College of Sciences Newsletter Edition 13 June 1, 2002 
The Rest of the Story
From the editor:
To this armchair observer, research faculty get to pursue their interests (in the name of science, of course) by traveling to the far corners of the Earth taking samples, running data and bringing additional knowledge back to their labs at the home institution. This is often the case in the College of Sciences at Old Dominion, too. I drool at the exciting recounts of seemingly romantic and fantastic voyages to such places as Antarctica or the Amazon taking water samples, or caving in Hawaii identifying rare animal life, or studying the plants of the Bible in Jordan. When reporting, researchers almost never include the hardships they encounter or must endure – like subzero climates, biting or stinging insects, unusual travel detours or the complicated arrangements needed to bring back samples in their original form. Here is one researchers story…
Ross Edwards, assistant professor of chemistry, described the approval and shipping nightmare he and John Donat, associate professor of chemistry, encountered late last fall as they attempted to bring back samples of sea-ice from near the south magnetic pole off Antarctica. It went something like this as reported by Edwards:
Ice samples for the project were drilled from sea-ice in the South Western Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean not far from the south magnetic pole during a voyage of the Australian icebreaker RSV Aurora Australis in November 2001. The samples were for ultra-trace metal speciation and required a special ultra-trace metal clean drill to prevent contamination of the samples. Since we were funded only 1 month before the ship was to depart, the design for the drill was still inside my head. After some grueling hours and the help of a plastics fabricator and the Old Dominion University science and engineering workshop, we managed to put the Teflon and titanium drill together, clean it in acid and ship it to Hobart, Tasmania.
In Tasmania, however, the drill was caught in customs, while the departure date of the ship was advanced by several days (normally it’s delayed). With the help of the University of Tasmania, the all-important drill cleared customs on the day that the ship left, luckily with it on board! Five weeks later the ice had been drilled and had returned to Tasmania where it was to face another dilemma. The new FAA regulations made it extremely hard to ship a box containing frozen Antarctic sea-ice to Norfolk within the maximum 24 hours that the ice would remain frozen. So…the ice remained in Tasmania. Fortunately several months later a colleague was traveling from Tasmania to Washington D.C. on a government visa and was able to bring the ice as hand luggage. Unfortunately, to keep the ice frozen all the way to D.C., he had to restock the insulated container with dry ice in San Francisco. This meant leaving the airport between connecting flights and hiring a cab to take him to the dry-ice dealer where he could purchase more dry ice. The cab driver dropped him off short of the dry-ice dealer, but after walking several miles with his luggage and dragging the insulated box he found the company, restocked the container, called another cab and made his connecting flight to DC.
Meanwhile, I drove from Norfolk to Dulles airport, meeting him at 11:00 pm. With the ice, I immediately began the drive back to Norfolk. As luck would have it, the first substantial rain the area has had in several months began thus making the drive impossible. Luckily I had bought dry ice on the way to the airport, restocked the container and stopped for the night.
The ice arrived in Norfolk the next day, still frozen, and was soon melted and prepared for analysis. While the ice was in transit from Tasmania, Donat was funded for a research expedition in the North Atlantic, thus leaving for Japan the day after the just-arrived samples were melted and divided between us for analysis. In order for the samples to be analyzed in time for the data to be used in a new NSF proposal, it was necessary for his samples to accompany him to Japan and then out into the Atlantic where they are currently being analyzed. So for the first time in history, there are now small pieces of Antarctic sea-ice moving slowly across the ocean between Japan and Hawaii.
It is this type of research that requires lots of improvisation, hair that is firmly anchored to your scalp and an understanding spouse!
