Last year we put together a little exhibition bringing together a range of objects from our collections to commemorate the departure of the expedition on 15 June 1910.

On 17 January 1912, Scott and his four companions reached the South Pole only to find that he had been beaten, by a month, by a Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen. The fate of Scott’s Polar Party is well-known: all five died on the return journey. But there was much more to Scott’s expedition than the attempt on the Pole. It was a major scientific expedition, studying the geology, biology, meteorology and physics of Antarctica and its glaciers.

We’re planning another exhibition, , opening in January 2012, to look at the Welsh links with Scott’s expedition and the scientific work undertaken on it. We’re part of a national series of exhibitions and events to mark the centenary of the expedition. I’ve been working on this exhibition for some months now, but about four weeks ago my preparations took an exciting turn when I was invited to join a trip to the Ross Sea in Antarctica, with the intention of visiting Scott’s expedition base hut.

We sailed a week ago from Lyttleton in the South Island of New Zealand, the same port from which Scott sailed in 1910. Two days ago, we entered the pack ice of the Ross Sea. Each winter, the continent of Antarctica doubles in size as the sea around it freezes. I’m on a Russian icebreaker. We’ve been following leads - strips of open water between the ice floes - and where necessary forcing our way through the thicker floes. We do this by ramming into the ice, then reversing a few hundred metres before ploughing full ahead into the floe and hopefully breaking through. Breaking our way through the ice feels very much like being in the central seats of a 747 in bad turbulence, but much noisier.

We’ve been making good progress, initially through thin first year ice (formed this last winter) and then into an area of open water called a polynya. But today we’ve slowed. The pack ice we’re in now is much thicker, over a metre thick in places. This is multi-year ice, built up over several winters. At 70oS, we’re now well south of the Antarctic Circle and in continuous daylight. Here the sun will not set for some months.

Some of the ice floes are forced together by the pressure of tides and currents and today we found ourselves caught between two floes. This pressure caused the floes to close behind us, and for a while we were trapped in the ice. Even with all engines on full power, we could neither advance or reverse. But just as we were beginning to decide who we would eat first, the ice floes parted and we were released from their grip!

All around us there is nothing but sea ice to the horizon in all directions. The ice surface is not smooth, but broken by the jagged lines of pressure ridges and the occasional enormous tabular iceberg frozen into the pack ice. It looks lifeless. There are no other human beings as far as the eye can see. But life is here. This morning an orca, a killer whale, popped up to take a look at us; minke whales show their fins through the open water of the leads; and crabeater seals bask on the ice floes. Clusters of Adelie penguins rush around on the ice while, in contrast, a stately Emperor penguin stands tall and imperious on the edge of a floe.

There is no environment on earth to compare.