Everybody knows this is Nowhere

Breaking the silence

2005-06-27T10:22:00.000+10:00

Well, I'm back. In fact I've been back from Antarctica for a ridiculously long time (as most of you reading this already know). Sorry for the super-long lapse in correspondence. I've been busy. Sure, not so busy that I couldn't make a quick entry, but busy enough so that I just never felt like doing it. Now that I'm back from Antarctica I'm not really sure what to do with the blog. I guess I could just write about my time in LA. Afterall, the Neil Young song that this blog is named after was originally written about Los Angeles (or so is my belief). Time will tell, I'm sure. I would like to say right off the bat though that this new entry in no way symbolizes any commitment on my part to keep blogging on any regular, semi-regular, or even wildly sporadic frequency.

I got back from Antarctica in Feb. I spent a few days traveling around New Zealand (what people on the ice like to call "decompression time"). I wish I had a longer stay there, but I had things in the real world to take care, so it was a quick trip. What I now provide for you is a link to the Shutterfly photos of my time in New Zealand. Beautiful place New Zealand is. It's my humble belief that everyone needs to go there once in their life. But I'm sure there's lots of places we all should go once in our life, and it's hopeless to get to all of them. So enjoy the pictures.

http://share.shutterfly.com/os.jsp?i=EeMN2rVo4bPQg&open=1

Here's a few to whet your appetite.

2005-06-27T10:21:00.000+10:00

My travel map. Like I said, it was a quick trip, too quick for sure. But it was at least a little bit of good life.

2005-06-27T10:20:00.002+10:00

Panoramic shot of Wharariki Beach located near Cape Farewell. Typical gorgeous coastline of New Zealand.

2005-06-27T10:20:00.001+10:00

Sea lions at Kiakoura.

2005-06-27T10:20:00.000+10:00

Kiakoura, New Zealand.

2005-06-27T10:19:00.000+10:00

A closer picture of the arches of Wharariki Beach.

2005-06-27T10:18:00.000+10:00

Trees bending to the relentless wind of Cape Farewell, located on the northern tip of the south island of New Zealand.

Last post from nowhere.

2005-02-06T22:39:00.000+10:00

This should be the last post from the Great White South. Of course with the Superbowl tomorrow it wouldn't be surprising if the Air Force cancelled the flight due to some mysterious mechanical malfunction that came out of the blue.

It's funny listening to the Neil Young song from which this blog site derived its name. It was good name for the site back then, but now it's more appropriate than ever. It's simply time to go. All of us will miss people we've met down here. But it's strange to see everyone get into town and then go to all of their going away parties. We were the first to get here, and now it looks like we are the last to leave.

So here's a few pix from one of the more recent going away parties. It had the advantage of also being an engagement party. So with more to celebrate, the drinking activities needed to be stepped up a notch. A few of us ended up going old school on the function and started shot-gunning beers. It really had been a long time for me, but I'm happy to say I still have what it takes to hang with the youngsters. My years of 'training' with the likes of Wheaton, Williams, Santagata, Burns, and Gunderson (to name only a few) seemingly payed off.

I'm in a huge hurry right now, so I gotta go. In closing, Antarctica was great. But in the words of Jets coach, Herm Edwards, "We gots to go!".

I'll post back in when I get back from New Zealand, mid-Feb or something like that. Or tomorrow when I find out the plane doesn't fly.

2005-02-06T20:09:00.000+10:00

Midnight in McMurdo. Drinking just doesn't feel the same when the night doesn't come around.

2005-02-06T20:04:00.000+10:00

The engagement/going away party. The couple (Rebecca and Justin) are cutting a cake that came from the South Pole land traverse. It was several months old (it never got eaten on the traverse). Remarkably, it still tasted okay.

2005-02-06T20:03:00.000+10:00

Dave and Dug Coons, just getting along famously. It was funny then, but with these pix, it's funnier now.

2005-02-06T20:02:00.000+10:00

Antarctic beer shot-gunning. It's a harsh continent indeed when your drinking stale, 2 year-old Speight's. But we made sure to maintain our professionalism throughout the entire operation. Left to right: me, Margie (an undergrad from Dartmouth working with the Dry Valley scientists), and Dug Coons (New Harbor diver).

2005-02-06T20:01:00.000+10:00

What a feeling of accomplishment.

2005-02-06T17:31:00.000+10:00

An introspective moment after the mayhem.

Closin' up shop

2005-02-01T20:40:00.000+10:00

Time to go. Just finished my last experiment of the season. Perhaps the last experiment I'll ever conduct in Antarctica. I made sure it was a big ole, over-the-top who's your daddy type experiment. Of course I had to carefully chose the soundtrack to this glorious (but yet bittersweet) moment (and by moment I mean 10 plus hours). I won't go into all the music that filled this 'moment', but it ended strong with JJ Cale, Littlest Man Band (a great band from Long Beach that apparently is the repressed artistic side of Reel Big Fish), and Wilco.

Now there is only the clean-up. We are scheduled to leave on the 7th of Feb. I say scheduled because it is rare to actually leave Antarctica when you are supposed to. Mechanical difficulties and weather conspire to make your stay anywhere from 1 to 20 days longer than was ever your intention.

Leaving entails the 'bag-drag'. You haul all of your possessions to the MCC (Movement Control Center, Antarctica is not just a harsh continent, it's an acronym) the night before your 'scheduled' flight. You check everything in (for our science group that results in about 60 lbs personal and 210 lbs science gear) at that time, except for your ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear and a few personal effects (toothbrush, underwear, etc). So no matter if your plane is the next day or delayed the next 10 days, all you have is your ECW gear and your personal stuff cause everything else is checked in and loaded on cargo pallets. The next time you see it will be in Christchurch, New Zealand. More horrible than the flight being delayed is the dreaded 'boomerang'. This occurs when the plane is heading to its destination and before it reaches its PSR (Point of Safe Return) the weather becomes too bad for landing. The plane then turns around and you go back to where you started and try it again the next day. Luckily, the boomerang usually occurs when you're going to Antarctica, not leaving. McMurdo is full of some great boomerang stories. Some people have boomeranged 4 flights in a row. Or the best, the guy who fill asleep on the plane and didn't know it boomeranged. He woke up happy and had on his mind ripe fruit and fresh beer. When he found out the plane boomeranged he was completely crushed (in this case the plane was trying to leave Antarctica, but because they couldn't get the landing gear back up into the plane they had to turn around).

So from here on out, it's just cleaning. It's amazing how entrenched in a place you can become in just 5 months. I gotta say, this place is a mess! We have been working in 2 labs (both are in terrible shape) and the aquarium. Today, Allison and I cleaned up the large tanks we have been using to grow our larvae in. Tomorrow we will start cleaning up the lab spaces. We also need to get our larger science gear up to the cargo department so it can be put on a ship and taken back to Pt. Hueneme, CA.

There has been a lot of ship activity just outside of town. Our lab has a great view of McMurdo Sound and the Transantarctic Mountains across the water, so we get to see the icebreakers come and go. Both have been working full time (the US and Russian breakers). We have also been visited by a tourist ship. It's an old, decomissioned Russian icebreaker, the Klebnikov (although Russian in origin, the ship seems full of Americans). We also just had our yearly visit from the fuel resupply vessel (the Paul Buck). The next vessel to come into port will be the cargo resupply vessel (the American Tern). The resupply operation will take several days of first unloading the supplies the town needs and then loading the vessel with all the junk and garbage the town has produced over the last year, which needs to be removed from the continent. It's a hectic several days with work going on non-stop. It's not a lot of fun for most of the contract workers because lots of people switch over to 12 hours shifts and much to everyone's chagrin all alcohol sales are stopped and the bars are shut down (as a safety precaution so no one gets themselves killed during the busy work week).

We took our last trip to the continent the other day. We went back to New Harbor. There's a really good field camp setup there with a couple of Jamesways and some huts. Right now Samuel Bowser is out there doing research on Formaniferans (one-celled organisms that are very complex and relatively large). Dave and Rob did one last dive to scout out the area for different kinds of seastars that aren't normally found on the Ross Island side of the McMurdo Sound.

The ice out at New Harbor was in terrible condition. Large areas had thawed and created a moat that seperated the land from the thick ice farther offshore where we dive. But when it gets cold the moat freezes over so that it's too thick to take a zodiac through and too thin to walk on. So the divers have to get in their dry suits and break the ice by walking and swimming through it, all the while pulling the zodiac (with all the dive gear) with them. Once on the thick ice, the dive gear is put on sleds and pulled to the dive hole. Even this ice is extremely uneven and makes for a tough walk. The reason why the ice is so uneven is due to dirt being blown onto the ice during storms. Ice covered by dirt warms up much quicker than the uncoverered ice due to solar heating. This creates localized areas of ice melt and therefore a very uneven ice surface.

It was a good trip and a good way to say goodbye to continent. We even broke out some cigars.

Well that's the story so far. Only a few more days to go. After this I'll spend a few days in New Zealand, to decompress a little bit. I'll be heading up to Golden Bay. Going to keep it simple and put up my tent and chill out on the beach and enjoy a land of fresh food and beverage. I also heard a crazy rumor that the sun really sets in New Zealand. It'll be good to get my night on, it's been a while.

I'll try to keep some posts going during the final stretch. Meanwhile, here's more pictures of stuff...

2005-02-01T20:39:00.000+10:00

Allison taking a break from the hard work.

2005-02-01T20:38:00.000+10:00

Me, working hard, as always. Trying the scrub away the remains of all those filthy sea urchins. Filthy, I tell you, filthy!

2005-02-01T20:33:00.001+10:00

Research vessel, Nathaniel B Palmer, off-loading pasengers on the sea ice. In the background is the Russian icebreaker.

2005-02-01T20:33:00.000+10:00

The Russian icebreaker making its way through the channel in the sea ice. In the background are the Transantarctic Mountains.

2005-02-01T20:25:00.000+10:00

The 2 ice breakers (Russian in front, USGC Polar Star in the middle) escorting the fuel resupply vessel through the channel in the sea ice and into McMurdo.

2005-02-01T20:24:00.000+10:00

New Harbor Camp from the air. In the background is the Commonwealth Glacier and further back is Taylor Valley.

2005-02-01T20:23:00.000+10:00

New Harbor camp from a distance.

2005-02-01T20:20:00.000+10:00

New Harbor is the entrance to Taylor Valley (one of the dry valleys). There are many mummified seals. This one is a relative new-comer to the area. It's very spooky how it seems to be caught in motion as if it was frozen on the spot.

2005-02-01T20:19:00.000+10:00

Dave and Karen hanging on the back of the zodiac.

2005-02-01T20:16:00.001+10:00

Smashing the frozen ice on the moat to get to the red hut in the distance (where the dive hole is).

2005-02-01T20:16:00.000+10:00

Navigating the canals of New Harbor.

See ya, Sucker!

2005-02-01T20:15:00.000+10:00

On the way back, the zodiac can handle the trip on it's own (while Rob leaves Doug and Karen to fend for themselves).

2005-02-01T20:14:00.000+10:00

Sam Bowser and Rob Robbins inside the Jamesway at New Harbor.

2005-02-01T20:13:00.000+10:00

The New Harbor dive gang. From right to left: Dave Ginsburg, Rob Robbins, Dug Coons, and Karen.

You're GROUNDED!!!!!!

2005-01-23T19:52:00.001+10:00

Well, it appears that there is something big enough to stop iceberg B15A. The bottom of the Ross Sea. According to this report the iceberg has grounded itself a mere 5 miles from the Drygalski Ice Tongue. Thereby canceling the much-hyped clash of the titans. Worse still, if true, this would keep the current sea ice conditions around for many many more years.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/01/20/iceberg.collision.ap/index.html

Both of the ice breakers are here now (the United States Polar Star the Russian ice breaker). Apparently the Russian media has been drumming up their involvement in breaking ice for us as a 'rescue mission'. Their ice breaking efforts are 'saving' the McMurdo community by allowing 'vital fuel, food, and medications' to be delivered. You gotta love the politics in all of this. Too bad it's not true, cause the sad reality is we've got enough hot dogs and baked beans to make 'beany weenies' until B15A melts down to the size of an ice cube.

Team Larvae: Livin’ the dream

2005-01-23T19:42:00.000+10:00

As I alluded to in my previous post, the members of the lab got to go on a very sweet “field trip” last week. Firstly we flew out to Granite Harbor. We have gone out there several times before and it’s always fun. We go there to collect the animals we use for our research. Graduate student Dave Ginsburg and DSO Rob Robbins do the diving and the rest of us do the dive tending. We help them get their gear on and get in and out of the water. Antarctic diving requires a hell of a lot of equipment and it’s a much easier time if you’ve got some people helping you out, especially putting on the water-tight “lobster gloves” and hauling your butt out of the dive hole. Granite Harbor is about 100 miles north of McMurdo Station on the continental side of McMurdo Sound. It’s a fun helo trip by itself, flying over icebergs and seals and the Coast Guard icebreaker (which is here breaking ice as we speak). We like to dive at Granite Harbor because there is a very active crack system in the sea ice. This allows us access to the water without the trouble of having to drill a hole through the ice.

On this particular trip we brought along the NSF Science Rep who is from the Geology program at NSF. He was interested in showing us the freshwater inputs from the continent into Granite Harbor specifically and McMurdo Sound in general. During the summer when it warms up, Granite Harbor comes alive with the sound of little streams of water (from the thawing glaciers) falling down the granite cliffs (hence, Granite Harbor) and into the harbor. The freshwater input is so much that it creates a freshwater lens that’s 10 to 15 feet thick and floats above the heavier seawater under the ice. Freshwater lenses like this can create very interesting distributions of marine animals that would not normally be seen (e.g. deep water species tend to come up to much shallower depths and thereby can be observed and collected by scuba diving).

After diving at Granite Harbor we flew back in a more long-winded fashion that allowed us to explore a bunch of the nearby glaciers. One of the glaciers (the Miller Glacier) had a cool structure on it called a ‘ring moraine’. A smaller glacier was feeding into the Miller from a cliff and all of the debris picked up by the glacier had been deposited in an arc forming a ring (bad description, but see picture) Best of all, we then got an incredible helicopter tour of the McMurdo Dry Valleys! The dry valleys are an amazing landscape which at times defy the imagination. It’s basically a valley system that receives no precipitation. This creates a stark landscape that appears completely devoid of life. Of course it only appears that way because life does exist there, albeit in a much less ambitious form than we are used to. To put the biology of the dry valleys in perspective, the apex predator of the dry valleys is a tiny nematode worm!

Although very little precipitation falls in the valleys, they are not completely dry. There are numerous glacier systems that come into the valleys from the polar plateau. These glaciers will melt during the warmer summer months and create streams. Over the course of centuries (if not longer) lakes have also formed in the lowest portions of the dry valleys. These lakes are frozen on the surface year-round. But under the ice life abounds! In fact in one of the lakes, Lake Vanda, the temperature of the bottom of the lake is quite warm, something around 25C! This is due to the ice trapping entering heat just like a green house. At the bottom of the lake are huge microbial mats. In the soils of the valleys life is a lot tougher, but still hanging on (as life is known to do). There are nematodes (called the Lions of the Dry Valleys), rotifers, tardigrades and the omnipresent bacteria. The ‘simple’ ecology of the dry valleys has made it an important model for understanding how environmental changes can influence ecosystems. The dry valleys have also been used as an analog for life on the early Earth as well as an analog to Mars and Europa (moon of Jupiter that has an ice surface, it is thought that under this ice there may be an ocean, where just maybe there could be life). The other thing about the dry valleys is that it’s a geologist’s heaven. Because life has so little influence on the area, the geological history of the valleys is laid bare for all to see. There are no plants to cover it, no animals to manipulate it and almost no water erosion to alter it. So written all over the vast openness of the dry valleys is its own geological history. I’m no geologist, but from what I hear it tells quite a story.

As a biologist, it has always been a dream of mine to get to see the dry valleys. Since we are typically only flying helicopters so we can go to our dive locations we usually aren’t in need of going through the valleys. But with this tour of the freshwater inputs it became entirely reasonable to get a tour and stop and look around, which is what we did. It really was an amazing, dream-come-true trip. We flew through the major valleys (Victoria, through Bull Pass and into Wright Valley and then into Taylor Valley). We stopped at Lake Hoare camp (in Taylor Valley) to check out the science facilities (I need to find a way to do science in the dry valleys). Then we stopped at the foot of the Taylor Glacier at a place called….Blood Falls! Damn that sounds like something out of a horror movie, Blood Falls, oh yeah. (Blood Falls is a rust colored part of the glacier where there is an inexplicably high concentration of iron seeping out due to some kind of subglacial artesian well). Then we flew over the Kukri Hills (much bigger than hills if you ask me) and onto the Farrar Glacier. Then it was back to McMurdo, which after spending so much of the day at Granite Harbor and the valleys really felt like the big city.

All in all, an amazing day. So here are a few pictures of the big day and a link to many more pictures of the big day. The weather wasn’t great (in fact it was pretty bad, we almost didn’t go at all due to clouds, snow, and lots of ground fog), so the pictures aren’t great, but they’ll hopefully get the idea across that the dry valleys are one of the strangest and most beautiful places on earth, to me at least. It represents the gray area between the abiotic, physically driven world of geology (where things are there because they’re there) and the intricate and adaptive realm of biology (where things are there because they’ve figured out how to survive). A world of vast scale, time, and process. To me, a religious experience.

http://share.shutterfly.com/os.jsp?i=EeMN2rVo4bPBg&open=1

2005-01-23T19:37:00.000+10:00

Team Larvae (Dave Ginsburg, me, Allison Green, and Michael Moore) living the dream at Blood Falls at the foot of the Taylor Glacier. Robert Falcon Scott first discovered the McMurdo Dry Valleys in the early 1900s. He actually explored Taylor Valley and called it the Valley of the Dead. So you could say we were at Blood Falls in the Valley of the Dead. Very scary stuff!

2005-01-23T19:36:00.000+10:00

Coular Cliffs at Granite Harbor. The system of cracks in the sea ice make it an excellent place for diving operations. The cliffs are great for climbing. Running water coming from the melting glaciers could be heard everywhere.

2005-01-23T19:35:00.000+10:00

The ring moraine at Miller Glacier.

2005-01-23T19:33:00.000+10:00

The Onyx River in Wright Valley. Smaller, alpine glaciers can be seen in the distance rolling into the valley.

2005-01-23T19:31:00.000+10:00

Lake Vida in the Victoria Valley. With no precipitation the only moisture is derived from melting glaciers that create the stream/lake system of the dry valleys.

A website for all you iceberg fans.

2005-01-19T08:54:00.000+10:00

Here's a great website with some cool satellite images of the ice demolition derby going on in the Ross Sea north of McMurdo Station. Thanks to Jason Coleman for providing the URL to his site in one of the comment sections. It provides the latest info on how the Drygalksi Ice Tongue and the sea ice are faring throughout this slow-motion feast of destruction. Check it out.

http://www.jasoncoleman.com/BlogArchives/2005/01/the_ice_dance_c.html

Waiting on an iceberg...

2005-01-18T07:19:00.000+10:00

The collision between iceberg B15A and the Drygalski Ice Tongue still has yet to occur. Icebergs have never been known for their punctuality. And who's going to tell a Long Island-sized iceberg that it's late? The best estimate of when it should happen is... soon. Meanwhile here's a CNN link to the latest B15A story.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/01/17/iceberg.collision.reut/index.html

Oh yeah, and here's a link to a story about little ole me in Antarctica from the Rutland Herald. Thanks to Carolyn Handy for writing it.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2005501150340

In other news, myself and teammate (and mid-rats chef), Mark Babas, have advanced to the championship game in our dart league. Unfortunately it's a double elimination tournament and we already lost to our opponents once. So we need to beat them twice and they need to beat us only once. Oh yeah, and our opponents are really really good.

Team Larvae took a trip out to Granite Harbor the other day (it's about 100 miles away on the continent) to try to get some late season sea urchins. On the way back we got to experience an amazing trip through the McMurdo Dry Valleys. We even landed the helicopter in a couple of places and walked around. If time permits, I'll put together a little post regarding the trip. Simply put, it was dreamy.....

Iceberg update

2005-01-13T17:55:00.000+10:00

I've gotten some comments regarding what is going on with the iceberg (okay, I got one comment wondering about the iceberg). Well, I'm rather busy right now, so I won't go on and on about it, but here's a link to a cool story on the iceberg.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/ice_berg_ram.html

Apparently iceberg B-15 is trying to play chicken with another large piece of ice. Too bad this piece of ice is actually a glacier (albeit a floating glacier)! The collision of B-15 with the Drygalski Ice Tongue should be fairly spectatular, in that big-picture/slow-motion sort of way. The coolest thing about the article is they compare the size of B-15 to none other than Long Island! How's that for props! I guess anything that looks even remotely like Long Island should be expected to create trouble for everyone.

Okay, gotta go, and you should go too, go to the above nasa link and try to be smarter than who you are.

The ONE and ONLY!

2005-01-07T20:45:00.000+10:00

Firstly, congratulations to the USC TROJANS for winning their second national championship in football in two years. Last year we shared it with LSU (and rightfully so), this year we share it only with Trojan fans, period. I've been attending Trojan games for the last 8 or 9 years and it's been a tough ride. The downward days of Robinson's second tenure to the enormous failure of the Paul Hackett experiment. But once Pete Carroll got here everything changed. What he has done for this program is unbelievable. There really aren't a lot of things I like about USC as an instution, but it's football program, along with the history and tradition surrounding it, is simply amazing. And it has been especially great to see Coach Carroll be responsible for it. He was completely mistreated by the NFL and wasn't even USC's first choice. If you can believe this, Dennis Ericson was first on the list to replace Paul Hackett. The guy who just got his ass fired from the once proud flagship of the NFL, the San Fransisco 49ers. Of course the 49ers are hoping to hire Pete Carroll, along with offensive guru Norm Chow, and while they're at it take Matt Leinart with their first round pick (which they undoubtedly earned all by themselves). Don't know anything for sure, but I doubt Carroll is ready to leave USC (and I think USC would gladly sweeten his deal to help him make up his mind).

Secondly, sorry for taking an extra day to post this. It took a little while to recover from the necessary celebrations of the utterly dominating performance of the USC Trojans over the Oklahomoa Sooners. It really was something to behold.

I want to thank lots of other people including Sooner lineman Birdine, Sooner coach Stoops, and all the experts out there in sportsland who suffer from eastcoastbiasitis. It was their "expert analysis" that really made this victory so much sweeter. Although Vegas had us favored by something around 3 points, everyone else and their grandmothers pretty much figured that the Pac-10 only plays 2-hand touch and couldn't match up with the big burly men of the Big-12 conference. And I've heard it all before. In fact it was one year ago that lots of people said the same thing about the Trojans when they played Michigan in the Rose Bowl (a game I had the pleasure of watching in person). Coach Stoops even said something like "our team is far and away better at running the ball". Hmmmm. Sounds like a complete lack of respect for how the west coast plays football. Don't get me wrong, I love the east coast, but not at the expense of appreciating reality. Football is football, blocking is blocking. A good running team on the west coast is probably gonna be a good running team on the east coast. I especially appreciated Birdine's comments on how Matt Leinart was an overrated quarterback playing for an average team. After whupping the Sooners' butts I wonder what he thinks of his own QB's and team's talent. Anyway, as usual, I digress.

We had a party to watch and celebrate the game on Wednesday (the game was on Wednesday, Antarctic time). We even had a couple of Oklahoma fans show up. As most of you know, the first 5 minutes or so was exciting, but the game that was supposed to be a classic matchup quickly turned into a classic blowout. Some of the biggest excitement came late in the 4th quarter when Dave Ginsburg and myself almost won a Harley Davidson motorcycle. We had entered a pool (one of those 10 x 10 grids) to win the motorcycle, it was a lot of money to enter, so Dave and I split the costs. Our numbers were OK=2 and USC=5. Once we found out our numbers we felt pretty sure we had no chance in hell to win anything. But lo and behold, 4th quarter, 7 minutes to go, USC has the ball on their 1 yard line. Dave was very excited about the chances of OK getting a safety, I said something to the effect of "there is no way in hell the Trojans give up a safety". Then, as if on cue, Heisman winner Matt Leinart fumbles the snap, recovers the ball and is sacked in the end zone, safety. The score is now 55 to 12. Those are our numbers!!!! But as you all know, that wasn't the final score, so although it was close we did not win the fully restored, beautiful Harley Davidson. Ah, but it was exciting.

So after the impressive USC victory, we all decided that we needed to let everyone on base share the joy. So we took the USC flag (it sure has been to a lot of cool places lately) and took the McMurdo galley by storm. Yup, it must've been something to see. We barged in running around with the flag yelling and screaming. Some people got it, some people were rooting us on and happy for the victory. Of course many people had no idea what in the hell we were doing. And I think it was those people that made the experience so much better for me.

After that, we went back to Hut 10 (where we watched the game) and continued to party until 3 in the morning (the game started at 2pm, so it really was a lot of work, and hence the recovery period was absolutely necessary).

So what follows are a few shots of us being drunk, happy, and National Champions.

Oh yeah, I've read lots of articles about the game (the experts sure have changed their opinions), but here's a kind of a funny one regarding the Auburn situation. I honestly feel bad for Auburn, but not that bad. They should've kept us on their out of conference schedule. But then again, we've got all the answers when it comes to Auburn, that's why we've beat them easily the last 2 years. Cadillac appears to be a great running back when he's playing SEC games, but man oh man, do we sure have a way of making him look old and busted when he tries to carry the rock through our defense. Anyway, here's the URL on the article (it's from the Cincinnati enquirer of all places):

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050106/COL03/501060395/1062/SPT

Here's a little taster:
"The Trojans are loaded like Fort Knox. Matt Leinart threw four touchdown passes in the first half. He looked as if he were knocking over milk bottles at the state fair.

Throw the beanbag through the clown's mouth, Matt.

Meanwhile, Auburn made its case for No. 1 on its knees. The mighty Tigers burned the last two minutes of a three-point win over ninth-ranked Virginia Tech by lying down as the clock dripped off. Auburn would have had no chance against the Trojans.

Here's the math: No. 1 beats No. 2 by 36 points. No. 3 beats No. 9 by three points. It's a big mystery how No. 3 would do against No. 1. There ought to be an investigation. Or at least another championship game."

GO TROJANS!!!!!
FIGHT ON!!!!

2005-01-07T20:42:00.000+10:00

Cardinal and Gold forever.

2005-01-07T20:41:00.001+10:00

Entering the galley. We were not about to be taken lightly.

2005-01-07T20:41:00.000+10:00

Even members of the New York National Guard could get behind the dominating victory of the USC Trojans over the Oklahoma Sooners.

2005-01-07T20:40:00.000+10:00

Spreading the word.....

2005-01-07T20:39:00.000+10:00

It was a snowy day in McMurdo (it's been snowing here the last 3 days. Huge, wet snowflakes. Very fun). But nothing could stop us from letting the world know that the USC Trojans were National Champions.

2005-01-07T20:34:00.000+10:00

So very close. The unlikely 5 and 2 score that almost won me and Dave a Harley Davidson. It's like the Trojans wanted us to have our cake and eat it too. But then evil Oklahoma had to score and ruin it for us. Ah, but I was still too happy to really care.

2005-01-07T20:30:00.000+10:00

Cuppy and Kitty. A father and daughter working in McMurdo together. They are die-hard Oklahoma fans and great people. And look, they're making the Trojan victory sign with their hands. Seriously, they were great sports and watched the entire game with us.

2004-12-25T11:35:00.000+10:00

While out at Cape Bird we ran into ole Saint Nick himself. Apparently he is sick of dealing with the regulations of the Elven union and is negotiating with penguin representatives in an attempt to outsource most of his work to the Adelie penguins. Talk about globalization!

Merry Christmas and the penguins of Cape Bird.

2004-12-25T11:21:00.000+10:00

Merry Christmas from Antarctica! It's Christmas day down here (we are a day ahead of the States) and all is peaceful. For the most part everyone has the day off and even better for all the contract workers, it's another one of those rare 2 day weekends. So everyone is feeling pretty joyful right about now. The big Christmas party was last night. They held it in the heavy equipment building. It was a good time for all with good food and live music. Tonight is our big Christmas dinner. The only thing missing is some fresh eggnog. I had some of the Borden's ultrapasturized eggnog (the stuff that lasts for years without refrigeration), that was no good.

Earlier this week we went out to Cape Bird, the northern most tip of Ross Island. We wanted to collect sea urchins from this location. We are interested in differences in reproductive ecology between different populations of sea urchins residing in the McMurdo Sound area. So we flew out there in a helicopter and got dropped off for the day. Because the location is so far away from McMurdo, we can't get the usual dive hole drilled out there. But it turns out there are some huge cracks in the sea ice which Dave and Rob can dive through.

The cool thing about Cape Bird is that there are several Adelie penguin rookeries there, so there's always a good chance or running into some of Antarctica's most interesting citizens. We were not disappointed as we had many penguins stopping by our little diving operation to check us out. As I've mentioned before, penguins have no natural predator on land (or sea ice). So they have no fear of humans and they approach them quite happily to see what going on. The great thing about Adelie penguins is that they are probably the most indecisive animal on Earth. They see you, run towards you, stop, run away, stop, run back towards you, stop, run away.... you get the picture. The Adelies are very different from their cousins, the Emperor penguins. As the name suggests, the Emperors are quite snobby. Humanizing an Emperor penguin event would be like this: Emperor penguin waddles up to you, looks you up and down several times, walks away completey unimpressed with your existence and wonders what god in heaven would waste several millions of years of evolution to create such a useless biped.

But this day was about the cute little Adelie penguins. We saw no Emperors. We ran into a couple of Kiwi researchers who were camping out at Cape Bird studying the penguin rookeries. They said it was okay if we approached the rookeries (but of course maintain a polite distance so as not to disturb the penguins). It was amazing to see these cute little penguin chicks huddle up underneath their parents (moms and dads take turns babysitting the chicks while the other goes on foraging trips for food) trying to stay warm. Very very cute. Of course it was also sobering to keep in mind that most, if not all, of these chicks face a very bleak future because of the miles of sea ice separating the parents from the open sea where they get their food. The parents can't jump in the water and swim away, but need to walk 50 to 100 miles to get to the ocean. This means most of the chicks will eventually die of starvation. You're probably thinking, "But Doug, you said there were cracks in the sea ice. That's where you guys went diving. So why can't the penguins get in the water there and swim to the ice edge?" Good question. The penguins can get in the seawater through the cracks. But they can't swim to the open water because they need to come up frequently for air and with all the ice between the entrance point and the open water, they would suffocate along the way to the open water (unless they happened to find another crack system in the sea ice). Hopefully a large storm will come in and blow out the sea ice, allowing the parents to feed their babies.

So here's a few pictures of our big day at Cape Bird. Hope you enjoy. And I hope everyone out there has a wonderful Christmas and a fantastic new year. To the Family (Mom, Dad, Steve, Jeff, and Uncle Allan): I miss the hell out of you guys. Next year I'll be sure to get out to Ludlow for a proper Christmas.

2004-12-25T11:14:00.000+10:00

Penguins chilling out at Cape Bird.

2004-12-25T11:01:00.000+10:00

Here they come! The first penguin scout party draws closer to our diving operations.

2004-12-25T10:59:00.001+10:00

One lone penguin tries to keep the peace.

2004-12-25T10:59:00.000+10:00

Two Adelie penguins pose for the camera.

2004-12-25T10:56:00.000+10:00

Portrait of an Adelie penguin.

2004-12-25T10:54:00.001+10:00

Penguins exiting the water.

2004-12-25T10:54:00.000+10:00

I am Penguin. Here me roar! Santa can only hold the flag and look on.

2004-12-25T10:53:00.000+10:00

Penguins approaching us making their way back to the rookery grounds.

Christmas 'chinoderms

2004-12-24T17:44:00.000+10:00

Well, it looks like those crazy Antarctic echinoderms can't get enough of the holiday season. Their latest death-defying stunt was to use their superpowers to form a seastar Christmas tree, topped with a brilliant sea urchin (for once the seastars weren't stars at all). This latest wonderment of nature was witnessed and photographed by the diving safety officer for McMurdo, Rob Robbins. It is impressive that with the harshness of the local environment these Antarctic echinoderms appear to be very tolerant of huge differences not only in evolutionary lineages (afterall sea stars and sea urchins split from each other hundreds of millions of years ago) but also in religous perspectives (see echinoderm Menorah below). A worthy holiday lesson for us all to keep in mind.

NSF press release on killer iceberg (and the Russians are coming!)

2004-12-24T17:12:00.000+10:00

The following is a press release from the National Science Foundation (NSF). They are in charge of running McMurdo Base. It was released in response to the doom and gloom article in CNN (and other places I assume).

A new development that occurred after this release is that the US just finished negotiations with the Russians for a second icebreaker. So this season there will be a US and a Russian icebreaker trying to clear out the sea ice. Pretty exciting. The Russians save the day! In exchange I think we're giving the Russians some logistical support (eg letting them run some Antarctic operations out of McMurdo). Looks like the Yanks and Russians are allies in this Cold War (Reagon would love it)...

ICEBERG POSES NO THREAT TO ANTARCTIC PERSONNEL
Annual long-range supply effort, icebreaking operations are on schedule

National Science Foundation (NSF) officials said today that iceberg B-15A is not blocking access to McMurdo Station, the U. S. logistics hub for much of the nation’s research activity in Antarctica, contradicting widely circulated reports to the contrary.

Karl Erb, Director of NSF’s Office of Polar Programs said the real effect of the enormous iceberg had been to shield large parts of the Ross Sea from wind and ocean currents, with the result that sea ice had formed over a larger area than usual in the sea-lanes approaching McMurdo Sound. Before McMurdo Station can be resupplied icebreakers have to open a channel each year through which the resupply ships can proceed, and the icebreaker task will be more difficult this year. Erb expressed confidence that the U.S. Coast Guard and its crew aboard the icebreaker USCGC Polar Star will succeed. He added that NSF is currently arranging for a backup icebreaker that can assist the Polar Star if necessary. This is in response to a Coast Guard recommendation.

“There is absolutely no truth to reports circulating widely that the stations are facing a crisis when it comes to supplies of any kind, including food. Personnel at McMurdo and South Pole stations are in no danger,” Erb said.

Some news media have conveyed the misimpression that an enormous iceberg, B-15A, is blocking ship access to the McMurdo Station seaport.

The U.S. research station at the geographic South Pole is more than 800 miles inland, and supplies are airlifted there from McMurdo after arriving on ships.

B-15A is a fragment of a much larger iceberg that broke away from the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000. Scientists believe that the enormous piece of ice broke away as part of a long-term natural cycle (every 50-to-100 years, or so) in which the shelf—which is roughly the size of Texas— sheds pieces much as human fingernails grow and break off.

The berg initially drifted toward McMurdo Sound and grounded near Cape Crozier on Ross Island. It has since broken into pieces that still are very large. Some remain in place, but the largest splinter—B-15A, approximately 100 miles long—is moving north at roughly 1-3 three kilometres per day.

The berg’s fate is unclear, as it depends on unpredictable winds, tides and other forces, but possibilities include colliding with the floating Drygalski Ice Tongue or continuing north, eventually to melt. If it’s the former,
the impact with the ice tongue could come as soon as Dec. 24.

The U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Star left Seattle, Washington, on Nov. 4 and should reach the edge of the sea ice about Dec. 27. It will begin immediately to cut a channel in the sea ice for the supply ships.

Officials agreed that the position of B-15A presents no obstacle to navigating the ship to the ice edge and beginning its work of opening a channel through this year’s roughly 80 nautical miles of sea ice. In a normal year, the icebreaker clears a channel through perhaps 10 miles of first-year ice.

In some prior years, the Coast Guard deployed both the Polar Sea and the Polar Star to open the channel but the Polar Sea is in dry dock for a major refit. NSF is negotiating to bring a chartered icebreaker to assist the Polar Star this year.

NSF, through its Office of Polar Programs, manages the U.S. Antarctic Program.

# # #

PR04-159

NSF program contact: Al Sutherland, 703-292-7457 alsuther@nsf.gov

Useful links:

Fact Sheets:

http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/media/99/fs_usap.htm
U.S. Antarctic Program

http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/media/01/fssigsci.htm
Significant U.S. Science Discoveries from Antarctica

http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/media/01/fslogistics.htm
Scientific Logistics at the Poles

Press releases:

http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/02/pr0212.htm
Enormous Iceberg May Be in Its Death ThroesCollisions with another large berg may doom B-15A to a breakup

http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/press/00/pr0016.htm
Motion of Massive Antarctic Ice Berg Causes Another Immense Berg to "Calve"

The National Science Foundation is an independent federal agencythat supports fundamental research and education across allfields of science and engineering, with an annual budget ofnearly $5.47 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states throughgrants to nearly 2,000 universities and institutions. Each year,NSF receives about 30,000 competitive requests for funding, andmakes about 10,000 new funding awards. The National ScienceFoundation also awards over $200 million in professional andservice contracts yearly.

Useful National Science Foundation Web Sites:
NSF Home Page: http://www.nsf.gov
News Highlights: http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa
Newsroom: http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/media/start.htm
Science Statistics: http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/stats.htm
Awards Searches: http://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/a6/A6Start.htm

The state of the sea ice.

2004-12-17T21:39:00.000+10:00

A lot of people have been writing me, or people I know, asking about how the penguins are doing and what's going on with this enormous iceberg parked out side our back door. For those of you who haven't seen the article, it's on the CNN site: http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/12/14/nz.penguins.ap/index.html

What's happening is that the Ross Ice Shelf is in the middle of a calving event. Huge chunks of this enormous glacier (the size of Texas) are breaking off and floating around in the Ross Sea. These events seem to occur about every 50 years or so. This in interesting because McMurdo Station is only about 50 years old. So this is the first time in the station's history that it has had to deal with the Ross Sea becoming littered with enormous icebergs. By enormous, I mean really, really, really big. Like the iceberg takes up the entire horizon. The largest iceberg, B15A, is close to the size of Ross Island, where McMurdo Station is located, and has been described has the largest floating thing on the planet right now. Not only is it a huge obstacle, but it also creates another very significant problem: persistent sea ice. The surface of the water in the Ross Sea freezes in the winter. But as summer approaches the rise in temperature and the energy of late winter/early spring storms causes most of the frozen sea ice to break apart, thus allowing ships access to McMurdo in the summer (an icebreaker is sent down every year to break a channel through what little ice remains between the open ocean and McMurdo). These ships provide vital equipment and supplies needed for the town. These huge icebergs cause the sea ice, also called fast ice (cause it doesn't move, it's held fast) to stay around. The reason for this is rooted in some complex oceanography, but the upshot is that the icebergs create a stable structure that the sea ice adheres to and, more importantly, the icebergs block warmer ocean waters that would usually circulate around the sea ice. This keeps the water around the sea ice much colder and therefore stops the usual progression of the break up of sea ice during the summer months.

This creates problems for both the humans and the wildlife. The sea ice around McMurdo is very old, having not been thawed or blown away for some 5 to 6 years. This has allowed the ice to thicken to about 16 to 18 feet! Very tough work for an icebreaker. Luckily, not all of McMurdo Sound is that thick, since the sea ice has blown out in other areas in more recent years. Still, the iceberg has caused the ice edge (where the sea ice ends and the open ocean begins) to be about 100 miles further north than it usually is. This means that the icebreaker (provided by the US Coast Guard) has that much more work to do.

Two years ago the ice was very hard to clear out for the same reasons. It took 2 icebreakers to clear a channel for the resupply vessel. Even then it was very delicate work because the channel was full of ice chunks that were up to 14 feet thick. The resupply vessel has a reinforced hull, but it is not an icebreaker. Pieces of ice that big could easily rip the hull open. In fact, that year the fuel resupply ship did not even enter the channel for fear of the ship busting open and spilling fuel all over the pristine Antarctic waters. Instead, fuel lines were laid down over the sea ice and the fuel was transferred that way.

This year though, more icebergs have moved into the area and caused the ice edge to be even further away, making the above option a much more difficult one to carry out. Also, there will only be one icebreaker this year (the National Science Foundation tried to get a second, but it never worked out). So as mentioned in the CNN article, this iceberg has created very large logistical problems concerning how to resupply the station. There are stores emergency foods and fuel, to be sure, but no one wants to eat 10-year-old frozen hot dogs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It will be very interesting to see how this problem gets solved, especially in the long-term. Hopefully the icebreaker will be able to clear the channel all by itself, but to some people supposedly in the know, they don't think it's likely. Some rare, late season storms would help out as well, so that more ice might blow away. Truly vital supplies (food and fuel) can be flown it, but not without an enormous cost that the NSF would probably like to avoid.

The other side of this iceberg situation is its influence on the biology of McMurdo Sound. The most notable problem is that the penguin rookeries in Ross Island face a very grim outlook (as discussed in the CNN article). This is because the parents rear their children at established rookeries on Ross Island. They take turns going on foraging missions where they walk to the sea ice, swim and get food, return to the rookery and regurgitate the food up for the chicks to eat. Only problem is what used to be a short walk to the sea ice (the rookeries were seemingly established during better times when the sea ice blew out) for the parents has now turned into a Homerian Odyssey of hundreds of miles. By the time they return to the rookery, if they return at all, they've used up all the food just to make the journey. This results in the penguin chicks dying of starvation. The closest penguin rookery to McMurdo (at Cape Royds, an Adelie penguin rookery) is likely to lose all their chicks this year. Zero survival. Very grim. This too could happen at a couple of more rookeries. These giant icebergs have already worked over the Emperor penguin rookeries at Caper Crozier. The rookeries there were smashed to bits and pieces when these island-sized icebergs initially fell off the Ross Ice Shelf and rammed into the frozen sea ice where the Emperors established their breeding grounds. It's very difficult imagining something 100 miles long smashing into your house.

The sea ice is also experiencing another problem. The last 4 to 6 weeks have been extremely warm here. Well above freezing (the high temperature today was 39F). The sea ice around the station and where the sea ice runway is located is very thick and its structural integrity is not about to compromised anytime soon. The problem is that with the warm temperatures we've had it's caused the 16 feet thick ice to turn into 14 feet thick ice that is now covered in 2 feet worth of slush. The road that goes from the hard ground of Ross Island to the frozen sea ice of McMurdo Sound (called 'the transition') has suffered the worst. This road is covered now with huge puddles of standing water, some up to 3 feet deep. The road to the ice runway is filled with these puddles as well (the constant driving of vehicles on the roads has dramatically increased their degradation in these warm conditions). This has resulted in the sea ice now being closed to just about everyone. The sea ice runway is closed as well. This means that planes bringing personnel and supplies to Antarctica from New Zealand can no longer land on wheels, but need to be equipped with skis (the runway on the permanent Ross Ice Shelf is different from the hard surface provided by the frozen sea ice and thus only ski equipped planes can use it). This change in landing gear severely limits the amount of cargo the planes can carry. So the good life of fresh food and mail packages being delivered in a timely fashion that was experienced during the days of the big C-17 and C-141 jets are now over. With the ski equipped planes handling the cargo, fresh food and mail fall very low on the priority of cargo to be shipped. People (myself included) don't know if Christmas packages sent by friends and family will arrive in time for Christmas. But this is not a huge problem, its just means the easier days of fresh food and mail aren't as frequent anymore (harsh continent indeed!).

So that's the state of the sea ice. Wow, that was a long post. You may not hear from me for the next 2 or 3 weeks. I've also put a photo in that shows Ross Island and these huge icebergs floating around the Ross Sea wreaking havoc on our little Antarctic operation (and the poor penguins too!).

2004-12-17T20:08:00.000+10:00

Recent satellite image of the waters (and icebergs) surrounding Ross Island. The yellow area just left of McMurdo Station shows where the sea ice edge is usually located during the summer. The red line displays the basic path the icebreaker and resupply vessels would take to get to McMurdo Station. However, the huge iceberg, B15A, is not only blocking the path of the vessels (not a big problem since ships can simply avoid it) but is causing the sea ice edge to remain a hundred miles or so further north. The northern tip of the Ross Ice Shelf can be seen as the white area in the lower right of the photo just off of Ross Island. This is where the large icebergs are born.

2004-12-15T18:10:00.000+10:00

Here's a great photo for all you Hanukah lovers out there! Our science diver/graduate student, Dave Ginsburg took this picture. You can imagine just how shocked he was to be diving under the frozen sea-ice of McMurdo Sound and come accross this large and highly organized group of Jewish echinoderms celebrating the glory of Hanukah by taking the shape of a menorah! While this formation may seem quite subtle to some, Dave, being of Jewish persuasion himself, immediatley understood what was going on and took this photo. Now I share it with you. Happy Hanukah!

Quarterback U?

2004-12-12T13:30:00.000+10:00

Congratulations to USC Trojan QB Matt Leinart, this year's Heisman trophy winner, and USC's 6th winner (tied for 2nd place with Ohio State). People used to call USC Tailback University. Now that a Trojan Quarterback has won 2 of the last 3 Heisman trophys perhaps USC will be called Quarterback University. Our all star running back, Reggie Bush, came in 5th place for Heisman voting. Reggie was always a long shot for winning simply because to college football purists he doesn't touch the football enough (which is fair), but anyone who has watched the Trojans this season knows that his presence has made all the difference. He is the quintessential game-breaker.

Anyway, this makes the BCS championship game all the more exciting (even though I hate everything about the BCS). For the first time ever, two Heisman quarterbacks will be squaring off against each other, along with 2 Heisman finalists running backs (Oklahoma's RB Adian Peterson came in second place and is an amazing RB).

GO TROJANS!!!!!!

Fight on Trojans!!!!!!

2004-12-10T08:35:00.000+10:00

This blog is typically dedicated to the activities of my research life here in McMurdo. However, I can't help but change course for a second and congratulate the University of Southern California Trojans. Incase anyone didn't read the fine print about me, I am a USC Trojan. Been one for a while now and it fills my heart with joy to see my football team go from PAC-10 cellar to co-National Champion (don't worry Ken, I'm not gonna disrespect LSU). And now with the regular season behind us, including an all too scary game against our cross-town rivals, UCLA (who played an excellent game), we are headed to the National Championship game again. And this time it appears everyone agrees there will be only 1 National Championship game, the Orange Bowl, USC vs. Oklahoma. Even better the Orange Bowl will be played on the 4th of January, which just so happens to be my birthday. I think a Trojan victory over the Sooners would be an excellent birthday gift.

It's been a strange football season, cheering on USC from all the way down south in Antarctica. I'm accustom to going to all the USC home games. Luckily, AFRTS (Armed Forces Radio and Television Service) has treated us pretty well. We got to watch 5 or 6 USC games down here. All others games were vigilantly monitored through the McMurdo internet and its modem-like bandwidth. Not the most fulfilling way to watch football, but it is a harsh continent afterall.

And so USC went wire to wire ranked #1 in both polls, an achievement that has not been completed by a football team in quite some time. Two of our players are Heisman finalists (QB Matt Leinart and RB/wide receiver/all around clutch game-breaker Reggie Bush) as well. To celebrate this joyous time, myself and a couple other die-hard Trojans decided to get out on the sea ice and have a cigar (the good ones you can't get in the states...)and bring the ole 'SC flag with us (Cardinal and Gold never looked so good!). It was a beautiful day on the sea ice and we even got to see some Weddell seals. We were at a location called Little Razorback. It's a tough and sharp outcropping out of the sea ice of volcanic rock . The island, along with a couple other islands in the vicinity (Big Razorback, Tent Island, and Inaccessible Island), actually makes up part of an enormous volcanic caldera that has since been submerged by the Ross Sea. These islands are simply parts of the caldera that stick up above the seawater level. Anyway, I digress. So here's a couple of shots marking the occassion.

GO TROJANS!!!!!!

Dad, you'll be happy to know that I have Hut-10 reserved for an Orange Bowl party.

2004-12-10T08:33:00.000+10:00

Two Trojans enjoying a fine cigar on the sea ice, that's Dave Ginsburg on the right, grad student and diver for our research group (Little Razorback Island in the background). Just so you don't think anything weird is going on, Dave is not in a Gimp outfit, it's his drysuit he uses for diving. Without a dry suit he would go hypothermic in the subfreezing waters almost immediately. He hardly ever puts on the Gimp outfit these days....

2004-12-10T08:30:00.000+10:00

The day the sea ice went from blinding white to Cardinal and Gold! From left to right: Dave Ginsburg, me, Allison Green (grad student in lab), and Jeff Rockholm (USC alumnist). Hopefully after Jan. 4th we'll have reason to break out the cigars one more time.

To meet the Man on top of the World

2004-12-05T20:06:00.000+10:00

So, it’s been an extremely eventful week. I had the honor of meeting Sir Edmund Hillary, the pride of New Zealand. Of course his greatest claim to fame and the deed that earned him his knighthood was his successful climb of Mt. Everest (along with sherpa Tenzing Norgay). That was back in 1952.

Perhaps a little less know feat of Sir Edmunds was his role in the British Commonwealth Transantarctic Expedition. Hillary was in charge of laying depots from Ross Island to within 100 hundred miles of the South Pole. Vivian Fuchs (the British component of the expedition) was to traverse the entire continent, starting on the opposite side as Hillary, on tracked vehicles and utilized the depots that Hillary and his men stored along the continent. It turned out that after some interesting setbacks, Hillary was ahead of schedule in laying the depots for Fuchs and he decided to take his crew (traveling in tractors that were basically fit to be used on New Zealand farms) all the way to the South Pole. So on January 4, (my birthday!) 1958, Sir Edmund Hillary became the first human to reach the South Pole overland since Robert Scott. These events also coincided with the International Geophysical Year (1957-1958). Along with getting to the South Pole, Hillary was also responsible for choosing the location and constructing New Zealand’s Antarctic base which would become known as Scott Base (which is located at the end of the Hut Point Peninsula on Ross Island within walking distance of McMurdo Station).

So for all these reasons, Sir Ed (as the Kiwis like to affectionately call him) has become a real hero and ambassador for New Zealand. Naturally, when he decides to pay a visit to Scott Base (again, the base he created) it’s a big deal.

One of the official reasons for his visit was to mark the 25th anniversary of the Mt. Erebus Air Accident. This was truly one of the saddest days in Antarctic history. Air New Zealand used to operate a DC-10 that would fly tourists on sight-seeing trips over parts of the Antarctica continent. On the 28th of November 1979, the plane smashed into the volcano that makes up Ross Island, Mt. Erebus, killing all 257 people on board. Poor visibility was blamed for the accident. In an amazing twist, Sir Edmund Hillary was supposed to be on that flight, acting as a tour guide. Due to prior commitments, he couldn’t go on the flight and offered the job to his best friend. So this accident must have placed an enormous weight on Hillary. In yet another interesting twist, however, Hillary came to marry the widow of his lost friend (earlier Hillary had tragically lost his wife and daughter in a plane crash over India).

Luckily for everyone involved, he took the time out of his schedule to give a talk to the people working at McMurdo Base. As you might imagine, he is getting up there in the years (he’s 85). He doesn’t look like a young chicken, but he definitely still has some of that fire in his eyes that I’m sure he needed when going up Everest, or for that matter driving a farm tractor over crevasse fields that were several football fields in length and could swallow entire houses. The talk was fantastic. No powerpoint. Just an old-timer telling stories that were truly amazing. And there was not one hint that all his life-long fame ever went to his head. He was modest, but not at the expense of being engaging. He talked mostly about his traverse across Antarctica. I’d say the high point of the talk was at the end when someone asked him about the most exciting thing he’d done during the years of the traverse. I don’t recall what he initially said, but it sounded like a stock answer that was mildly interesting, but nothing riveting. Then everyone was getting set to leave (there was a crowd of about 600 people there) when a better answer jumped in his head. He called everyone back to their seats and told one last story. Unfortunately memory doesn’t serve me as well as I’d like it to, but the story was basically this: He was flying in a small plane scouting for possible routes for the traverse and he and the pilot were heading back to Scott Base. Somewhere in the return trip Sir Ed needed to urinate very badly. He informed the pilot that things were “getting grim” and that he’d appreciate it if he could land the plane somewhere. The pilot was not too happy about this but he eventually landed on a completely unknown glacier (where crevasse fields just might be eagerly awaiting to swallow their plane). Both of them then walked over to an enormous crevasse and peed off the edge of it and into the darkness below. They then got back in the plane and took off, hoping that they would clear the crevasse they just peed off. It turns out they did, just barely. The way Sir Ed told the story I’m sure is 100-times more entertaining than my rendition, but it certainly put a lot of the early days of Antarctic expeditions into perspective of how different things are now compared to then.

The day after his talk to McMurdo Base he came back to get a tour of the Crary Laboratory. That is the lab at McMurdo that is home to all the scientists doing research in this part of Antarctica. The tour included scientists explaining their research to Sir Ed. So it turns out that I (along with my boss, Donal) got to talk about sea urchin larvae to the first man to climb Everest!!!!!! It was just surreal. And better still, he thought they were cool. Can there be any greater source of confirmation that you’re doing exciting stuff than from the first human to get to the top of Everest? It’s always hit and miss showing people embryos and larvae under a microscope. Some people aren’t comfortable looking through microscopes and don’t even see the animals at all. Well, Sir Ed must have seen them perfectly because he was describing them back to us, and with a tinge of excitement in his voice (really, I’m not making this up!).

So, I’ve included some pictures of the events. I’ve also included a poem that Sir Ed read during the memorial service of the Erebus Air Accident. It was written by Bill Manhire and really is quite moving.

2004-12-05T19:48:00.000+10:00

Mt. Erebus (3794 meters high), the largest volcano (and only active one) making up Ross Island, the home of the US and Kiwi bases. The other volcanos on the island are Mt Terror, Mt. Bird, and Mt. Terra-Nova. It is the southernmost volcano in the world. In 1979 a DC-10 passenger jet flew into the mountain and killed all 257 people on board. Nov 28th marks the 25th anniversary of the tragic event. The following is a poem by Bill Manhire that Sir Edmund Hillary read during the memorial service:

Erebus Voices

The Mountain

I am here beside my brother, Terror.
I am the place of human error.

I am beauty and cloud, and I am sorrow;
I am tears which you will weep tomorrow.

I am the sky and the exhausting gale.
I am the place of ice, I am the debris trail.

I am as far as you can see.
I am the place of memory.

And I am still a hand, a fingertip, a ring.
I am what there is no forgetting.

I am the one with truly broken heart.
I watched them fall, and freeze, and break apart.

2004-12-05T19:40:00.000+10:00

Sir Edmund Hillary and the crew of scientists and support staff of the Crary Laboratory. I'm somewhere in the back.

2004-12-05T19:30:00.000+10:00

Sir Ed, examining larvae of the Antarctic sea urchin, Sterechinus neumayeri.

2004-12-05T19:28:00.000+10:00

Hanging out with Sir Ed discussing larval biology. Life is strange indeed!

2004-12-05T19:16:00.000+10:00

Always a glutton for true adventure, Sir Ed even braved the food at the McMurdo cafeteria. Notice the look of sheer determination. I kid, I kid. The food is fine....Really, it is.

2004-12-05T19:14:00.000+10:00

On the phone with the South Pole. Communications must have been very different in 1957!

2004-12-05T19:13:00.000+10:00

The large crowd of McMurdo residents awaiting the story telling of Sir Edmund Hillary.

2004-12-05T18:34:00.000+10:00

Sir Ed, chatting with people before his talk to McMurdo Station.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!

2004-11-25T19:56:00.000+10:00

Greetings from the Great White South and Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the States! The Thanksgiving holiday down here is a bit complex. When it's Thanksgiving here, it's only Wednesday in the States. And everyone knows that Wednesday is certainly not a holiday. Also, it turns out that when it is Thanksgiving here (today is Thursday), it's not Thanksgiving afterall. Due to logistical concerns (i.e. the need for the base to keep running and planes to keep landing) Thanksgiving is not on Thursday in McMurdo but gets moved to Saturday. I suppose this could open us up to allegations of being unAmerican, but on the plus side all the poor Raytheon workers have the rare opportunity of getting 2 days off instead of just one. Yup, that's right, down here the contract workers work 6 days a week, 10 hours a day! So I guess this week they will be really thankful. They certainly deserve a couple of days. That's a tough schedule to do for 6 to 15 months.

Things here are going well. Been busy as all hell. The boss-man is still in town, so we all work just a little bit harder when he's around (or look like we're working a little bit harder). I'm looking forward to our Thanksgiving feast (on Saturday, not Thursday). The galley can only hold so many people at once, so the feast will actually occur 3 times for 3 different sets of people. I've signed up for the last dinner sitting in the hopes that we can linger a little longer after the dinner and not get pushed out to make room for the next herd of people. Nothing like the after dinner conversation of a Thanksgiving feast. Full tummy and the slight buzz of wine (actually it's usually beer, who am I trying to kid?), let the conversation go wherever it likes. Nothing is really offensive in this window of time. Hot button topics can suddenly be discussed with about as much passion as a convesation regarding lawn fertilizers. It's all good, everyone's cool, just sit back and enjoy the fullness of your stomach (and the buzz) and the impending weekend of football to come.

So yeah, sorry about my lack of blogging. I really have been quite busy. There's been some exciting stuff going on here that I will hopefully get the chance to talk about shortly. So I'll just leave you with a couple more pictures. These are from the other day when I had to free up a dive hole that was drilled several weeks ago. The preway in the hut (it's basically a kerosene heater) failed and so the hole froze shut. I went out intent on opening it up. I didn't realize that the hole was now up to 4 feet of ice. Luckily I had a chainsaw with me. Unfortunately the chainsaw blade was only 30 inches long. It was hard work and both me and the chainsaw ended up soaking wet in ice and slush. But it got done and quite honestly, it was fun. Although I was quite sore since the hole I was sawing was 2 feet below the floor of the hut, so that added a little extra challenge to it.

Anyway, happy Thanksgiving everyone!

2004-11-25T19:20:00.000+10:00

Fun with a chainsaw. It was a race against time; finish the job or pass out from carbon monoxide poisoning. Allison was a huge help using the breaker bar to free up the chunks of ice that were cut with the chainsaw.

South Pole Airlines

2004-10-28T18:12:00.000+10:00

Four ski equipped LC-130s (Hercules) lined up on the sea-ice runway getting ready to transport supplies and passengers to the recently opened Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica.

Definitely Mainbody

2004-10-28T18:04:00.000+10:00

It’s almost November and the Mainbody season is under way and in full force. McMurdo Station is filling with people, sometimes at a disturbing rate. The population of the town is somewhere in the 900s. The sky-equipped C-130 Hercules planes have arrived from Scotia, NY and started taking people to the South Pole station. These are the specialized planes that have skis for landing gear, allowing them to use the ice runways we have here at McMurdo and at the South Pole station. The last sunset was about 1 week ago. The next sunset will be at 12:38am.....
on the 21st of February 2005.

The research is going well. Dr. Robert Maxson (from the University of Southern California, Health Sciences campus) joined our research group a couple of weeks ago. He and I have been spending a lot of our energy trying to understand how developing forms of Antarctic echinoderms regulate ribonucleic acid (RNA). Very quickly, RNA is the molecule that translates an animal’s genetic information (DNA) into its final product, protein. The flow of genetic information is DNA to RNA (process called transcription) and then RNA to protein (process called translation). Anyway, Rob and I are interested in how quickly RNA is being synthesized and degraded in early life stages of animals in Antarctica. So far there has been a lot of trouble-shooting, trying to find accurate ways to isolate and quantify the amount and different types of RNA in these animals. By understanding the RNA of these animals we hope to understand the potentially unique way in which these organisms tolerate (and actually thrive) in this environment, which is the coldest marine environment on planet Earth. Because the process of translating genetic information is so important (DNA, for the most part is only a ‘blue print’, it is the protein that is encoded by DNA that is the ‘working machine’ of an organism), one of the goals of my research is to understand the energetic cost of turning DNA into protein. It is a highly energy consuming process. To put this in perspective, somewhere between one fifth to one half of the energy your body spends during a day is used up for the sole purpose of turning DNA into protein (through transcription and translation). This means that if you are on a diet where you are neither gaining nor losing weight, 20 to 50% of your caloric intake is used to fuel these processes. So for animals living in the nutrient poor and very cold environment of Antarctica, evolutionary changes that allow for any increase in efficiency of these processes would be highly beneficial. As biologists, we are interested in seeing 1) if such ‘adaptations’ exist and, 2) if they do exist, what parts of these highly complex processes can be ‘tweaked’ to result in increased energy efficiency. Such research allows biologist to understand what rules in living organisms are fixed (they can’t be changed) and what rules can be ‘bent’ and allow an organism to adapt to its particular environment.

So anyway….

In a couple of days Dr. Maxson will be leaving us to go back to Los Angeles (he’s got his own lab that he runs at USC where he studies the interaction between gene regulation and development). When he leaves my boss from USC, Donal Manahan, will be arriving. He’ll spend about a month with us in McMurdo and help out with different aspects of the research.

Night pix.

2004-10-14T19:38:00.000+10:00

Okay, here are some night time pictures. Celebrating the days when the sun did go below the horizon. Actually, the sun is still setting, but just barely.

http://share.shutterfly.com/os.jsp?i=EeMN2rVo4bO-A&open=1

The shocking truth revealed behind the ice runway damage!

2004-10-08T20:01:00.000+10:00

A nice piece of photoshop work depicting how the ice runway was REALLY damaged when the C-17 landed. Apparently it wasn't the "cleanest" of landings (in reality the landing was fine, it was just old ice with lots of airpockets in it). This gem was found on the McMurdo community common network drive, simply called the "i drive" (i.e. its drive letter designation). From time to time I'm sure I'll find other wonderful photos from the i drive to include for your blogging pleasure.

The plane that broke the runway

2004-10-07T20:14:00.000+10:00

The only plane to make it on the official first day of the Mainbody science season for 2004. The C-17 jet was able to leave McMurdo, but due the damage it inflicted on the ice runway, no other planes could land.

Mainbody delayed!!!! Well, sort of....

2004-10-07T20:02:00.000+10:00

Well, it turns out Winfly hasn't truly ended yet. The first plane did land, but no other planes followed. Apparently the ice runway is having some unexpected problems. When the first plane landed (a big ole C-17), it actually damaged the ice runway pretty badly. Not sure the type of damage, but the rumors around town (and this town is great for anyone who loves a good rumor) are that the plane either 1) tore up one huge piece of ice from the runway, or 2) dug a huge rut into the runway. Either way the second plane (and several others scheduled to land in the subsequent days), which was supposed to land a couple of hours later, was turned around back to New Zealand (its point of origin) because the ice runway was no longer safe. So town is still rather quiet, only about 300 or so people. The rumormill has it that the runway will be ready to go by Saturday. A couple extra days of Winfly-sized McMurdo is quite enjoyable.

2004-10-06T15:11:00.000+10:00

Two snow blasters preparing the road leading to the ice runway. I imagine if I were to see these amazing machines as a child, my only dream in the world would be to drive one.

Midnight glow

2004-10-06T15:09:00.000+10:00

A view across McMurdo Sound of the long twilight hours of Winfly. Photo was taken at 11pm. The silhouetted mountain is Mt. Discovery, an ancient volcanic cone located on the continent of Antarctic.

The end of Winfly....

2004-10-06T14:59:00.000+10:00

Sorry for not writing lately. The research has kept me very busy. This blog thing is a new “responsibility” for me that I haven’t entirely figured out how to fit in my schedule yet. Anyway….

So, it’s the end of the Winfly season. Tomorrow is the big day when the Antarctic sky will fill with airplanes. Well, not really “fill” with airplanes, but 2 planes will be landing on the ice runway tomorrow. Both of the planes will be spewing out people and supplies and, if we are really lucky, fresh food. We’ve been in Antarctica for about 6 weeks so far. The Winfly season has been very kind to us in terms of the scientific research accomplished and the overall Antarctic experience. With less people on base during Winfly, life has much more of a family feel to it. You get a chance to know people better. On the science side of things, with less scientific research groups here, we get more attention and, more importantly, more space than we will come Mainbody (Mainbody is the word used to describe when Winfly is over and operations at McMurdo Station go into full swing). In fact, with the start of Mainbody our lab now has to move out of our cozy little office space as well as our aquarium laboratory. Basically, we have to share more. Not a problem, but we have grown to enjoy the extra space afforded to us by the Winfly season.

A great thing about Winfly is the chance to experience the Antarctic night. The stars are brilliant and if you are really lucky, you’ll get to see the Southern lights (aurora australialis). We weren’t lucky, but hey, the stars were great. The sun remains very low on the horizon during the late winter period as well. This creates sunrises and sunsets that can last for hours on end. At this point though, the night as all but evaporated. As I write this it’s 10pm and the sun has just set behind the Trans-Antarctic Mountains, creating a twilight condition that will probably last the next 3-4 hours. At which point it will get just a bit darker and stars will be seen, but only briefly as the sun will shortly begin to rise again. As the days continue, the sun’s dip below the horizon will get shallower and shallower as the twilight darkness becomes less and less. Finally, the sun will not drop below the horizon, but briefly disappear only behind the trans-Antarctic Mountains. By mid-October the sun no longer dips low enough to be obscured by anything, at which point it will simply run circles around us getting higher and higher in the sky, providing constant daylight. Only in late February will the sun venture below the horizon again.

At this point I’m trying to get some pictures together showing the evening and night time look of McMurdo. Cause after that, it'll be nothing but daytime photography. Hopefully in a couple of days I’ll have those ready for you and have the link to them posted here.

2004-09-25T01:35:00.000+10:00

Photo of the day: Team Larvae at Cinder Cones. The picture was taken at the memorial for Jeffrey Rude, a graduate student who died while doing research in Antarctica. We were at Cinder Cones that day to drill a hole in the ice for diving operations. Incase the red parkas obscure us beyond recognition the line-up form left to right is: Mike Moore, Doug Pace, Allison Green, and Dave Ginsburg.

Fresh batch o' photos

2004-09-22T19:38:00.000+10:00

Hi again. Here's some new photos (well, new to you, the blogger) for you all. The shutterfly URL is:

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/share/view?i=EeMN2rVo4bO2g&open=1&sm=1&sl=0

http://share.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=EeMN2rVo4bO2g&notag=1

This batch of photos is a collection of pictures taken during my first week or so here in McMurdo, Antarctica. For starters, this is a special time to be in Antarctica. It’s the end of the winter season here. People here call this time of year “Winfly”. It stands for Winter Fly-in. Every year the base “closes” near the end of February, meaning that the summer population of McMurdo plummets from over 1000 people to about 150 people for the winter. Planes stop coming to McMurdo once March rolls along. By May it is completely dark all the time. So the 150 remaining people are now in Antarctica all by themselves, no new people show up, no fresh food, and no sunlight. Just the bitter cold of the Antarctic winter. When mid-August arrives, there is a brief time-window where the Air Force will fly 3-4 flights from New Zealand into McMurdo Base. The purpose of these flights is to get the base ready for the oncoming summer science research season which starts in early October. These planes bring in vital supplies and people. The base increases in population to about 300 people. The most important job for Winfly is to get the runway ready that the planes will be landing on come October. It takes several weeks to accomplish this because every year the runway has to be made all over again. The reason is because the runway is on the frozed sea ice of McMurdo Sound a few miles from the shore line where McMurdo Base is.

What also makes this time of year so interesting is that this is about the time when the sun begins to get above the horizon and therefore marks the end of the long, cold, night of the Antarctic winter. The sun rising on this frozen landscape after a 4 month hiatus has an amazing effect on the biology of Antarctic. This is the time when life begins to get going again. It may not be as visually stunning as Spring in a temperate forest with flowers blooming and birds chirping and what not, but compared to the frozen and motionless sterility of the dark Antarctic winter, it truly is a remarkable turn of events. The enormous Weddell seals haul out of the water (where ever they can find a crack in the sea ice that allows them access to the air above the frozen waters of the Ross Sea) and give birth to baby seals. Whales (Minkes, Blues, and Killers) begin their migration south to feed on the rich planktonic life that is found in the Antarctic water. The late winter/early spring also marks a time when the marine invertebrates found beneath the frozen sea ice begin to reproduce. One invertebrate in particular, the Antarctic pin-cushion seastar, Odontaster validus, begins spawning at this time. It is this seastar that allows me and the lab I work in to have this rare opportunity to come to Antarctica during Winfly. If we were to arrive in October, when most of the other scientists get here, the seastar would already be done spawning, and we would not be able to study these amazing animals. I use the word amazing because they, and all other Antarctic life-forms, are living in water that is almost 2 degrees below the freezing point of fresh water. The seawater doesn’t freeze however because of the salt that in it. I will talk more about how we study these animals in later emails.

So anyway, that was a basic introduction to why our lab is in Antarctica right now. The photos in this “posting” are just a small sampling of pictures I took around town during my first week here.

The first set of photos show our science group, BO-006, working with another science group, BO-005 (Art Devries’ group). We are attempting to open up a hole in the sea ice so that we can have access the water below it and go SCUBA diving so that we can get the seastars we are interested in. This is not typically how a hole in the sea ice is made. The town has much more appropriate equipment to do this, along with much better trained people to use that equipment. However, it being Winfly, a lot of that equipment was not quite ready to be used yet. So we took it upon ourselves to make our own hole (it really was imperative for us to get in the water and collect these seastars as soon as possible). What we didn’t know was that the ice we were trying to cut through with a chainsaw and/or drill through with a Jiffy drill was sea ice that had not been blown out to see for several years. The sea ice was actually 16 feet thick! So to make a long story short, our efforts did not pay off. But honestly, we did have fun being out on the sea ice and playing with chainsaws and drills. Luckily, the drill rig we normally use to make dive holes was ready a couple of days later and we never had to repeat this futile experience again. I will include photos of how to correctly drill a dive hole in later photo albums. Some of the other pictures show the general work being carried out to get the town ready for the approaching summer season. Roads have to be built on the sea ice so that vehicles can drive from town to the "airport". The most dangerous part of these roads is the transition from land to ice. This is the point where cracks in the ice are most likely to form. Even though the sea ice is 16 feet thick, it is still floating on top of a large body of water that is heavily influenced by tides. The motion created by these tides is constantly creating cracks in the ice where it abuts land. Heavy equipment operators try to stabilize this “transition zone” but clearing away the snow so they can see where the cracks are and then by adding freshwater to them so that it will easily fill in the cracks and freeze.

The second batch of photos are pictures of nacreaous clouds. These are a type of polar stratospheric cloud (PSC) that occur often in Antarctica. They are very stunning with there psychedelic coloration. The reason for this coloring is due to the large amount of ice crystals that these clouds contain. Interestingly, as beautiful as they are, they are a very important part of the cycle that creates the ozone hole over Antarctica. The ice crystals in these clouds create an optimal chemical environment for the chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere to interact and destroy the ozone in the upper atmosphere. If this reaction were to occur in the absence of ice crystals, it would happen with a much lower efficiency. This is the main reason why the hole in the ozone is focused over Antarctica. Antarctica is cold enough to support a large number of PSCs.

The photos after the nacreaous clouds are of a laser used by atmospheric scientists to detect PSCs. The laser (the green beam going up into to sky) is located in the Crary Lab (where our lab spends most of its day). The laser has a telescope hooked up to it. When the laser encounters a PSC, the light created by the laser scatters and the interference is picked up by the telescope.

Wow, that was a long-winded description. Hopefully the next ones will be shorter now that I’ve given you some background information.

Enjoy the pictures. If you have questions, feel free to ask in the comments sections of the posts and I will try to address them in the next installment.

Wow, I'm blogging now!

2004-09-21T18:32:00.000+10:00

Hey everyone. So I've finally decided to do this blog thing. I've been a fan of other people's blogs for sometime now. And Kenny, just as the constant pestering finally got you to join fantasy football, it finally got me to blog.

The purpose of this blog is to entertain people that already know me but may want to know a little more about 1) Antarctica in general, and 2) just what the hell it is I'm doing in Antarctica. The title is simly one way of describing Antarctica in terms of location and state of mind for many that make the trip to the ultimate Southland. It's stolen from a song of the same title from an album of the same title by the singer/songwriter Neil Young. I thought it was a good summation of the experience (from one particular perspective) and it also happens to be a simple fact that Neil Young rules.

So back to the blog....

The blog is basically serving as a platform for photos I'll be posting. I've been experimenting with blogger supplied software "Hello" which allows for you to post photos (I've already included a few). I'm not sure how much I'll end up using it. My other tactic may be just to post the Shutterfly URL where all you fine, fine bloggers can go and look at the pictures there. I hope to find the motivation and inspiration to write some short descriptions of the photos in the hopes of describing my Antarctic experience here at McMurdo Base.

So that's it for now. Oddly enough, I've got to get to the bowling alley and get ready for the latest round of a bowling tournament. Probably not what you would expect from the rugged frontier of Antarctica......

2004-09-17T18:13:00.000+10:00

The plane that took me to Nowhere. The inflight service was somewhat lacking.

2004-09-17T18:09:00.000+10:00

The red parka tribe of McMurdo, getting ready for another season of red parka wearing.

2004-09-15T20:54:00.000+10:00

high res