With the construction of a floating raft to help us across the slushy
melted bank of the Ieniseï, and the air temperatures refreezing the
slush on the ice, arriving at the sampling site was made a bit easier
for Anatolii.
Arnaud captured some great footage of the river crossing for the documentary today and today’s sample was the most colored yet!
It was also Allison’s birthday and after sampling, we had a very
nice party for her, which included American treats such as brownies.
She received very special gifts from everyone in the lab, including
her very own sampling bottle and signed t-shirt!

Today the ice on the Ieniseï started to change drastically, first huge
cracks, ice ridges, lakes along the bank, and slush.
Reaching the sampling site starts to be more “technical”  for Anatolii (water and slush lake crossing…).
But we sampled again.
On the afternoon, we went to the Permafrost museum in order to store our samples 10 m below ground…in the permafrost, a perfect freezer with constant T° for our samples.

Every day the samples are becoming more and more colored. Today was much colder on the ice than yesterday, and much of what melted yesterday has turned back into ice. We visited fishermen working on the ice on the way back to the lab from sampling, and in the afternoon we completed our lab work. We modified some of the hand filtration units to make them faster,  and also completed the first SPE of the trip.

Today gave us visible changes signaling the arrival of spring; it was
warm enough for rain and large amounts of snowmelt. In the morning, we went sampling on the ice, then processed our samples and went on a walk in the city and on the Ieniseï in the afternoon. We saw visible cracking in the ice during our sampling and walk.

Even if the Ieniseï seems quite calm on the surface (ice thickness:
1.5 m), things are stirring under the ice. We are starting to see
changes in the color of the water, as well as the DOM measurements.
Water is coming up further each time we drill into the ice,
demonstrating that the discharge from the river is starting to increase.
In the city, it was a bank holiday; flags were out, and there was
music, bbq and games for the children to celebrate the end of winter
and the arrival of spring. One of the festivities was the symbolic
burning of winter, and the representation of the arrival of spring
entered the festival on a snowmobile.

Today was a busy day in Igarka.
In the morning, our TFF became completely operational thanks to Anatolii’s hard work!
We also had a meeting with everyone in the Igarka lab to explain what the TOMCAR project is about, and shared some clips of the documentary Arnaud has been working on.
In the afternoon, we proceeded with our sample processing and collected a new sample from the Ieniseï.
On the way back to the lab, we viewed a recent burn site not far from the river.

We have finally received all the sampling equipment!
Nikolaï and Nikita helped us set up the lab today.
We are almost ready to process our samples, however, we cannot start quite yet because the Tangential Flow Filtration unit was damaged during transit.
Anatolii is working on it and it should be fixed soon.

We are still waiting for the last part of our equipment.
Hopefully, it will arrive tomorrow.
So we went sampling the Ieniseï this morning.
Nice weather (-3°C, no wind) and a good sampling session.
Air: -3°C
Water: 0,08°C / Ice thickness: 1.48m

After the disappointment of yesterday, we took the first day off,
where we walked around the city and in the countryside.
Allison found some charcoal and slightly burnt wood for her research and Arnaud filmed our adventures for the documentary.

Only a part of the stuff arrived today and some of it is broken.
So we are waiting for the rest of the cargo (Monday maybe) and we started insurance declaration. Tomorrow will be a day off.
We are still organizing the lab and buying stuff to be fully prepared…
Air T°: -12°C, Almost sunny.