McMurdoisms

This picture was taken near the adelie penguin rookery at Cape Royds yesterday. I saw penguins, seals, and skuas. The penguins have chicks now. They are doing better this year now that the big iceberg has drifted away and the parents have a shorter distance to go and forage.

My trip yesterday inspired me to write about some aspects of life here. There are many common expressions and acronyms used in the USAP that may be confusing to people who have not been here. I thought I would try to explain a few of them.

Going portrait refers to turning your blue food tray vertically in order to accommodate more than 6 people at the round tables in the Dining Facility.

Rocket is a verb meaning to use the propane fired toilet at Lake Hoare Camp.

Grey water is a verb meaning to dispose of water in the grey water barrels.

Skua is a sea bird, the Antarctic gull, frequently spotted outside of Building 155 (aka the Galley or Dining Facility). If you are lucky enough to get to the penguin rookery at Cape Royds, you will see them there too. Skuas will eat many things and are not afraid to attack humans in order to steal their food. Yesterday at Cape Royds I witnessed two skuas snacking on a penguin chick.
Skua is also a verb meaning to take your unwanted items and put them in the reuse bins so that you don'’t have to bring them home when you redeploy (see below) and hopefully someone else will want to use them.
Skua is also a verb meaning to find or use something that was left in Skua by someone else.
Skua is a noun referring to the item left behind.
Example sentences:
Wow, you found that in skua? Hey, I skua-ed those pants. Check out my skua. Watch out, here comes a skua!

Lots of expressions have to do with coming to and leaving Antarctica.

Deployment means traveling to Antarctica.

Orange bags: The extreme cold weather (ECW) clothing that we get from the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) in Cheech is packed in orange bags.

Cheech: Christchurch, NZ

Movement Control Center (MCC), Building 140: This is the building where you go when it'’s time to bag drag (see below) before you redeploy (see below).

Redeployment does not mean traveling to Antarctica again. It means, undeployment, or the trip back home.

Bag Drag is the process of bringing your luggage to the MCC so that it can be palletized and brought out to the airfield. This happens the night before your scheduled flight. You are allowed to keep one orange bag after bag drag. You are advised to keep some spare clothing in case the plane does not arrive as planned. If you don't have a change of clothes, you may have to skua some.

PAX are passengers.

Winter is a verb meaning to stay in Antarctica through the winter, from station close in February through August. There are no planned flights to USAP stations during this time. In January, people start to ask, "When do you redeploy or are you wintering?"

Holidays McMurdo Style

Christmas has come and gone. I hope everyone had happy holidays, where ever you are. I enjoyed the weekend very much. We had the station Christmas party on Saturday night. It was hosted by the Vehicle Maintenance Facility (VMF), also known as the Heavy Shop. This is where they maintain and repair on all of the big vehicles on station. The party was fun. I smelled distinctly of fuel at the end of the night. The Dining Facility served a delicious dinner of lobster, beef Wellington, duck and some vegetarian options on Christmas Eve. Nik and I decided to take some time that afternoon before dinner to walk to Hut Point and explore around the ponds. The ponds are not as pristine as the ponds in the dry valleys, but they have several features in common. For one thing, they are frozen solid for most of the year. They are also in darkness for about four months. Then, during a few months of the summer, they melt. Depending on the weather, they may still contain some ice, but there is enough water for the algae to grow. Like the ponds in the dry valleys, there are no predators to graze on the algae so it can grow in thick mats along the bottom. The mats "lift-off" too, just like the mats in the dry valleys. The algal mats become so saturated with oxygen bubbles from photosynthesis that chunks will tear off and float to the surface. One of the ponds had a lovely green color from the algae. One thing I have learned from working in Antarctica is that, where there is water, there is life.

Besides the algae in the ponds, which was cool enough, we also saw penguins, seals and skuas that afternoon. The penguins were too far away to photograph, but they were out there on the sea ice. A few seals decided to haul out into the sea ice to sun bathe for a while. They were rolling around on the ice, searching for a comfortable spot. They are pretty fun to watch when the are moving, even though they may look a little like giant slugs in the picture.
We also heard and saw skuas. Skuas are sea birds, like gulls. These are some seriously tough characters. They frequently attack diners in McMurdo who attempt to leave the dining hall with food. Besides galley food, skuas also eat penguin eggs and chicks. This skua had other things on its mind. I think that there was a skua nesting nearby because there were two, one apparently on the nest and one to keep watch nearby. The one in this photo looks calm enough here, but when we got a little closer, it opened its beak to screech at us, which sent chills down my spine. We took a wide path around it so we didn't bother it any more. I plan to write more about skuas in a future blog because they are such a significant part of life in McMurdo.
Before we left Hut Point, we walked around Scott's Hut and saw this beautiful ephemeral art work. The window was still in the shade and had frost on it. You can also see the reflected landscape of sea ice, mountains and sky in the window. I walked back to the hut a few hours later and that side of the hut was in the sun and the frost was completely gone, without a trace. I have never seen this frost before, so I don't know how often it happens. It might be that it was just the right humidity and temperature. I was lucky to be there and see it and to have my camera with me to share it with you too.

Lab Daze

I'm still here. I have been busy working in the Crary Lab these days, analyzing lake water samples from the dry valleys by ion chromatography. I measure the concentration of things like sodium, calcium, chloride and sulfate. It does not always seem very bloggable, mostly because the labs are very functional and comfortable places to work, but they are not exciting to photograph (low bloggicity factor?). Water samples in plastic bottles are not exciting until you get the data. Of course it is exciting to see if the lakes are more or less salty than last year. The lakes in the dry valleys are very unusual chemically stratified lakes and the bottom waters are very old and salty. A little spilled drop of water from the bottom of Lake Bonney turned into a little pile of salt overnight on my lab bench. It is about 30% salt by weight, or almost 10 times saltier than sea water. The surface waters change a little every year depending on the balance between the stream flow into the lakes and the evaporative loss off the surface.
Last night after a long day of labbing it, Chris, Liz and I walked on one of the trails near McMurdo. It's a trail that goes up a ridge from Hut Point, near Scott's Discovery Hut, and then circles back through the station. Many people have walked up this hill over the years, but a trail was officially established and opened for recreation 2 years ago just before the two day Christmas holiday. It's a great way to get some elevation gain and do some site seeing. There I am trudging up the steep path with Scott's Hut at the edge of the peninsula below. (Ohhh, and next time I'm out there I need to check out those little ponds.)
Photos courtesy of Chris Gardner

Inside or out?

This morning I went to pick up our flight lunches from the Dining Facility, aka Galley. The young woman who helped me asked, "Are you going someplace exciting?" Even though I wasn't especially excited about the day's activities, I smiled and said, "Yes, we are going to the dry valleys." Saying that made me feel more excited about getting out for the day! Sometimes, you need to have other people help you put things in perspective.
I went out to the field today to conduct lab inspections with Paulene from Crary Lab and Rae, our camp manager. We started doing this a few years ago in an attempt to make the field labs safer and think of ways that we can make improvements. In the old days we didn't have eye wash stations in the labs, so we added them. We try to make sure that all the labs have basic supplies like lab gloves and goggles. It's not exactly an exciting day of "field work" poking into the dark corners of some of the labs in the field camps. It was still great to get out and see things and meet up with the people from my science group out in the field. We went to all of the fixed camps in the Taylor Valley, and we traveled in an A-star helicopter, so it was good sight seeing.


I wanted to show a few of my pictures from today. As soon as we arrived at Lake Hoare we took all of the cargo off of the helicopter including our survival bags. The pilot was planning to do a sling load and wanted to reduce the weight of the helicopter. Sandra hooked up the load. Then the pilot took off to his destination. It can be exciting to work around helicopters, but I was happy that Sandra was the one hooking up the load and not me. The pilot came back to Lake Hoare and Sandra loaded all of the cargo back onto the helicopter and we flew up the valley to Lake Bonney. We visited with Jill and John for a few minutes before checking out the labs. Then we traveled back down the valley to F6 and Fryxell camps and visited the dive team and the limno team. The last stop for us was New Harbor. It is right on the ocean so it has a different feel from the camps further up in the Taylor Valley. You can see across McMurdo Sound to Ross Island and our favorite landmark, Mt Erebus (top picture). When we left New Harbor, we flew back to Lake Hoare to bring Rae home. We also stopped at Hjorth Hill to pick up Rachel and Marble Point for some fuel and then we flew back to McMurdo. I felt recharged after the day.

Ice time

I thought it was worth commenting about the time difference between here and where most of y'all are. I have not been changing the time stamp on my blog postings so even though I say it's Sunday afternoon here, the time stamp on the entry will say Saturday at 10PM. We are on New Zealand time, so right now it is Monday night here, but still early Monday morning for most of you.
We are having a little going away party tonight, one of many. This week I will be waving goodbye to a few co-workers. Peter and Adam are leaving tomorrow (weather permitting). Kelly and I traveled here together on Oct 19. He will be leaving at the end of this week. I was feeling fine until he started talking about learning how to surf while he is in NZ and I am looking forward to another 11 to 12 weeks of ice time, primarily lab work. Don't get me wrong, I do like McMurdo and I do enjoy my job and the people here. There is a mass exodus of beakers in December to make room for a new batch arriving in January. It's always a little strange to say goodbye.
People here do keep track of such things as ice time, months on ice, seasons worked in Antarctica... Some people want to know whether or not you've wintered (no, that's crazy), been "on continent" (yes, Dry Valleys and South Pole) or if you are "bi-polar" (yes, Summit Greenland). McMurdo is on an island and most people never make it across McMurdo Sound to the continent. Here is a picture of McMurdo taken a few days ago from Hut Point. Scott's Discovery Hut is in the foreground, and well, there is McMurdo Station, my home away from home.

Diamond dust

It's Sunday and I was thinking about going for a hike in the hills this afternoon until I felt the icy cold blasts of wind. It "looks" like it would be a nice day and the official McMurdo weather forecast called for +5C (+41F) or "shorts" weather. One step outside reveals the truth. It's actually not that bad, but we have been spoiled by the nice weather over the last few days. According to the Building 71 Weather (NASA's unofficial weather display for McMurdo) it is -11C with 25 knot winds. Brrrrrr. There is also some clear sky precipitation, aka diamond dust. I'm sure I have seen this at home in NH in the winter, and it was fairly common on the Greenland ice sheet. It is ice crystals in the air, near ground level so you can see them flying by and it makes the air sparkle. The picture is from today. It is a picture of the flags at the NSF Chalet representing the signatory nations to the Antarctic treaty.