Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 01/09/2008 - 14:00
Forums
Antarctic Weather Stations

  Dear Mr. B,

       How many or what kind of animals have you and your team seen? How many days have you and your team been there? What kind of work do you do at the Weather Stations? What kinds of things do you take to Antartica? How big are the helos inside?How many groups of seals or penguins have you seen? How fun is Happy Camper School? 

               Smile Wink Laughing Cool

                           Gracie 3W

Wed, 01/09/2008 - 21:19

Kirk Beckendorf

Very good questions. No large land animals live in Antarctica, nothing much bigger than insects. There are animals that live in both the water and on land, like the penguins we saw at Cape Bird. We have also some seals, and a type of bird call a skua (it sort of looks and acts like a sea gull. We saw a lot of all of them.
We have changed out parts of the stations that were broken, we have dug snow pits to measure how much it snow since the station was last visited, we have also raised parts of the station higher above the snow.
In New Zealand we were given about 30 pounds worth of warm clothes, I also brought two cameras and camera lenses. Plus a few other odd and end things. The scientists shipped down new weather stations and spare parts for the stations that we will be visiting.
They use two sizes of helicopters here. The one we have used holds four people, and there is not much room for those four people, especially since we have to wear our large parkas which weigh about 7-8 pounds each.
Happy Camper made me happy!
Mr. B.