Half-way Through the Season

This past Tuesday (it's Thursday now) marked the half-way mark of this field season. So, it seems like a good point for a quick reflection on a few differences between this season and the last one.

1) Daily Life: Living in McMurdo (population 886 today; just below freezing) and South Pole Station (population ~100; way, way below freezing) is pretty different. Here in McMurdo, there is quite a bit to do; many hiking trails, animal watching, sports equipment rentals, 2 bars, a coffee/wine house, band performances, lounge and pool rooms in every dorm, and so much more. In South Pole, for leisure time you could read in your room, read in the library, or read in the lab. If you wanted to be social, there was a tv room and a sitting room. The smaller population of Pole did, however, have the advantage of making it feel a little more familiar. I don't really take advantage of all the entertainment opportunities here in McMurdo, but I do enjoy being able to get away from the station for a while. That just wasn't possible at Pole.

2) Work: At Pole, we had a fair amount of autonomy and with only 2-4 people on our team, everyone was always in the loop and had a voice in operational decisions. Here in McMurdo, we have so many team members that communication of plans isn't always efficient, and people sometimes seem to be stepping on each other. Too many cooks in the kitchen, as the saying goes. Trying to get research work from home done is also difficult here, due to the constant coming and going of team members. But, a couple of days ago I moved from the lab to an empty office and am finding concentration a little easier now.

3) Field Work: This year, I've been to one field site (a post on this is coming soon) and may or may not get to go to another. Last year at Pole, I think I visited 6-8 sites. However, the site(s) near McMurdo are very beautiful with rocks and topography. Most sites we visited from Pole were on the Antarctic Plateau and were "flat and white" - featureless. This was pretty surreal the first time, but less interesting after that. :)

Other than these reflections, there have been a couple interesting, if somewhat random tidbits I'd like to share.

1) We've had ships visiting. I think we've had 4 so far, but I'm losing count. The Coast Guard ice breaker, the "Polar Star" docked last week and is now back again. They are offering tours today, so hopefully I will get to see the inside. We've also been visited by a tanker carrying fuel to get the station through the winter, a tourist cruise ship, and a science vessel rumored to be the one that made the news a few weeks ago due to the many international efforts to free it from the ice. This has led to a big upswing in station population. The visitors seem to travel in packs. Sometimes the station store is so crowded that you can't see the merchandise. And, the visitors watch the rest of us. It is clearly motivated by curiosity, and if I were briefly visiting an Antarctic station, I would probably do the same. Nevertheless, it is a little uncomfortable to pass through a group of people and have half of them turn and watch you do something profoundly uninteresting like hang your coat or wash your hands. It's a little like being a zoo animal.

2) More wildlife. On Tuesday, I rode out to the airfield, Pegasus, which is about an hour's drive from McMurdo. It sits on the permanent Ross Ice Shelf. I was there to test a couple seismometers. (Incidentally, an active airfield filled with heavy machinery on an ice shelf sensitive to tides is not an ideal location to test a seismometer.) The work was fairly uneventful - one seismometer was great, the other unreliable. Probably of greater interest to most of you is the wildlife I saw along the way. On the ice shelf, we encountered penguins - emperor penguins this time! These two guys were sliding on their bellies along side this fuel line. Why? Nobody knows, but it's not the first time I've seen penguins do this. They look bored. (Sorry these wildlife pictures aren't great. They were taken in a hurry - sometimes through van windows, and I didn't have time to switch to appropriate lenses.)

We also saw a flock herd school waddle ... (Seriously, that's what they're called on land! In water, they are a "raft." A "rookery" is a breeding colony.) ... a waddle of emperor penguins standing behind a shack along the road. Just - standing there. After talking with people at the station, I found out that this waddle(!) has been growing over the past few days, starting with one penguin, and a few more joining every day. Again, nobody knows why. Must be aliens. (I'm joking! :P )

Finally, the "transition zone" where the ice meets the shore near Scott Base (the NZ base) is littered with Weddell seals. Cute though they are individually, laying scattered over the dirty ice, they kinda look like enormous black slugs.