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I was very excited to have a chance to do both today. Last season I had to miss out on the project to due to the birth of my son Joe, it has been two years since I have had the chance to be in the Deepworker, and to see the fantastic microbialites up close and personal. It was also exciting to get a chance to begin Kelly Lake explorations. The first research I did in Kelly lake was during my M.Sc. work back in 1995. Since then I have been working with the PLRP and have been diving in Kelly several times. Although we didn’t know it in 1995, the dives showed that there were HIUGE microbialites in Kelly Lake as well. The chance to work on Kelly lake microbialites in more detail this season is thrilling. In particular I can’t wait to compare the microbialites here to Pavilion Lake. The visibility in Kelly lake is not as unbelievably clear as Pavilion, and the chemistry of the water is different. These differences mean we can start to look at our question of how these microbialites are forming in a new way. The differences between Kelly Lake and Pavilion will give us a new perspective and a new way to investigate microbialite formation.

With all this exciting potential, it was great to get the dive started. It was a little disappointing at first with the visibility being less than expected. But once I got to the slope and the target depth for the contour the visibility improved and got better – I started to see microbialites! At first they were just individual ones, about the size of softballs, sitting on the sediments. From there, the microbialites got bigger and more frequent. There were new transitions between microbialite morphologies, new variations in patterns, and also lots of similarities to Pavilion Lake. This first look at Kelly Lake was as amazing as we had hoped, and I am looking forward as we keep exploring to seeing what new things we find and what new insights we can find to understand the formation of these incredibly interesting unique microbialites.

Darlene and Greg reacquainting with DeepWorker

Getting mentally prepared

Here we go!

I can’t believe that we leave for Pavilion in two days! Our McMaster team (Allyson, Lisa, Jen and myself) is going up early to sample several lakes on the Cariboo plateau before the commencement of the main field season. There is so much going on this year at the lake that we felt we had to go early or we would not be able to get everything done at our other research sites, to say nothing of the potential of missing the giant pancakes available at the roadside diner in Clinton, BC.

Speaking of getting everything done, it is amazing how much work everyone has put in getting ready for this year. Our planning and preparations have really built on last year and we are much better prepared to achieve our science goals. Everyone who has been involved in the planning deserved a ton of credit for all their work getting everything ready.

The tree that the microbialites are growing on provides a timeline for growth via radiocarbon dating.

The exciting field work will be starting this weekend. I am really looking forward to seeing us build on our success last year and be able to really fill out our mapping and investigation of the distribution and morphologies of the structures. We are also going to spend several of our days scuba diving to sample the datable structures we found last year. This is one of the main interests for us from McMaster as we hope to be able to use radiocarbon dating methods to determine how much variability in microbialite growth rate occurs in the different environments in the lake. Without the video from the submersible operations last year we would never have been able to locate the ten sampling targets we have for this year.

Now its time for last minute packing and checking to make sure everything is ready… and then we all meet at the airport at 6 am for our early flight and the real start of the excitement.

-Greg