David Attenborough eats cornflakes for breakfast. Sorry, I realize this is probably getting old, but I am Obsessed! He’ll be gone soon and I will quiet down about it, but for now I am relishing the experience. This is my first morning in Antarctica, which looks no different from when I went to bad at 11:00 pm last night, but feels like a whole new world/planet/life. The flight yesterday was great and went by so so quickly. Before I knew it we were being told to don all of our extreme cold weather gear, that they were going to further drop the temperature in the plane, and that we would soon be landing on Pegasus runway on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica!
This morning I had a fantastic breakfast, and then headed over to the Crary Lab (the National Science Foundation (NSF) McMurdo Station science center that was built in 1988-89 at McMurdo) for briefings on science operations at McMurdo and for an extensive lab tour. This NSF Antarctic Biology Course was conceptualized in 1988, when polar regions started to receive more attention following the 1985 publication in Nature that discussed the significant decrease in ozone over Antarctica. This realization, that humans had the power to change the GEOSPHERE, was a big shock to most. At that point the NSF decided they wanted to find a way to have a “university on the ice.” The goals of the course were/are to introduce “students” to Antarctic science and the logistical issues of how to work in polar regions (most Antarctic science is logistically limited), provide training in INTEGRATIVE biology and adaptation, and to provide a venue for teamwork in research science. This program has trained approx. 230 scientists from approx. 30 nations in the 16 years (9 courses total) it has been in existence. In our introduction to the course we were also told about the several really dumb things past participants have done (midnight polar plunge in -2oC water – thankfully they did not get swept under the ice; a “fun run” alone across unknown ice – thankfully he/she did not step into one of the many crevasses/cracks that are often covered/hidden by snow, getting intoxicated and passing out in the snow – um, the potential consequences of this are probably obvious). Safety here is a bigger issue than any place else on earth, probably. It is a totally unknown and harsh environment, and the potential for getting really messed up is huge. The program has had no major injuries (so far we can only list one accident and it resulted in a broken knee cap…ouch!) in it’s 16 years and Dr. Donal Manahan, the director and apparently my “boss” for now, wants to keep it that way.
The Crary lab is pretty phenomenal. The labs are all really nice and the aquarium room is immaculate,
the stockroom is full of fun things to get creative with. I will not bore you with the details, but it is sweet and pretty much anything you could imagine doing, you can do! Just walking around in the hallways and reading the titles of the scientific posters lining the walls, and paying attention to the institutions the scientists are affiliated with, allows you to get a feel for the diversity of work done out of this facility.
All 38 of us (25 participants and 13 instructors (profs/TAs)) then went through introductions when we had to stand up and say our name, what institution we come from, what level we are at (PhD student, post doc, or professor), what our research interests are, and why we wanted to participate in the course. Even though we have been together 24-7 since Jan 2, this was a really cool activity because I had not gotten to talk with everyone yet about what type of science they “do.” I found out that there is a PhD student, Rob Ellis, here from Steve Widdicombe’s lab at Plymouth in the UK (a lab that does a lot of really cool ocean acidification work). A post doc, Dr. Tatiana Ilina, from Russia, but now at the University of Hawaii, who is a carbon cycle modeler and who does a lot of work on acidification and climate models….the list goes on and on….so so many talented and brilliant scientists. I am terrified and overwhelmed by the intelligence and creativity surrounding me. Oh, one crazy thing. One of the participants, Caroline Chenard, overlapped with me at Dalhousie University during our undergrad years in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and was even in my same program!!! I do not know why/how we never met, she was in the co-op program and was off working and was a couple years behind me, so maybe that is why, but we certainly had fun reminiscing about life at Dal and in Halifax.
Following these introductory lectures, tours, and introductions, we had lunch, and then got geared up for snowmobile training. We get to our field sites on either snowmobiles pulling sleds or in helicopters. Snowmobile training was SO MUCH FUN!!!
Our instructor owns a motorcycle shop in Wyoming in his other/off the ice life, and he was a real trip. We each got on our own ski-doo (I was 2nd in the line after the instructor, behind Damien) and practiced figure 8s and turns, then we just flew down straightaways.
Our instructor, while turning around to head back to the shed, tipped his ski-doo over. It was hilarious, because no one was hurt, and Damien had to help him upright his machine.
There was so much snow on the ice that it was like falling into a mattress. We fell backwards off of our machine into the snow and made snow angels. I never imagined snowmobiles and snow angels would fit so perfectly together. Oh, and I made a snowWO/man and my fingers nearly froze off. Good times!
Following lecture, even though it was 10:00 pm and had been a 14 hour day, we went over to Gallagher’s, one of the pubs (apparently the “beaker” bar – where the scientists hang out) for some mellow-out time. It is hard to wind down here because it is always so very bright. When we stepped out of the lab into the night, it required sunglasses….still so foreign to me. Anyhow, at the pub I learned something else about Rob (the Plymouth PhD student). For a brief moment he held a record in the Guinness Book, for hours/miles run on a treadmill with a team….468 miles in 48 hours. Maybe the ice really does attract the most bizarre and odd…
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