SDSU scientists heading to Arctic

NASA's Terra satellite captured this image of Franz Josef Land in August 2011.
NASA's Terra satellite captured this image of Franz Josef Land in August 2011. NASA

It's off to the great white north for San Diego State University biologist Forest Rohwer and his grad student Steve Quistad. They leave this weekend for Russia, where they'll catch the ice breaker MS Polaris out of Murmansk for the long trip north to Franz Josef Land, a collection of nearly 200 ice-covered islands in the Arctic Ocean. Rowher and Quistad are part of a 40-day scientific expedition devoted to exploring the life and nature of one of the most remote regions on earth.

"We're going to take samples of a pristine Arctic system and see what it has in common with pristine systems elsewhere," says the 44-year-old Rohwer, who recently returned from doing research in the Galapagos Islands.

Forest Rohwer (left) and Steve Quistad. Courtesy of SDSU

Some of the samples will be compared to those he plans to take in the Line Islands, a small group of atolls and coral islands in the central Pacific. He's done similar research there before.

The new expedition will be long, and, potentially, dangerous. Rohwer and Quistad will do some of the sampling during research dives in frigid Arctic waters. They'll also do coring into the ice, and search for fecal matter produced by polar bears and walruses. The feces will be analyzed for traces of man-made pollution, notably mercury.

Franz Josef Land is more than 7,000 miles from San Diego. Wikipedia Commons

"You don't go on land it that part of the world unless you're with someone who has a gun," says Quistad, referring to the need to guard against attacks by polar bears, which can grow up to 10-feet long and weigh as much as 1,500 pounds.

Like Rohwer, the 22-year-old Quistad has experience working under pressure, and in extreme environments. In 2009, he traveled deep into the Pacific aboard the research submersible Alvin. And in 2011, he was aboard a research ship in the Pacific that rescued scientists from Kure Island. The scientists were relocated because there was concern that radioactive fallout from one of the nuclear reactors that failed in the great Japanese earthquake would flow their way.

We'll keep you current about Rohwer and Quistad's trip. They're agreed to exchange emails with us while they're at sea.


