Penguin on monday night with Claire and Adam

It was a busy morning at the boatshed yesterday as we knew the weather would get bad today so we pulled some work forward and took two visiting Malaysian scientists out to Anchorage to collect some soil samples. The scientists are a professor and her masters student – Felix and Irene. Their FA was Ben Tibbets and myself and Danny decided to take the boat together.

We landed on Anchorage amoungst lots of elephant seals which although smelly weren’t that active. However, the skuas were very active so the best thing to do was carry a spade above your head to stop getting attacked by them.

While Danny went looking for the emergency depot to get a GPS co-ordinate and the scientists and FA went off to get soil I stayed at the hut and did some work on it. I took a fully inventory of the contents and also re did the guy wires and dug out the solar panel and a bunch of wires from the snow. It was sunny so I was just in trousers and a light fleece. It was therapeutic work which I enjoyed being out on an island with just the birds and seals surrounding me and great visibility across to all the moutains on the peninsula. When I was done with the work I climbed the hill and took a few photos.

We got back in time for lunch and then continued the normally boat maintenance in the afternoon as Mel wasn’t able to go diving as she had an experiment going on. I thought it would be an early evening however, I got involved at the sewing loft trying to repair the industrial sewing machine that someone broke. It really is needed for getting stuff made on base so as I didn’t finish completing it until well into dinner time I will go back this afternoon.

After dinner Adam, Claire and I went up to Vals and did a few runs. Claire was excited to break in her new skis. With the snow melting so fast it was a bit icy on Vals and it is almost getting to blue ice on the ramp. There was a group doing field training – those that just came in on the Dash – so we stopped in at the Caboose and had cuppa before heading home at 10:30pm. Another great day down south!

Lagoon Hut

Elephant Seals at Lagoon

On monday I went for my fourth dive in Antarctica helping Mel out with a little project. There were quite a large amount of icebergs in south cove as it has been blowing a southerly for a few days. We went down to 12m or so and were down for 40 minutes. My fingers were numb after 5 minutes.

While Mel was measuring the bodies of brittle stars on the grid I was bagging up 50 or so limpets for Mel to shuck and use for feeding the urchins in the aquarium at the bonner lab. I was also bagging up rocks with algae for the limpets already in the aquarium to graze on.

We also had a field party going out to Lagoon to get soil samples for a project. So all in all a busy day. I had taken a recreational trip out to Lagoon on Sunday as I was on Marine SAR duty this weekend. It means I can’t go beyond the hanger as I need to be able to launch the boat within 20 minutes. However, if I am already on the water it is OK.

Landing point at Lagoon

After the trip to Lagoon we waited for the DASH 7 to land bringing in some new scientists for 10 days. It was a beautiful day so it wasn’t a bother waiting. As we were tied up on the wharf I mentioned to my crew that something was just under the surface of the water. A few seconds later a penguin jumped into the boat! It scared the crew and had a waddle around – there was enough time for me to get a quick video! I told Henry on the phone and he said silly aunty ashley – obviously he didn’t believe me.

We were up at the memorial late on Monday night after the great science talk about aerial photography and we hung out for a long time with a penguin which climbed about 250 yards up to join us following our penguin calls. The penguin stopped about 1.5 meters away from us and proceeded to pick up rocks and talk to us.

Dr. Claire is the postmistress on base and has it open in on Monday lunch times. We have our own British Antarctic Territory stamps and also first day covers which I shall grab a few of this coming week. Post coming in is very irregular some came in on the Dash 7 from the Falklands that we were on and then some more on the JCR. The next mail run incoming is not expected until February. We will be sending out next week on the JCR and they will send it out at the end of December. Below is a picture of our mailbox!

On our way down some stamp collectors who specialise in Antartica stamps were on a research visit to the Falklands and they latched onto Claire and asked her to do a talk about being a postmistress in Antartica. Not quite sure what she will be able to say!

Pilot Mark my instructor!
On Friday I flew down to Fossil Bluff. We were attempting to put Clive and Kevin into Mars Oasis for Kevin’s field project. Unfortunately the contrast wasn’t great so instead we dropped them off at Fossil Bluff.

I will have more pictures later of the cabin at Fossil Bluff it really is something. I am really in love with it and even got to do the final approach to landing at Rothera and did the controls to within 50 feet of landing. The pilots down here are awesome and really into teaching if you want to learn. I have a bunch of books coming down to start reading up for my PPL.

The crevassing in one section of the flight was amazing. This picture shows crevasses that are about 100 feet deep. We were 100 feet above the deck.

Picture taken by Claire of our trip up Stork. Myself with Clive uphill of me.

Very early this morning the R/V Palmer tied up at the wharf to unload some science gear for the LARISSA project. The LARsen Ice Shelf System, Antarctica (LARISSA) project is an NSF-funded interdisciplinary project that will try to study as many aspects as possible of ice shelf ecosystems on the heels of the 2002 collapse of the Larsen B Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula. Last week an American twin otter came into base and will be based here for two months supporting the LARISSA project. A group of us spent the morning taking american’s from the ship for a tour of the base and also I manned the base store. They also got a tour of the aquarium and dive store courtesy of Mel and JJ. They were only on base for 4 hours while the crew of the ship unloaded containers, skidoos an science equipment.

This afternoon everyone is inside watching movies or going to the gym as a large low has come in bringing 40 knot winds and driving snow. This is when a nice indoor fireplace would be lovely. I am writing and working on organising my photos. Quite relaxing after a long busy week!

This is a picture of the Sea Spider I brought up on my last dive in the Aquarium in the Bonner Lab. He was quite hard to bring up and is the biggest the marine biologists have seen in the year they have been here. It was quite hard to surface from 20m while holding onto a spider in one hand and a seal prod in the other but I managed to do it without damaging him so was very happy.

The first media visit of the season – Sky News at Rothera – took place in November and the news reports from this visit will be broadcast on Sky News (Freeview Channel 82) next Monday (7th Dec) and Tuesday (8th Dec) to coincide with the start of the Copenhagen Climate Change conference. The reports will be broadcast every hour from 4am onwards and will also be accessible on the Sky News website:
http://news.sky.com/skynews/UK-News

The first news report (broadcast throughout the day on Monday 7th Dec) contains interviews with Andy Smith, Rob Bingham and Konrad Steffen.

The second news report (broadcast throughout the day on Tuesday 8th Dec) contains interviews with Melissa Langridge and Dave Barnes.

A half an hour news report ‘The Frozen Front Line’ will also be available on Sky Anytime (only available to SKY subscribers) in HD from Monday 7th Dec onwards. This will be broadcast on the Sky News Freeview Channel from 24th December onwards at various times. The report includes interviews with Tamsin Gray, Andy Smith, Rob Bingham, Dave Barnes, Melissa Langridge, Terri Souster and Konrad Steffen.

I will not be featured as I was not on base at the time however, Mel and Terri are part of the marine team down here that I work with.

Last Sunday on a beautiful evening the James Clark Ross came around Adelaide island with two twin otters flying above.

The JCR is the BAS ship which came in with supplies and scientists after a two week science cruise from the Falklands to Rothera. We spent two and half days unloading the cargo from the ship which is basically a years worth of supplies for the base including steel for rebuildling the wharf and new machinery. We perched at the memorials to get a view of the ship docking.

Monday and Tuesday were long days at the wharf using forklifts and then long days and evenings hand carting everything into the correct storage areas. The alcohol for the base took two hours of a human chain to get into the bond upstairs one evening!

SFYC burgee at Fossil Bluff Fuel Depot Lat. 71° 20? S, Long. 68° 17? W

So it is Thursday and I had on of the coolest experiences of my life on monday and haven’t had the time to write about it. I flew a twin otter for 5 hours on monday out of the 9 hours of flight time. That’s right I actually flew the plane 🙂 and I am now in love with flying it is so similar to sailing. At some points we were 200 feet above the ice.. Tomorrow I am going out again if the weather is good enough.

So Henry here are pictures of Aunty Ash flying the plane!

I spent the morning from 7am shifting three container loads of food into the food store most of the boxes were 30kg each so I was glad to get out of it and go flying. We left at 10:30am from Rothera and it was the most beautiful flying day of the season according to my pilot Doug. Fitted to the planes underbody we had a massive SLR camera and were tasked to go take pictures of an Emperor penguin colony the other side of the Antarctic Peninsula and also some pictures of sea ice. The project is based around the finding of penguin colonies using satellite imagery which was announced in June this year.
The very large view finder of the camera under our plane!

We stopped first at Fossil Bluff which is a fuel depot which I will be sent to man sometime this season. Tony who is down there this week is Rothera’s electrician and he joked that the best job he had ever had was one of a fuel attendant! It really is a beautiful place to be.

After refuelling we took off for the other side of the peninsula to the colony which had been found using satellite images. I had been told by the guys who were going to Halley that I would miss out on seeing Emperor Penguins well I didn’t I just saw them from 2000 feet!

We were meant to fly north to get more pictures of sea ice however, the cloud cover came down and we headed back to Fossil Bluff for more fuel and for a cup of tea at the melon hut.

By the time we got back to base it was 8:30pm and time for a late dinner and then I headed up the hill to camp at the caboose to finish off an amazing day down south!

One last picture for Henry – the big plane – Dash 7 in the hanger.