Baby Seal Video from Henry Kaiser

Henry Kaiser has worked many years in the United States Antarctic Program as a diver and videographer in support of several different biologic research groups.  He is also a musican and composer.  He often uses his compositions to provide the sound track to the beautiful underwater videos he takes here in McMurdo Sound.  Some of this footage has appeared in Werner Herzog's films "Encounters at the End of the World" and "The Wild Blue Yonder".

Incidentally, the band Condition Fun, for which I play drums, was lucky enough to have him join us for one song at the Crary Lab Grantee Social (otherwise know as the Beaker Ball).  He played a rippin' guitar solo and sounded great!

Recently, Henry posted this video to Youtube.  Enjoy!

This video gives a really good introduction to Weddell seals and also has underwater footage from Henry Kaiser.

Inside the Historic Antarctic Huts

When I wrote the post on Cape Royds, I forgot that Google has created the opportunity for the world to see inside some of the historic huts of Antarctica.

Here is the link to the "street view" of the hut at Cape Royds: http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/gallery/antarctica/shackletons-hut-cape-royds-on-ross-island.html

This one is for Robert Scott's Hut at Cape Evans, a common recreational trip (at least in past seasons before our Deltas (large-tire vehicles) all broke down and we had enough mechanics on station to repair them. http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/gallery/antarctica/scotts-hut-cape-evans-on-ross-island.html

Passenger Delta

Actually, I just discovered that not only are the huts on Google Street View, but so are the Crary Science Center (where all of our scientists work), South Pole Station and the Berg Field Center (BFC), where scientists and field support personnel get their outdoor gear for field camp work.  The BFC has also been known as the Building Full of Chicks or the Building Full of Caffeine depending on who is working there each season.

Check out the fabulous and in-depth images here:  http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/gallery/antarctica/

When nature calls in nature

You probably haven't ever wondered how we deal with going to the bathroom in Antarctica but this blog post will explain that it is way more complicated than you might imagine.  Skip this post if you are squeamish about the realities of dealing with bodily waste.

In an attempt to mitigate the environmental impact of thousands of scientists and support staff leaving pee and poo all over this icy continent, the Antarctic Conservation Act requires us to collect all of our bodily waste for disposal off-continent.  We do a great job of complying with this requirement in almost all locations we (the US Antarctic Program) inhabit.  If we are recreating off-station, we bring pee bottles and funnels (for women, only, of course).  At field camps, the carpenters rig up special outhouses.

Having lived in Alaska, I'm no stranger to outhouses.  Most outhouses in Alaska have quarter moons carved into the door.  This harkens back to the days when there were separate outhouses for men and women.  Men's outhouses had a sun depicted on the door - representing Helios, the masculine god of the sun.  Women's outhouses had a moon depicted on the door - representing the moon goddess, Luna or Selene.  At some time in history, they decided to economize and build just one outhouse and they (whoever "they" were) decided to keep the women's outhouses, thus the moon symbol you see on outhouses today.  In Antarctica, however, none of this is relevant.  Here's what we do....

Inside, men's urinals drain into 55 gallon barrels (called U-barrels (U for urine)).  Solid waste goes to another container and women's urine toilets are coffee cans that have to be poured into the men's urinal.  The light blue styrofoam insulation is what makes it possible to sit down on those seats in -40 degree temperatures.  Fun, huh?

Cape Royds

About once a season, I get a call or an email from someone in the IT department (my boss or someone from the Communications part of our department) to tell me that I'm going on a really cool trip in a helicopter.  This year, the destination was Cape Royds - an adelie penguin rookery and the site of one of Ernest Shackleton's huts.  Built in 1908, this wooden hut is undergoing restoration work by the Antarctic Heritage Trust of New Zealand.  The hut is off-limits during the restoration work, which last year, turned up five crates of whisky.  The whisky was distilled by Mackinlay Distillery in Scotland and has since been reverse engineered and re-created.  Incidentally, you can buy it online, but the reviews have not been all that positive.  See here:  http://www.connosr.com/reviews/mackinlays/shackletons-whisky-mackinlays-rare-old-highland/good-but-not-worth-the-hype/


Ernest Shackleton's hut - 1908

 Anyway...I didn't go out to Cape Royds to drink 100+ year-old whisky.  I went to see penguins while my IT co-workers rigged up the antenna, wiring and equipment for wi-fi and telephone (land line and VOIP phone) for the scientists who will be continuing their on-going adelie penguin studies.

The day was uncommonly calm and warm - so calm that all I could hear was the sound of thousands of penguins calling for their mates.  And warm enough for me to sunbathe, albeit in parka and wool hat.

Here are photos of the site.  You can see the hut and the penguin rookery to the right of it.  In the background is annual sea ice with the ice edge not too far off in the distance.  On the other side of the hut, is active volcano, Mt. Erebus and perhaps you can also see Barne Glacier beyond.


Adelie Rookery



Mt. Erebus



Hut, Rookery, Sea Ice and Mt. Discovery in the background

 After I returned to McMurdo, I ran into the educational outreach coordinator for this science work.  She has been working with a penguin researcher for many years and does daily blogs with school kids back in the States.  I asked her to help me understand some of what I observed at Cape Royds.  You might notice that the penguins are standing on a pile of small stones.  Those are nests.  The males come in from open water (running and sliding over the sea ice) to Cape Royds and gather stones and pebbles (lava rock from Erebus) to make a nest.  Then they make a lot of noise and flap their wings in an attempt to attract a female.  Penguins are monogamous for one year.  They might attract the same female as the year before or they might choose a new one each year.  Sometimes jilted females peck and squawk at this season's chosen mate.  In some of the photos you see birds with their wings out - these are apparently the males trying to get attention.  If you see any penguins standing on a lying down penguin, that's sex.  I did see some of that but the shots were blurry.  Sorry no penguin porn on this blog.



Penguins returning from the sea





Molted penguin feathers



My terrific colleagues - riggers Andrew and Emily



On my way to Palmer

After being at Denver headquarters for orientation my new adventure finally begins. We fly into Chile through Santiago, where we are welcomed by a local person who works for the program. He takes me through immigration and shows me the line for customs and takes off to welcome the rest of my colleagues.

I have been a good boy and have been trying to find information on what you are allowed to bring into the country. Apparently that was not good enough, because they confiscated my dried mangoes and blueberries. I was so looking forward to having them and they were not cheap either.

From Santiago via Puerto Montt we fly to Punta Arenas, which is all the way in the south of the country. Chilean independence day is coming up, so the plane is filled to the brim with families traveling to see their family.

In Punta Arenas we stay for 2 nights in a quite reasonable hotel. In our free time we take to the streets to see the town, but very few places are open, because of Independence day. Of we do the obligatory "rubbing the foot" of the Fuegan (one of indigenous people in the region before European colonization) who sits at the base of the statue of Magellan.

Same as for deploying to McMurdo, we need to go to a warehouse, to get our extreme weather clothing. Unlike McMurdo, a lot of that clothing is rain- and boating gear. My colleagues are very helpful in advising me about what to take double or triple items of and what to reject.

And then the time has come…we've become passengers of the LMG, the boat that is going to bring us south.

To answer some of the questions that often come up about the boat, I have stolen some info from the official website.
Full name:                    R/V Laurence M.Gould
Type of Vessel:            Antarctic Research and Supply Vessel
Builder:                        North American Shipbuilding, Larose, Louisiana
Year of Construction:  1997
Installed Power:           4,576 Horsepower from Caterpillar Diesels
Ice-breaking capability: 1 ft. of first year ice at continuous forward progression
Length Overall:           250 Feet (76.1 meters)
Width (Beam):            56 Feet (17 meters)
Depth:                         19.4 Feet (5.9 meters)
Endurance:                  75 Days
Lab Space:                  8 Labs, 2,490 sq. ft.
Accommodations:       Science party: 23
Total capacity:             44

For those of you who want to read more:
http://www.nsf.gov/od/opp/support/gould.jsp

Trying out the life vests.

The waters between Chile and Antarctica can have some very extreme weather and I was especially apprehensive of the renowned and feared Drake Passage. But -to cut a 4 day long story short- the seas were very mild and I did not need my sea sickness medication.

They had me sleeping in a shipping container with bunk beds down in the hold, which actually might have been the place where the boat sways the least. But it also meant hearing the incessant pneumatic, banging and rattling noise from the ship close to my ears. The fact that I needed to climb a steep set of stairs to go to the toilet was another reason why I was very happy that I did not get sick.

Life on board was filled with watching movies, reading and hanging around and waiting for meals (which were not as bad as I expected). I did get to help with some science measurements, which consisted of lowering a probe at regular times and recording data like depth and water temperature.

View along the way.

Arrival. Photo's Stacie Murray.

I was asleep for the last part of our journey so but was woken with the sights and sounds of the ship mooring at Palmer pier.