Who is ready to pack up and head to McMurdo, Antarctica yet?
Yes, you don’t need a passport and you could get there as a tourist on a cruise or expedition ship for anywhere between $5,000 and $45,000. You could also get a job through Raytheon and be a lab manager, electrician, waste technician, dining hall person, weather observer, physical therapist, heavy equipment mechanic, or a fire technician. As neat as those assignments are, these people that have made it all the way down to Antarctica don’t get to leave McMurdo much. They might accompany us or another group of scientists to the field, to the remote spots on the ice, once or twice during their stay there. The rest of the time they will mostly be in McMurdo (or Palmer or South Pole Station). On the bright side, they don’t have to work 18-hour days and they will get to enjoy the climbing cave, the gym, and the many lectures, classes, and events that the station puts on. They’ll get to have fun!
McMurdo is about 3,864 km (2,415 miles) south of Christchurch, New Zealand, and 1,360 km (850 miles) north of the South Pole!
We, however, will be working like mad but we will also be in utter and complete wilderness. I’ve been reading all kinds of books and watching movies and it’s slowly starting to sink in how special the places are that we will be going to. I don’t think I can describe it properly. We’ll be surrounded by miles and miles of empty “whiteness” that only the crazy, intense wind will have touched.
Can you see our tent?
There will be a world of amazing unknown creatures, gigantic volcano sponges and feathery crinoids that our divers and us, with the help of SCINI, get to see. Most of all, we will be in a place on earth that is still somewhat undisturbed, that is relatively uncontaminated by pollution, industrialization, or humanity compared to much of the world.
Sadly though, even in a remote spot such as Antarctica, there is some pollution and destruction thanks to humans. There is intense contamination in small areas like right in front of our research station where the base dumped trash from 1957 to 1988. Stacy actually resarched this from 2002-2004 as part of her ASPIRE expeditions.
There is also global contamination that, try as we may, we cannot get away from. Remember the aerosol cans some of us used for hairspray or deodorant 20 years ago? We are experiencing the effects of that right now and especially so in Antarctica. Those household products that many of us used, in conjunction with propellants for other aerosol cans and refrigerator coolants, released chloroflourocarbons (CFCs) in the upper atmoshpere. Though production of those CFCs were banned by the Montreal Protocol in 1989, they have broken down the ozone over Antarctica which has resulted in a giant ozone hole. The ozone used to block UV rays and, since the atmosphere has not recovered, we now have to be really, really careful and wear lots of sunscreen and special sunglasses. I had to buy special "glacier glasses" and sunscreen with an SPF of 100! Who knows if that will be enough. Much worse than that, the animals that live down in Antarctica can't go out and buy sunscreen. The UV is carcinogenic and more mutations have already been observed and recorded in larval organisms.
Though we have slowed down the CFCs, we are not in the clear yet - even so many years later. Even worse, we now have an additional worry, climate change! How much more destruction and chaos will that cause before we really do something about that?
Aren't these sponges and crinoids beautiful?
We can learn so much from Antarctica!
Part of being able to get to go to the more remote spots, like the ice away from McMurdo in Antarctica, is partaking in all kinds of classes to learn about being responsible and safe in Antarctica. In fact, upon arrival in Antarctica, before I do anything else, I will be attending between 14 and 17 classes about everything from how to drive vehicles with triangle wheels to how to use the gigantic drills to make holes in the ice. I’ll also be going to an overnight “Happy Camper School” to learn all about survival on the ice. I’ll learn how to build an ice shelter, which I’ll have to spend the night in. Does anyone have any advice on that? I’ll also learn how to pee in a bottle properly as we won’t have bathrooms in the field and as we cannot contaminate the delicate ice environment with our chemically-laden urine. Hopefully I’ll also learn how to light a stove without getting my fingers frostbitten unlike a previous PolarTREC teacher that I recently talked to.
Any advice on how to drive this thing?
I’m actually already starting to take my required classes to learn about safekeeping Antarctica. A recent online class through the United States Antarctic Program Online Learning Center shed a little light on the complicated process of recycling and garbage in Antarctica. In the early days of Antarctic exploration, (remember Verne Peckham and Willy Heinrich?), the explorers buried and dumped their garbage as they focused on survival and conquest more so than safeguarding and keeping Antarctica clean for future generations of explorers and us researchers.
Everything will be shipped off Antarctica!
Now, thanks to that Antarctic Treaty, preservation of this precious, pristine continent is one of the highest priorities. Waste, whether hazardous, chemical, radio, or even simple, regular, non-hazardous waste is prohibited in Antarctica. We cannot dump the water to clean our science solutions down the sinks in the Crary lab. They must be properly disposed off in hazardous waste bins, which then get shipped off the continent. Corks and lids have to be removed from bottles and put into special bins of their own. Those packing peanuts are not allowed in Antarctica! (Please don’t send us our special, fragile birthday presents in boxes with styrofoam peanuts!) Cans must also be properly rinsed else the food will rot during the shipment off the continent. Sorting Centers in our dorms and in the work areas are color coded (Yellow – burnable, Green – recycled, Red – hazardous) and complex. I’ve heard there are over 30 bins to choose from. Now doesn’t that give you incentive to do more recycling when you only have 3 or 4 to choose from!
What do I do? Where does my trash go?
This will probably take some time to learn and I’m sure I’ll be standing in front of the many bins pondering which bin to place my used napkin or my empty pen in. There are a couple of really amazing features that come out of this. First off, maybe not as significant but I’m sure useful, there is a special Skua area (named for one of the birds of Antarctica) which is a free exchange of supplies and materials. It’s like a thrift-store or a garage sale where we can bring stuff we don’t use or where we can look for free stuff which we happened to have forgotten. Unlike a garage sale or a thrift-store, it’s free! I’m excited (though I do admit that I got the award for having shipped way more than anyone else on our team).
Secondly, and much more importantly, 65% of the 3.5 million pounds of waste generated annually in McMurdo is recycled. Good cities in the US recycle about 30% of their garbage. In McMurdo more than twice that is recycled. In this remote of remote spots, they have developed a system that not only preserves that land but also the supplies and resources that are brought there. Doesn’t Antarctica with its “zone of peace” and its amazing recycling system sound more and more like the ideal place to be?
Lastly, spills in Antarctica are taken seriously. That little annoying oil dripping from your car could get you into serious trouble in Antarctica. Because Antarctica is so dry and cold, any spills, even fossil fuels don’t degrade. We have to be extra careful, especially in the field, with everything from transferring liquids over special containment reservoirs to using special bottles and accessories for getting rid of our human waste in the field. Again, all waste must be shipped off the continent. In fact, the women on our team will be the among the first to try out a new type of pee bottle . We’re all excited!
On a more serious note, some of the most remote spots that we will hopefully visit like the dry valleys or the historic huts or the penguin rookery at Cape Royd will require even more training. These spots are known as ASMA – Antarctic Specialty Managed Areas – and require special permits in addition to the extra training. I wonder what I’ll learn about them and what they will be like…
In the end, as my training module taught me, we should be expert “stewards of this extraordinary place and our gift will be to those who follow” – a clean, undisturbed, but now understood place!
Isn’t that an example for us all?
What can you do in your community to make it more like Antarctica?
Can you see the steward of the earth?