Category: Uncategorized
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Every so often a seal or penguin gets lost, and for some reason heads up Taylor Valley. In my hikes I’ve come across a few seal vertebrae and skua bones. But here by Lake Fryxell, Renee from Lake Hoare shows off an exceptionally preserved specimen, perhaps a year old: the leopard seal. Leopard seals are…
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Last week I finally got back to the Dry Valley frozen lakes, bringing cubitainers and Coca Cola. The helicopter stopped briefly at Lake Bonney to join the lab members moving out—to a new camp, at Lake Fryxell. Lakes Fryxell and Hoare (separated by Canada glacier) are on the rough side, as you can see. The…
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Downhill from McMurdo, at the foot of the congealed lava blob on the Ross Sea, stands the New Zealand research center, Scott Base. Named for the famous South Pole seeker Captain Robert Scott, Scott Base was founded in 1957 as part of the International Geophysical Year project. New Zealand plays a key role in all…
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This page is a salute to all the special people who keep things running at Mactown (McMurdo Station, Antarctica). Run by the National Science Foundation, McMurdo is the USA’s major Antarctic research center. It’s also a unique town community, built upon a blob of lava that dribbled out from Mount Erebus and solidified thousands of years…
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The week of Thanksgiving I slept like the Pilgrims, in a tent below freezing outside without plumbing or fossil fuels. However, there was 24/7 solar as well as my own body heat. Here is what it looked like, Monday morning. This particular tent I inherited from a taller student who couldn’t sit up straight in…
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As we recall from last time, Amy was really excited for the limnology team to fly their samples back to Mactown. The NSF helicopters are a precious resource; only five of them available for the entire Antarctic operation, and expensive to operate. And they are essential for the science. Some experiments require live lake samples immediately flown out to…
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So what does Lake Bonney Camp have in common with Cuba? We’ll soon find out, but first, let’s take a look at the camp that supports all the work of the scientists. First, here is a labeled map of all the key features of the science camp at Lake Bonney. From left to right (arrows):…
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Frozen Lake Bonney is where we are seeking protists (single-celled life with traits related to animals or plants). At either side rise the mountains of Taylor Valley. During summer, streams flow down the mountainsides from melting glaciers. The rest of the year, the water sits there, freezing and subliming, shaping unique contorted forms that persist throughout…
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Today, after dozens of training videos, I finally joined our research team in the Dry Valleys–one of the most sensitive protected regions of Antarctica. Packed like sardines, our helo flies across the Ross ice, then up Taylor Valley, passing the Kukri Hills of the Antarctic desert. You can see how steep they are, and how the snow is…
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The night that our C17 came over the Antarctic mountain range, this was what my cellphone saw pressed to the glass of a porthole. The jagged shadows from the mountains show how steep they are–and how low on the horizon the sun was. Yet it was bright enough for sunburn, especially given the ozone hole. This…
Joan Slonczewski 