No longer on the ice

Hi everyone, especially everyone in Iowa city. We were very surprised to see so many comments on our website until we remembered that the link is on your school network. Great to read what you think about it. Unfortunately we cannot answer all questions (sorry) because we are no longer on the ice. Now we are travelling in New Zealand and have way less opportunity to do internet (and it is expensive also) So to finish; here are some pictures from our flight out. We hope that you will all stay curious about Antarctica and will want to learn about it. Who knows, perhaps one day you might get to go there.
Walking towards the plane.
Sheri got to fly in the cockpit and had beautiful views.


The clothing we wore. All returned to the Antarctic Program; they will be washed and sorted and then used again.

Where are we? (map of Antarctica)

It just occurred to me that while you have been reading our blog, you probably have no idea of where exactly we are. This map shows some of the main US stations (McMurdo, South Pole and Palmer ), the Italian Mario Zucchelli Station and the Russian station (Vostok ).










We are actually on an island (Ross Island in the Ross Sea) which is surrounded by ice for most of the year. Every year an icebreaker ship is contracted to cut a channel (Krasin channel on the image) from the ice edge to our town. The oil tanker and the cargo vessel that were mentioned in our entry called " Vessel offload" travel through the channel to reach McMurdo. C-16 and B-15J are some of the enormous icebergs that are floating around and which have caused our bay to remain full of us and has made it harder for penguins to reach their food source in open water.







This image is also interesting because it shows Antarctica in relation to other countries and the claims some countries make. The Antarctic treaty says (amongst other things) that Antarctica is owned by nobody, but should this treaty ever be dissolved, lots of countries will want their pick of the pie.

What is the weather like?

One of the questions that is asked most often is "What is the weather like down there?" Well, let me start by saying that at this moment, it is very sunny; +14F (-10C) but it feels warmer. Needless to say that in the shade and in the wind it is considerably colder.

Because the weather is vital to the security and safety of the people working here we always have the latest weather obeservation and predictions at our disposal. They are displayed on television and on the intranet.

















Notice the way that the sunset is listed.


The weather and working conditions are also classified in 3 classes - Severe Weather Condition 3 being the best and Severe Weather Condition 1 being the worst. Accompanying these classes are rules of behaviour. For instance in Condition 1 you are not supposed to go outside and you need to let your supervisor know where you are (even in your free time). If Condition 1 lasts for an extended period, ropes are put up between the dorms and the galley (dining hall).

Apart from the television and the intranet these conditions are also announced on our 2-way radios and on scroll signs that are in most buildings.

Of course, we have only been here in the summer time - winter time is much colder and features such attractive things as 24 hours of darkness and auroras. Temperatures at the South Pole station are very much more extreme than here at McMurdo.

It was fun seeing the landscape change during our stay. We arrived at the beginning of October and there were piles of (frozen) snow everywhere. Weeks later there were small rivers of melt water and still some weeks later McMurdo was a very dusty place to (during ship offload Sparky the water sprinkler truck was driving around keeping our roads wet and less dusty). Now in February there is some occasional snowfall and we are preparing our outside storage areas for the winter with its snow and strong wind gusts.

If you want to check out the current weather at McMurdo:
http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/89664.html

Historical weather data for McMurdo:
http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/weather/hist_wxdata/mcmurdo_station.shtml

Historical weather data for the South Pole:
http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/weather/hist_wxdata/southpole_station.shtml

Cool Stuff That We Didn't Actually See....

There's lots of incredibly cool, beautiful and impressive stuff that happens on the continent that other people see and take photographs of. We haven't posted those photos on this blog because it seems a sham to do so .....HOWEVER, last night, I was checking in the baggage for people flying to Christchurch and was told that the cargo pallets shouldn't be closed because we were waiting for the whale harpooners to return with their harpoons.

At about 2:15 in the morning, three scientists (whom we'll refer to as "the harpooners") showed up to check in their equipment. I chatted with them for a while and learned that they fly by helicopter to the large channels in the ice where killer whales swim for food and they "harpoon" a small tracking device onto the dorsal fins of the orcas, as well as removing a small plug of blubber from the body. They are studying the migratory route and the health of the whales. The main harpooner is working at the Alaska Sea Life Center and, who knows, maybe if we visit him in Seward this summer, we'll have a chance to really see this stuff for real next year!

Ship Offload

There hasn't been much to write about since the past postings. We have been working nights and enjoying the relative quiet as the number of people on station ballooned to over 1200. People are thinking more about their travel off the ice than about having fun on the ice - so the number of parties has diminished. The band played a huge gig in the helicopter hangar - terrible acoustics, but a truly enthusiastic crowd.

The excitement at the moment is centered around the ships coming to station and the difficulties the ice breaker vessel has had in making the channel wide enough for the container vessel and the fuel vessel. Today, the container vessel docked at the floating ice pier. Normal operations cease during vessel offload; bars are closed; most people work 12 hour shifts and many people shift to nights. Additionally, some extra 50 Navy and New Zealand Defense Forces personnel arrived on station to assist with offload operations. The Navy Cargo handlers are very young and were very bored before the ship docked. As these young men and women are generally known as those who chose the military option when asked "do you want to do military service or time in prison?" - most McMurdoites dread having them around. As soon as ship offload is completed, they will be flown off the continent.

There are 711 containers or "milvans" on the ship and the powers-that-be estimate that the whole offload process will take about 3 days. Afterwards, all of our waste and any usable but unneeded items will be loaded onto the vessel and shipped back to the United States. Apparently, the food and "bio-waste" (our euphemistically preferrable name for pee and poop from field camps) smell pretty bad once everything starts to thaw as the ship reaches warmer climes near the equator.

The photo below shows the container ship, the American Tern and the Russian ice breaker, the Krasin in the channel on the way to McMurdo. Erebus, the active volcano is in the background.



As you can see from the photo, the shipping channel wasn't very clear. One of the propellers on the ice breaker was broken and good (windless) weather prevented the loose ice from being blown out to sea.

The American Tern at the pier at McMurdo.





The containers are removed from the ship and loaded onto flatbed trucks, which move them to the correct location on station.

Here, the containers are opened and the contents are recorded for entry into the inventory system and workers in pickles remove the items from the containers. Workers in loaders move the objects to their appropriate place in the warehouse. (This is what Michiel is doing.)

In the winter, a large majority of the 240 winter-over personnel will be in charge of moving the supplies to their appropriate locations within the warehouses and ensuring that the correct information about the supplies is entered into the inventory management software.