BBC Filming!

So these last couple days have been pretty exciting! A Planet Earth film crew from the BBC is working literally right across the hall from our lab! Right now, they are diving and filming underwater lifeforms living in the extremely cold ocean environment. These guys are spectacular cinematographers, world renowned, and right next door! I've had a pretty lucky streak going lately...



Everyone on the crew is incredibly friendly, and pumped to hear that I'm a film/geography student (working as a biologist?!?)...So today, I was invited to be their dive tender while they set up a time lapse camera at the ocean floor! Quite the jump-start to any film career! I headed out to the scuba shed (IMAX camera in hand!) with underwater cameraman, Norbert Wu. Once out on the ice, I helped the guys suit and glove up before they plunged into the frosted over dive hole! The water is 28 degreesF and covered with 15-20ft of ice!

Being a dive tender was a pretty sweet gig. Hopefully, I'll soon be the one swimming in the water with a camera though. Like Norbert said today, "just that much closer." Anyways, were gonna check out the footage tomorrow, and I'll officially be a part of a BBC production! Crazy!
Here is one of Norb's famous photos:


Antarctica, a frozen over continent at the end of the world, has proven to present itself as much more than a mere chunk of rock and ice...

Happy Camper

The sun shined all night through my dorm room window, and I still had no trouble sleeping. And luckily so, as I needed some rest before my first day of Antarctic Survival School, aka: Happy Camper.


After a quick shower (water is a precious commodity in our community), I headed to the galley to grab some grub, and off to the chalet for training. Our group of 20 "happy campers" started out the day in the classroom, discussing hypothermia, frostbite, clothing, ect. Equipped with our ECW, "extreme cold weather" gear, we headed out past Scott Base (the New Zealand base) and out onto the Ross Ice Shelf, where we were all exposed to the frigid Antarctic air!



The trainings in the field were actually pretty informative. Taught by alpine climbing guides, Danny and Dylan, we covered a variety of topics. Starting with stoves, we learned how to start and ignite them in the unbearable temps (any use of bare fingers resulted in instant numbing!). I can now completely assemble, repair, clean, and dismantle our MSR Wisperlights piece by piece. So if something does fail, whether it be a fuel line freezing or an o-ring cracking, there is no need to worry (mom)...






Our training also covered radio communications. We set up an HF antenna (spanned about 30 feet), aimed it at a repeater on Black Island, and I contacted the South Pole Base-the temperature was -60degreesF! Next was Helo Safety, "condition 1 (whiteout)" search & rescue, and my most favorite, snow shelters!

There are two types of tents we will be using in the field (Scott and Mountain tents). The Scott tents have the same design Captain Scott used when first exploring the South Pole in the early 1900's! However, a few of us chose to dig and carve snow trenches for our overnight sleeping quarters. Corey (a fellow LTER member on the stream team) and I connected our shelters with a separate tunnel through the snow. Here's what it looked like:

Southbound at Last!

One last night of darkness! With only hours before the 2,200-mile journey south, our crew celebrated farewell to Christchurch, and attempted to rest up before the big flight.

And the flight was big, to say the least. A C-17 is not your average commercial airline. Once inside, we were exposed to the innards of the massive aircraft. Wires, pipes, cables, and all sorts of electrical entrails lined the walls and 25ft high ceiling!




It was quite a suspenseful plane ride (despite this picture). Without any windows nearby, there was no gradual gradient between the calm ocean waters of New Zealand, and rugged, ice landscape of the Antarctic. As we flew closer to McMurdo, I got lucky enough to check out the cockpit and make friends with a navigator (Our flight crew was based out of NAS Whidbey back in Washington!). Here are some pictures of the crew, and looking down at an iced over ocean!



Five hours after takeoff, the sun was shining bright, Mt. Erebus beamed atop Ross Island, and the TransAntarctic Mountains spanned across the continent’s edge. Stepping out onto the ice is an amazing experience, nothing any photos, films, or stories could ever reenact. Antarctica is an unbeatable continent!



We hitched a ride from “Ivan,” and now I’m finally at McMurdo! I’ve been situated in my dorm (have a roommate, but have yet to meet him), dinner was actually pretty tasty (pizza night), and right now, Im looking out across the frozen over Ross Sea from the Lab Library. Tomorrow I’ll be out at snowcraft training, with a night in an igloo ahead of me!

CCD: Clothing Distribution Center

Today I geared up in Christchurch at the CCD, along with about fifty other scientists and support workers. I have more cold weather gear then I'll hopefully need. I would have never guessed any desert environment to require so many layers! However, there is a strict 75lbs baggage limit, and I have about 1/4 of that invested in my size 14 boots, so sacrifices will be made...


Anyways, I'm meeting lots of scientists, all working in different fields of research. Last night, I met a group from Wisconsin who are installing a neutrino telescope at the South Pole. It involves drilling 70 separate holes in the ice, each 2,400 meters deep! They drill at a rate of about 2m/min, roughly 200,000 gallons of ice is melted, and it requires a crew of 30 people (and a mere 4,800 gallons of fuel each hole!). The telescope is named "IceCube," and "will search for neutrinos from the most violent astrophysical sources: events like exploding stars, gamma ray bursts, and cataclysmic phenomena involving black holes and neutron stars." Check out the Icecube site for a further description about the project.


But even more exciting, I sat next to Henry Kaiser on the shuttle to the CCD!



Kaiser produced, composed, and filmed all the underwater footage for Werner Herzog's latest film, Encounters at the End of the World! He talked with me a bit about his work (all of the underwater footage in Encounters was collected over 2 years, the rest of the documentary took only 8 weeks), and all the gear required for filming under the frozen Ross Sea Ice Shelf in 28 degreesF water! It has been a very inspiring day indeed!


Tomorrow, we will be waking up at 3:30AM and off to the Antarctic Center/Airforce Base. If the weather permits, I'll be in McMurdo in the afternoon!

All for a Weddell Seal?

“It is worthy to record, too, that we have seen no living thing, not even a moss or lichen; all that we did find, far inland amongst the moraine heaps, was the skeleton of a Weddell seal, and how that came there is beyond guessing. It is certainly a valley of the dead; even the great glacier which once pushed through it has withered away” (Captain Robert F. Scott, 1903).


~I’ll have traveled 10,000 miles from home, all for the skeleton of a Weddell seal? Surely Captain Scott must have been mistaken…

While the McMurdo Dry Valleys may appear lifeless to our human eyes, a closer look would reveal otherwise. This cold desert ecosystem is home to a unique set of microorganisms, which have adapted and learned to survive in one of the harshest environments on our planet! Over the next two months, I too will be adapting to life in the Dry Valleys, and investigating life in the extreme! Keep checking back, and I’ll keep you updated on my southerly adventures.