field station musings

Its been a few years since I've had the opportunity to work at the research station here in Finland.

I would have to say that I am more of a city person (which, a lot of my biologist friends find perplexing) but nevertheless it's really nice to be able to escape the city from time to time and to work in a place like this for a month or so.

The nearest decent-sized town is only 20 km away – but without a car, it might as well be 200 km away. Periodically, we have to rely on another researcher or student at the station to drive us to town to buy groceries, to go for the occasional meal at a fancy restaurant or to grab an ice cream (like we did yesterday) but otherwise we are pretty much 'stuck' at the station surrounded by forests and the sea.

It's a bit like being in a pleasant wilderness retreat...except for the work. Still, despite the long work hours, there is usually plenty of free time to go for walks or sit outside in the sun (just have to avoid the giant mosquitoes).

We managed to catch some shrimp the other day while out collecting fish for our experiments and decided to incorporate them into our stir fry that night. They were small but otherwise tasty. Word quickly got around about our foraging adventures and a french student turned up to our lab last night with a pan full of shrimp she had caught and fried up in garlic. It was a different species and more tasty than ours...so we asked her to bring us more next time.