No ocean here

This week I'm at the Ocean Sciences meeting, a conference held every 2 years that is co-sponsored by AGU. This year it's in Salt Lake City, which, inexplicably, has no demonstrable ocean anywhere near it. No the lake doesn't count.

They are very excited to see us, even at Rite-Aid.

SLC is gorgeous. I used to spend much more time visiting here when I lived in Nevada, and I had forgotten how much I miss it.

Snow in the plaza my first night there.

Skiers waiting to board a public bus.

The Wasatch Front, on a grey morning.

This meeting is fun. It's a little bit more low key than the annual AGU meeting, although there is still a lot of getting up early and staying up late. Attendees are, well, ocean scientists, so they range from chemical oceanographers to fish biologists to physical oceanographers who study currents and waves, to just about anything you can imagine. The folks here doing the kind of research similar to mine are a tiny fraction of a very diverse group, so there's lots to see and do. I went to a whole session on whales, sea lions, and seals, which I never would have been able to do at a meeting more oriented toward geologists.

Some kind of demonstration in the exhibit hall. I'm not really sure what's going on here.

Note the flames beneath the painted city.
Not really what you want to stumble upon late at night.