So, it's been a while, and I have been terribly busy with exams, but they've all finished now and I'm free.
The timetable for this semester isn't certain yet, but I've had my first marine ecology lecture and it looks as though it will be a fantastic unit. We will be covering one biome every lecture, ranging from the shallow, rocky shores to the deep sea (possibly my favourite biome).
Today, we also had a physical oceanography lecture by Dr Siman Boxall, who has featured on Channel 4 documentaries about the 2004 and Japan tsunamis and who I feel very lucky to have as a lecturer. He showed us a few slides from a project he participated in, Cape Farewell, where he took several artists such as musician KT Tunstall and comedian Marcus Brigstocke to the Arctic. His aim was, through the inspiration the artists got from their time in the Arctic, to inform people of the reality of the shrinking sea ice. I found it both humbling and fascinating, and some of the things the artists came up with, including projecting words onto icebergs and jumping into the freezing (-1°C) sea in a survival suit and just "drifting", were really creative.
If you would like to have a look at the fantastic project, here's a link with more information:
http://www.capefarewell.com/
I have a sea survival course coming up around Easter, and I am hoping to bring my camera with me to document some of it. There will be more boatwork, too, which I am looking forward to, and there will also be more practicals soon, although I'm not entirely sure what they will involve.
Update on the Hobbit tshirt competition: I have completed it and am now the proud owner of the tshirt, which I will post a picture of a bit later.
Other than that, there's not really an awful lot of interesting things I can report as I have basically been living in the library for the past three weeks. Unpleasant but worth it, because now the exams are over. I promise to have a more interesting entry next time!
