Brief Post Turkey Updates

These last two days have been very long with a lot of work, so I am
reasonably exhausted, so I am going to keep this short (actually short, I
feel like I usually tell myself these will be short then they suddenly get
all philosophical or something).

Friday was the first day I actually got to hold a penguin. It was pretty
exciting, kind of a life bucket list check mark there. I will say this
about penguins though- they have evolved to live in some of the harshest
environments possible. By losing their ability to fly they can swim and
dive to depths people can only dream of. Their little legs carry them for
miles across ice and snow and up extremely steep hills to get to their
breeding colonies, where they deliver relatively fresh fish to their young.
But man are they dumb. Evolution has sculpted their bodies to fit their
needs, but it definitely skipped a step moulding whats inside those goofy
little heads. As much as I try to ignore it, the fact remains, they are
still just stupid birds (sorry birders, I'm trying, I really am).

Penguins seem to have about 3 driving forces. Eat, collect rocks for the
nest, and sit on eggs. Notice I dont say produce young or reproduce,
because may of them fail at that little step. There are nests where the
eggs have been laid directly on a sharp rock and cracked. Nests where the
parents sitting on the egg in the snow have melted the snow down to where
the bird can barely see out of its little hole and the eggs are starting to
float away under the snow around it. Sometimes they try to steal each
others eggs, but less as a parental instinct and more because they think
it would look good with the rocks they have adorned their divot in the snow
with. Which comes to another interesting/ funny/ kind of sad behavior of
the penguin. Plenty of people have heard oh the male brings a female a
pebble and if she likes it, they bond, and mate, and raise offspring blah
blah blah. Maybe I just watched Good Luck Chuck too many times (mostly for
Jessica Alba, lets be honest). I dont actually know if thats true, but what
I do know is they incessantly collect rocks to make their nests out of. Its
kind of cute, and it gives truer meaning to the term "penguin mines" that
we call the northern tip of Cape Shirreff where all the penguin colonies
are.

That being said, they arent all stoic birds tirelessly collecting rocks to
protect their young and impress their mates. A good number of birds have
figured out, why walk all the way over there and search for just the right
pebble when I can just sit here and wait for my neighbor to not look and
steal his. It happens almost constantly. The work I was helping with was to
weigh male-female pairs and their first egg laid. This involved removing
birds (very temporarily) from their nests. Usually we tried to only remove
one bird at a time and give them a chance to have the mate there to take
over nest guarding duties, aka sitting on a rock stuffed inside a blue
latex glove that we used as a dummy for their white round egg... However,
despite our best efforts, there was inevitably some times where neither
bird was on its nest. Fittingly, we were doing this work on Black Friday,
because it became a mad dash to raid and loot the empty nest. Sometimes
with up to 4 or 5 birds standing around picking the best rocks (including,
at times, the one in the latex glove). At one point, a male we had just
released back to his nest was standing in his own nest, stealing pebbles,
then looking around trying to find his nest. His instinct to steal rocks
temporarily overpowered his instinct to sit on any egg-ish shaped object IN
HIS NEST. Silly birds. Its also pretty entertaining releasing them after
you are done working them up because they are flailing and slapping and
biting (naturally), but if you hold them above their nest and their egg for
about 10 seconds, they eventually see the egg and instinct kicks in and
they just calm down, waddle over, do their little mate head bobbing dance
(occasionally they do this to the egg even without their mate there), and
sit down. And its not like a oh they gave me back my egg, thank goodness,
everything is ok, I'm going to calm down. No. Its a ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK
ooo look an egg. Or at least some pebbles to steal.

Ok enough about penguins (I knew this wouldn't be quick).

In other news, I also held my first fur seal pup today (saturday). They
continue to be some of the cutest animals I have ever seen or worked with.
They have little bug eyes and kind of raccoony faces, with ultra soft fur,
and flippers they still haven't quite learned how to use yet. When you pick
them up, they often just keep waving those flippers around and look like
they are trying to take off out of your arms. The one I held was the
sweetest one of the day. It was only about a day and a half old. I think it
hadn't quite learned how to bite yet, so it kind of just hung out in our
arms. The first pup we caught today (we worked on 4 mom-pup pairs) was a
bit of a devil and did its tiny growl and tried to bite a lot, but after
about 5 minutes it got tired and fell asleep in McKenzie's arms. Could be
worse. Usually during these captures we get help from the penguin
biologists (McKenzie and Tony), who work on the pup as we work on the mom.
We recovered 4 GLS tags (see earlier posts) and 2 time-depth recorders,
which I am excited to see the data from. The plan is to recover another TDR
tomorrow. So far we have gotten 3 TDRS back and only lost one, which is
pretty good numbers considering they were deployed (epoxied onto the seals'
backs) in March.

Now I really am going to end it. Hopefully everyone had a good
Thanksgiving. I'm sorry I couldnt say it to each of you individually. We
are finally getting some nicer weather (it was 1C/~33F today!). The problem
now is the snow is starting to melt so walking around SUCKS. You sink to
your knees in places and just have to keep going. I did have some fun
skiing and am getting to the point where I can kind of turn going down
hills, so thats good. And just to be clear, we use telemark skis so its
harder than you might think!

K now I'm really done.

I need dinner ideas! Send some recipes, or leave them in the comments below
if you can figure out how to do so.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

We are preppring 2 (smallish) turkeys down here to cook in our brand new
smoker. There will also be mashed potatos, green beans with panchetta
(since there was some confusion and we got that instead of bacon), pecan
pie, pumpkin pie, pisco sours (drinks native to peru and chile), and I'm
sure lots more food. Our resident chilean also is making sopapillas
(spelling?). Not sure what they are exactly but I'm sure a few of you
might...

We did our second capture the other day, this time on a female with a pup.
It was pretty exciting and the pup was freakin adorable. It was large, but
still only weighed about 7kg (maybe 16 lbs). Somehow those little guys
withstand subfreezing temperatures with gale force winds. We recovered
whats called a GLS tag. I want to say GLS stands for Global Location Sensor
or something like that. I feel like I have already mentioned
these, but basically, its this tiny tag that is smaller than a die. We can
clip it onto a flipper (for penguins they attach it to their leg) and the
sensor calculates sunrise and sunset each day and uses that to calculate
approximate lat/long of the animal. Even with how small they are, they can
work for over a year. The only tricky part is you have to get them back,
but with animals like fur seals and penguins that come back to the same
area year after year, its not too hard. They are also relatively cheap, so
these tags are awesome tools that provide a ton of data with relative easy
for relatively cheap.

In other news, wednesday finally showed a break in some extremely bad
weather we had been having for a couple days. Monday we actually called an
official storm day because it was consistently blowing over 40 mph with
gusts up to 59 (highest I saw at least). Tuesday wasn't much better, but it
was only in the 30s with gusts to the 40s. 40 is our official "danger"
cutoff, though I will tell you the difference between 39mph and 41mph is
pretty minimal...

Because of the nice weather we had an explosion of female fur seals and
pups showing up. One of my survey beaches went from having about 7 females
to having closer to 15, now with at least 7 pups and there will probably be
more when I go back out today to check on them all. Median pupping is
usually around Dec 7, so we expect to get a lot more in the next couple
weeks. This will keep us very busy catching animals. Oh I also learned how
to milk a female fur seal yesterday! We take a small milk sample to test
for persistant organic pollutants and plastics, as well as to see fat
content and other things. These are very important to see not only the
health of the seal, but to analyze what she is passing on to her pup.

Ok thats it for now, more to follow soon. We have a busy day of cooking and
doing dishes ahead of us here.

Happy Thanksgiving, enjoy the food and family around you, or at least make
the best of wherever you are.

The Puppies Are Coming!

So after our first fur seal pup was born last week (earlier than usual), we
have had a bit of a lull in births. It is actually a good thing probably,
since the weather has been less than pleasant. Tonight (friday night) is
probably the nicest it has been all week at 31F with only 6mph winds and no
snow coming down. It did snow off and on all day, but with less wind (less
being very relative, it was only in the teens and low 20s mph) it is not
too bad to deal with at this point. I have been adjusting to the cold and
can at least run out to pee or get food from the supply hut in just a long
sleeve shirt if needed, though much longer and it does still get pretty
cold...

Anyway, back to the pups. Our first one that was born just over a week ago
we actually though did not make it through the storms. We had not seen it
with its mother in several days, which were during the worst of the
blizzard. HOWEVER, just yesterday Kevin (another one of the pinniped people
here) found the pup, still alive, down the beach a little ways cuddling
with a block of ice. He returned the pup to its mom and they immediately
reunited, calling to each other, and rubbing and what not. We walked by
about an hour later and the little girls belly looked ready to pop it was
so full of milk. She probably had not eaten in several days.

I guess this brings up a little bit of a controversy when you live and work
in a place like this. Most people probably would not question the story I
have just told you, but some might, biologists especially. By returning the
pup to its mom Kevin directly changed the outcome of that animals life.
Typically biologists are supposed to remain at a distance from the things
they study. It can be extremely challenging at times, especially when their
subjects are so damn cute. There are people that would argue we should have
let nature take its course and let the pup die. In many ways they might be
right. Natural selection can be cruel, but it tends to favor those most
suited for the current environment. You could argue that, since this female
gave birth so early, her pup was subjected to the storm that other pups
avoided by being born late. If this pup survives, it may tend to give birth
earlier than other females, thus creating a positive feedback that may or
may not be beneficial to the species. At least that is usually the
arguement people make. Just like how saving a sick animal can weaken a
population as a whole and potentially add diseases to the group that
otherwise would have been weeded out.

That being said, when you are faced with a moral dilemna like that, it is
near impossible to say no, especially in a place like this. I dont
think have talked too much about the fur seals themselves we are studying
here so far. This island was recolonized by fur seals I believe in the 50s
or 60s. Their numbers had been driven way down by humans hunting them for
fur, meat, and over competition for food and whatever else people blame
animals for. They reached a peak abundance here in 2002 and 2003 when the
Cape was crawling with them. However, since then we have seen a decrease of
about 10% each year and it continues to get worse. Leopard seal populations
responded to the increase in fur seals (among several factors probably) and
are the main cause of death of these pups. Each year, the researchers here
will be subject to watching 60-90% of the pups they observe born and raised
die here before they ever go for their first foraging trip. It is the harsh
reality of the natural world and this is a place where fur seals are losing
the battle. It is the reason that penguins march by our camp everyday,
trekking probably over a mile, maybe more, instead of swimming around the
shallow bays and coves to get to their colonies from their hunting grounds.
Around here, leopard seals rule supreme.

So again, I will say I stand behind moving the pup and I would have done it
myself if I were there. We are here to study this group of animals, but I
think we are all hoping it recovers and survives. The pup was not sick or
weak, it got separated from its mother during a heavy storm. It may have
even found its way back eventually as the weather got nicer and calls could
be heard further away. And while I do not want to alter the breeding
behavior of animals here, climate change is in full effect here. Krill
populaitons have moved and gotten smaller (mostly the krill themselves are
smaller), peak pupping time actually has been getting earlier and earlier
for the fur seals. Contrary to most places in the world, Antarctica has
actually been getting colder these last couple years, but it doesnt mean
that the global changes will not directly affect the animals. So maybe its
good to have a few outliers, because if things do change suddenly (sudden
on an evolutionary scale), it is usually these outliers that become the
last hope of a species. If every single salmon returned to the stream it
was born in, or every sea turtle to the beach it hatched on, salmon and
turtles could never colonize new streams and beaches. If you put a damn on
that river or a hotel on the beach, you could wipe out a species. There is
a far greater than not chance that pup will not survive to its first
birthday, I say giving it a little boost early on is not the worst thing in
the world.

On a happier note, the weather seems to be lessening up a little and with
it more females have begun arriving and pupping. I now have 2 pups on my
beaches and was actually informed another was born after I had completed my
surveys. These tiny little things look like kittens with flippers and have
an adorable little trilly purr call back and forth with their mothers.
Pretty soon the beaches will be littered with them and then the real work
for us begins. We may not be saving every single one, but hopefully our
work here informs people on what is happening to their population and
allows managers to make decesions that will one day protect this species
here, and throughout the Antarctic.

Quick Updates

First off, my computer still seems to be dead. Sad. RIP little macbook.

In warmer news, we are currently in day 2 of a bit of a blizzard/ storm
that has engulfed us pretty hard. I use the term "warmer news" because
maybe it will make you all feel warmer. I am, in fact, quite cold. It could
be worse, our cabin is pretty well insulated and the little heater keeps in
usually in the upper 50s most of the day. As I write this though, its 11am
and is currently 24F outside with 33+mph winds. When you combine those, the
windchill is down to -14F (that -24C for any non-Americans out there).
Thats cold, especially when the wind plays such a large part in it. Just
bitter cold is one thing- jackets, gloves, hats can help with that- but the
wind just finds its way into every unprotected nook and cranny on your
body.

To be honest, I was actually just fine outside from the next down, other
than maybe my fingertips and the occasional gust that finds its way down
your neckline. The problem is usually your face. While doing my rounds this
morning, I had on a beanie, goggles, and a relatively thin facemask (a
Buff for anyone interested). Having a facemask is a huge asset when the
wind kicks up, even a thin one will protect your skin from the worst
effects. The problem with them, however, is they trap moisture from your
breath. While normally this just provides an uncomfortable warm, sticky
feeling, with wind and cold like this, it can actually start to freeze
against your face. Its days like this that I am happy I have a bit of
facial hair to help provide a buffer, though I may have pulled a couple
beard hairs out by accident that had frozen to my facemask on my walk
back...

Another joy/ character building life experience blah blah blah that we have
been dealing with here is the constant build up of snow. Once again, I do
have a new respect for people who live in snowy climates. You definitely
learn a lesson in futility when you are shovelling a path and either A)
everytime you toss a shovelful of snow aside, the wind brings half of it
right back on top of you or B) You do manage to shovel out a walkway, only
to return 15 minutes later to find it covered in a fresh layer of snow...

It has been snowing a lot, but I also shouldn't give the impression we get
FEET of snow everyday. We have had some good, deep powder but a lot of it
is just a reorganization of the snow that is already here. The way the
cabin is set up, we get little wind tunnels that funnel any and all
available snow to places like, right outside our back door. This means that
most mornings, whether it has snowed hard or not, you must step over a
small wall built up against the back door that can be anywhere from 1-3'
high. Also, speaking of digging out paths and doorways, many of you have
probably dug out a car or driveway. I have mentioned this before and I
respect that. But I would ask you this, how many of you dug out your
toilet? How about dug out your toilet multiple times a day? Not to mention
your toilet is a terrible smelling 4 pieces of plywood with a room on it
that can get several inches of snow inside if you leave any of the air
vents open (keeping them closed of course makes it smell even worse). Its
like a portapotty without the blue chemicals that has been left inside a
walk in freezer and you know that one of these days it will get full and it
will be your job to empty it by hand into the ocean, when you can only hope
that the winds have shifted and are no longer blowing everything straight
in your face... Character. Or something.

So enjoy whatever weather you might have. If your car seat is cold or there
is snow on your walk to work, or the guy next to you on the bus/subway
smells bad, just remember, at least you didnt have to walk through the snow
and wind just to pee. If you woke up in the middle of the night and had to
pee, it didn't take you 5 minutes to don full foul weather gear before
venturing into the cold. And you thought your toilet seat was cold... HA.

-Freezing our buns off in Antarctica (but really I'm just being dramatic)

Good and bad news

Hello again,
As the title says I have lots of good news and a little bad news. The bad
news first- my computer hard drive may have just crashed in what I assume
is an irreparable manner. It has been reduced to a flashing folder icon
with a question mark in it. It kind of has a hint of mocking to it, like
shouldn't there be a folder or something here? You tell me computer, you
messed yourself up, you died, you tell me whats wrong. As I have said many
times when my internet (particularly in Humboldt) would die or other piece
of technology die- We can put a remote control car on Mars or put a man on
the moon (50 years ago) but we can't get a damn steady internet connection
(or now, a computer that works for more than a few years). Seriously
silicon valley, instead of making tinier and tinier chips so my computer
can weigh less than the paper its replacing, how about you make a computer
that lasts as long as my car at least (and yes I realize it is not
profitable to make things that actually last and you therefore design
technology to fail over time).

Rant over, the downside is this makes it more difficult for me to write
long, well-thought posts. I had been taking to writing them from the
privacy of my bunk at night when I could take the time to try to make them
seem witty or intelligent without actually saying anything, you know, the
fox news approach. However, now I will have to resort to just sitting at
the communal computer and writing whatever pops into my head (the fox news
field reporter approach).

So on to the good news:
We had our first fur seal pup of the season born a few days ago! She is
super cute and super tiny. I had been told they were small but had not
realized just how small that is. It looks like a small cat with flippers
and a weirdly shaped head. The poor little thing is currently sitting on a
beach, hopefully tucked VERY close to mom because it is about 26F outside
with winds reaching 35 mph. Somehow these little things survive this frigid
cold, only more often than not to succumb to the cold bite of Jack Leopard
Seal (instead of Jack Frost...). Either way, she is here and hopefully it
means we will be getting lots more pups soon. This pup actually arrived
very early considering we only have one other female on the beaches and she
isnt even pregnant, but still. Of course, once the others do arrive, my day
will get a whole lot busier.

We usually work on pups when they are only 1-3 days old. We like to mark
some individuals and measure how big they are before their mom takes her
first trip back to sea to feed, leaving the little one alone on the beach.
It takes a little teachwork and coordination to distract both mom and
whichever bull holds the territory she is in to swoop up the pup quickly,
but I guess we will get very good at it and the people I am working with
have years of experience. We do work fast with minimal disturbance to the
animals and mom and pup are reunited quickly with no lasting effects (mom
doesnt reject her baby if it smells funny or anything weird like that).
Many of the animals on our study beaches are so used to our presence anyway
that they barely even lift their head when we walk by and I am told that
even many of the territorial males have learned that if we catch one of
their ladies, we always bring them back.

We also had our first chinstrap penguin egg laid today. I haven't seen it
myself but I am told there will be many more soon. I will get to work with
the penguins a lot in January when the chicks are hatching. Until then, I
am holding on to my child-like innocence that penguins, unlike every other
bird ever, are gentle and loving and will come hang out with me if given
enough time to get used to my affections. If Youtube has taught me
anything, its that this is exactly the case ALWAYS. Unfortunately, the
naysayer "penguin biologists" seem to think that penguins are kind of
jerks. Evolution has given them extremely strong wings. While you might
think its to allow them to, I dunno, swim or fish or balance or survive in
some way, you would be wrong. Their wings are strong so they can slap the
hell out of each other all day long, as well as any human who might try to
get too close. Again, I have not witnessed this myself so I still regard it
as hearsay, but APPARENTLY its not uncommon for penguins to slap
their rivals, slap their mates, slap chick (particularly OTHER birds'
chicks), slap people, slap the ground, slap themselves... basically just
slap anything they can. We have one penguin here who is known by the
penguineros (penguin biologists) because he is particularly easy to spot.
In most penguin colonies, the birds are spaced maybe a foot or two apart.
They get into tussles, slap, bite, and sometimes it even leaves one or both
birds bloody from the battle, but they move on. This one bird has a halo
around him of several feet. No birds hangout inside that halo because he
will attack them. He is a man alone on an island (that he created)
surrounded by peers. He rarely has a mate, probably serves him right.

In other news, we had a crab-eater seal briefly stop by today (sunday) and
hang out for a little while outside our camp. He didn't mind me crawling
right up to him on my belly to snap some close up photos (its these photos
I was sorting when my computer died, luckily I had not deleted some of my
photos from here off the camera. Many are gone though...). We have also
continued to see weddell and elephant seals around the island. Not much by
way of leopard seals since that one young male, but they will show up in
bunches as more baby fur seals pop out.

Thats it for now. I made a well received homemade mac n cheese (courtesy of
my mom) for dinner the other night. Sidenote for anyone cooking for 6
hungry field biologists- cute the number of servings a recipe says it
produces in half at least. We polished off 1 lb of pasta with nearly 2 lbs
of cheese, brocolli, panchetta, and a side salad with ease. Luckily I had
also made some of my mom's famous chocolate chip cookies (with dough to
pick at over the next couple days) to solidify everyone for the night.


If anyone wants to get in touch with me, please leave a comment and I will
try to make sure my information gets passed your way (email here is very
restricted so I do not want to just broadcast it out just yet).

Thanks for reading, hope everyone stays warm and dry and appreciates the
beauty and power (for better or for worse) of the computer you are reading
this on...

Showers and Flurries

Mark your calendars (retrospectively), Wiley has officially taken his first
shower in Antarctica. I changed my underwear too for all of you who I know
were very concerned...

That's right, on Monday Nov 10 I took a shower. I believe Oct 30th was my
last shower before that. Its not good when you have trouble remembering you
last shower. Our shower system here actually isn't too bad. It is indoors,
a real shower with a curtain and everything. You just have to heat snow,
fill a 5 gallon bucket, walk outside through the snow to get to the shower
room, place a hose in that bucket that connects to a small pump, step in
the shower, flip on the pump, enjoy those first few bone chilling seconds
where the left over water from the previous shower that is now at near
freezing temperatures sputters at you like a series of icy sneezes, then
finally get your few minutes of warm water. Of course, 5 gallons goes
pretty damn quick, so you have to turn off the pump as you soap up if you
want to have any moments to enjoy the warmth. Otherwise its like a race to
the finish- Wiley vs. the shampoo. There can only be one victor. Luckily I
finished with a few moments to just sit and enjoy my not quite hot enough
water- its also a fine art to get just the right water temperature by
mixing near boiling and freezing cold water in a bucket. Its these little
skills you learn over time I guess. This is how old people built character
right? Beats showering outside at least.

Speaking of outside, the weather has really been hit or miss the last
couple days. Sunday was amazing and warm. Tuesday was similar. In between
Antarctica skipped a beat and decided to be cold, windy, and snow. Right as
I was getting over my stage fright of peeing outside in the snow while
penguins watched, the weather forces me to pee in the outhouse. No matter,
when the sun came back out, so did I and the penguins could get back to
their judgemental stares instead of just getting half buried in snow
(that's actually not a joke, many at the breeding colonies were actually up
their chubby little waists in snow. They become like lawn gnomes in a black
and white film with hats that have fallen over their faces. Or something
like thiat...).

When I took a journalism class in college, one of the things they taught us
was that paragraphs shouldn't be more than a few sentences long to keep
readers interest and not seem too daunting or something. If you have made
it this far, you have now read two unnecessarily long paragraphs about me
showering and me peeing. You're welcome.

In more scientific news, we set up 2 of our telemetry receivers on two of
the hilltops around the Cape today. One of these stations automatically
scans through a series of tag frequencies and records who is there, much
like I did for half of my masters. The other station is linked directly
into the project leader's room here at camp (also lovingly know as the Old
Fart's room). The tags have not gone out yet, but as animals start to show
up, we can put these VHF tags on them to see when they come and go and how
long they are gone for.

We also found a young male leopard seal today. We tried to put a tag on it,
but it was too awake and did not appreciate our attempts to get close. The
usual technique is wait for the seal to fall asleep, creep up behind it,
grab a flipper, throw a tag in, and run. It's a lot like your first kiss
where the girl looks at you and you pretend you aren't even looking at her,
but for some reason you keep drifting toward here, then suddenly it all
happens and all you can do is run away snickering. Except this time the
girl might literally rip your throat out if she had the chance. (I was
going to go with a stealing money from your dad's wallet after he has
fallen asleep on the couch analogy, but since I have obviously never done
such a thing, I went with the kissing. But kissing is also gross and should
only be done by professionals).

Alright that's going to wrap up this round of nonsensical rambling from me.
Oh we did get a report from the penguineros of a possible female fur seal
sighting this evening, so work might be picking up and we should be getting
puppy seals soon! I wish I could share photos because I got some GOOD ones
the other day. I guess those will just have to wait. Oh but also keep an
eye on the link below (can't remember which one exactly) that links to info
about the camp and our weekly "Sit Reps." We submit them every Monday and
they should get posted online not too long after that. They have lots of
technical info about the number of animals we've seen, camp maintenance,
etc. but they also will occasionally have photos and other things. So check
it out!

Shirreff out.

Week 1 in Review

It has been a busy week. Its weird, the days feel like they go quickly, but
the week has felt very long. I left home almost 3 weeks ago, so maybe that
is contributing to it, but its still a strange phenomenon.

Things are starting to settle in here. The female fur seals still haven't
arrived so our workday is varied, but I am starting to get the swing of the
general routine. I have gotten used to peeing outside in the snow, often in
wind that brings the real feel temp down to below zero (Fahrenheit), with
teams of penguins watching and judging me. Though I will admit the last
couple days the wind has shifted in a way that makes peeing difficult to
say the least, so I have been using the outhouse more for that. On that
note, I have gotten used to our outhouse, which I am sad to say is little
more than a small shack with a bench with two holes cut out of it- one for
peeing, one for #2. Below the bench are buckets. Yes buckets, 5 gallons,
standard buckets. Human waste is one of the only things we are allowed to
dump here and it must go into the ocean, so we cannot have any kind of deep
hole or composting toilet. Plus, digging a deep hole when the ground is
frozen is tough and decomposition requires microbes and bacteria, which do
not typically work well at freezing temperatures. So we are stuck with a
bucket.

I am also starting to get a handle on just how much food we have here. Our
camp could feed the 6 of us for many many months, possibly years. We are
never short of food. That being said, it has also been an eye opener to
have to cook for 6 people. Parents with kids, or just people who entertain
a lot, I have a new respect for you because its crazy how much food and
time it takes to feed 6 hungry people. I made a stir-fry last night and
almost ran out of room in the giant wok just trying to mix it all together.
There will be days in January when the Chilean camp is full also and we
often have them over for dinner, which could mean cooking for up to 12
people. That should be interesting.

On Saturday I completed my first hike around the entire cape. We do weekly
phocid (again that's the true seals- weddell, leopard, crabeater, elephant)
to count all the seals on the cape. There weren't many out there since it
is still early in the season, but we did see more crabeater seals than they
ever have at this time of year. If anyone is interested in this kind of
thing, I highly recommend looking up what crabeater seal teeth look like
because they are really cool and crazy looking (they mostly eat krill, not
crabs from my understanding). Normally we divide and conquer the peninsula,
but since two of us are new here, the experienced pinniped technician
(that's our job title) took us around to show us the beaches and where
seals hide and what not. Remembering all the beach names and where they
start and end is challenging. Every little curve in the coastline or rocky
point or hilltop has its own name. Its like driving down Hwy 1 in
California and trying to name every curve in the road (in Spanish) for
several miles. Plus then the tide changes, or snow shifts, and it all looks
different. That being said, I am picking up the important ones pretty
quickly. My specific study beaches will likely be Chungungo ("sea otter")
and Cachorros (cant remember what it means...).

In other news, we tagged a few elephant seal pups the other day. As a
disclaimer, and I will likely say this a lot, everything we do here has
been highly scrutinized for safety, necessity, and effectiveness. We can
barely leave camp without a series of permits, let alone approach or touch
an animal. Most of the work we do here is non-invasive. Tagging involves
just clipping a tag onto the flipper of an animal and is little more than
piercing an ear. Plus these animals have evolved in a world where they are
constantly being bitten, scraped, sat on by other seals, etc so they have
very high pain tolerances and heal remarkably quickly. OK so that being
said, we tagged some elephant seal weaners. These ellies are only about a
month to a month and a half old but already can weigh several hundred
pounds, which makes subduing them (manually) very interesting and frankly
kind of fun. It becomes a rodeo as you pounce on their back with a small
net and try to keep them still while other people measure them and then tag
them. The seals are used to having other pups, which are much larger than
me, climbing all over them so they eventually kind of calm down and it
causes no harm to them, but they can definitely take you for a ride the
first few seconds. They are fat enough that its rare that you are able to
get both knees on the ground as you straddle them. One of our penguin
techs, Tony, is only about 5'6" and weighs about 115 lbs. He was dragged a
good 10-15 feet before subduing his pup (with a little help from the rest
of us). I wish I had video taped it because watching a little ball of fat
(sometimes their eyes almost get covered in fat rolls when then tuck their
head in) drag around Tony was one of the funnier sights I have seen so far.

During our circumambulation of the cape I also got my first full taste of
the penguin colonies at the north end of the peninsula. There are hundreds
of gentoo and chinstrap penguins (oh we also saw a lone Adelie penguin
outside the cabin the other day!) that have come to prepare for the
breeding season. They are generally smart enough to wait until the snow
melts before laying eggs. The penguineros (penguin techs) call it the
penguin mines and I can see why. They have to work their way through all
the birds looking for any with numbered bands on their wings. Several birds
were also outfitted with GLS tags, which are barely larger than a jelly
bean, but can use sunrise and sunset times, as well as angle of the sun and
a bunch of other crazy (and proprietary) measurements to tell you exactly
where the bird was for upwards of a year. All in that tiny package small
enough to attach to a penguin without causing any change in its ability to
swim or walk. Crazy.

I may have said this before, but I will say it again. There are a lot of
places that, before you visit, you look at postcards and photos and videos
and form an image of what that place will be like before you go.
Unfortunately, more often than not, those places do not actually look like
what you expected. That amazing tropical beach with palm trees and
sprawling red, orange, pink sunsets also has a 15 story hotel and strip
club next to it or something like that. Well so far Antarctica is not one
of those places. It has proven to be almost exactly what I expected. Jagged
rock outcroppings, snow covered everything, beaches with seals resting
everywhere, hundreds of birds flying overhead, penguins pretty much
everywhere you go, waves churned up by the winds and currents, and just a
general grey, overcast, windy climate. Its beautiful and kind of haunting
at the same time. You start reading or hearing stories about people who
have had to survive here with little to no resources and realize just how
amazing and difficult that is. If anyone is interested in those kinds of
stories (and a precaution, they aren't always pretty) there are several
books about Shackelton (I just started reading South) and one called Alone
on the Ice about the Australian explorer Mawson.

Ok I realize that wasn't really a week in review, more just a continuation
of thoughts and occurrences. The week has been good. I have made risotto
and stir-fry on my cooking days. Plans for mac n cheese and pizza in the
future. If anyone wants to share recipes, feel free to leave them in the
comments below. We have pretty much any ingredients and cooking tools you
could think of. You may need to sign in with a Google account to comment,
just a heads up. Thanks for the support from everyone so far. Its going to
be a long few months, but I think it will be good.

Snow, snow, and more snow...

Mid Week Updates:
The last few days have been nicely calm, at least work-wise. I have mostly
continued to help set up camp, shovel snow, chip away ice, unpack totes,
etc. Since its still only bull fur seals on the beaches staking out the
best spits of frozen beach or the best snow drifts, our work is pretty
light. Today we did hike over to the south western side of the cape to
scout for any breeding elephant seals, as well as any other kinds of
phocids that might be out there. (Quick terminology note- fur seals are
otariids, or "eared seals" aka sea lions. All "true seals" like weddell,
elephant, leopard, harbor, etc seals are phocids) Most of our work is with
fur seals, but we also do a Cape-wide phocid census (counting totals of
each species) once a week and we tag as many pups as possible to track them
opportunistically as they grow up. While over there, which I believe was
called Playa Santelmo or something similar... I should look it up... We
did in fact find one elephant seal mom with a pup that had probably been
born only hours before we arrived. There were also two male elephant seals
there, one of which was still relatively young, but still quite large as
far as fat slugs of animals go. With the ellies (elephant seals) on this
one little spit were also a couple weddell seals and several fur seals.
Elephant seals are some of the strangest, funniest, and most entertaining
animals ever. When they aren't making some of the most ridiculous noises
you've ever heard (I recommend youtubing it), they are doing this "silent
scream" where they have their mouth wide open and stare at you. It feels
like they are trying to yell at you while they slowly spin to track with
you or slink away slowly rolling hundreds of pounds of giggling blubber
over the snow while their little pups cackle and screech at their moms to
not leave them. Its hard not to just start laughing, even though they are
just trying to be good moms. Meanwhile, the weddell seals less than 10 feet
away couldn't care less what you are doing. They might lift their head,
maybe give you a few snorts, but are not up for the effort of changing
positions to keep you in sight or out of arms reach. I did watch one pee
today, but I don't think it was in response to my standing next to it, it
just had to go.

Yesterday we also hiked to a beach just south of us called Media Luna
("Half Moon") where the other group of ellies hangs out- the ones we have
visited a few times over the last week. We did a little work with them and
got lots of growls, screeches, and what sounds like the females just
belching at you for minutes on end. I almost ran home, grabbed a Coke, came
back, chugged it, and belched right back. Think of me as the seal
whisperer, but with belching. And not knowning what I am saying... On the
way home we saw a crabeater seal with scars from a leopard seal attack that
were pretty gnarly. The seal seemed to be ok though, so that's good.
Apparently its rare to see crabeaters around here, even though they are
very abundant in the Antarctic. I'm glad I've gotten to see a few so far,
including a pup that was clearly lost and hanging out on one of our fur
seal beaches.

The animals here never cease to amaze me with how accepting they are of our
presence. Arguably, most in this area have become pretty habituated to us
walking amongst them, but still. Most of the phocids you could actually
walk up and touch before they even noticed you are there. The fur seals are
a little more aware, but even then they often don't wake up until you are
walking right by them. The most cautious tend to be the penguins, but they
have this hilarious little move they do. I don't know if their eye sight
isn't great or if they just are really hopeful of friends, but as you walk
along they will often come waddling towards you. I think they believe you
are another penguin and they want to come check you out. But then they get
within about 15-20 feet (depending on the lighting), realize that you are
in fact not a 6' penguin, and do this very skeptical stare where they turn
sideways to get a better look at you. Soon after that you see them make the
final decision that you are indeed not what they had hoped and they quickly
go waddling away as quick as their little legs will carry them. It is even
better when they are on a hill, in which case they often start hopping with
both legs to get away quicker. And in case you were wondering, they do
slide on their bellies, but not as much as I expected. It still takes a
fair amount of effort to slide through powdery snow.

A couple other little notes about where I am because I have heard some
confusion still... I am at an American field camp on Livingston Island in
the South Shetland Islands just northwest of the Antarctic Peninsula.
Basically if you drew a line straight south from the tip of South America,
the first land you hit would be right around where I am. Also of note, I am
not (somewhat disappointingly) inside the Antarctic circle, nor will I get
the full 24 hours of sunlight at any point during my time here. It is
actually very similar to when I was in Alaska, where it doesn't necessarily
get dark at night, but its not sunny either. We might see some stars our
last week or two here, otherwise its pretty rare (weather doesn't help). If
you want to learn more, you can check out some of the links at the bottom
of this page, or else there is a Wikipedia page on the Cape Shirreff.
Google Maps also knows where Livingston Island is. If you want to follow
weather, not all weather websites will have my exact location, but I think
accuweather might. Weather.com has base Arturo Pratt, which is a Chilean
base not too far away, but you can probably find a closer one if you work
at it.

Made it!

So I have officially arrived in Antarctica. The first 4 hours here were
amazing- sunny, light breeze, penguins watching us offload gear, a fur seal
hanging out on the beach, and a leopard seal apparently cruising the
shoreline (I didn't see the leopard seal but was told it was there). The
nice weather encouraged other people on the ship to come help us move gear,
which was a huge help. However, that weather quickly changed and went to
typical Antarctica.

There are a lot of places you see in magazines or on postcards that you get
to and realize are completely different from what you expected. This is not
one of them. There are mountains and valleys covered in snow. Most days
everything is some sort of shade of grey. The wind has been averaging in
the high 20s to mid 30s mph. Its also cold. Not unbelievably cold, but
cold, and the wind does not help. Right now at 10:30am it is actually
fairly sunny, but its 31F and feels like -2F with the wind chill.

At the same time, its beautiful. When you get around the snow belting you
in the face, you realize this really is a crazy, amazing place. For one
thing, we get a little train of gentoo and chinstrap penguins marching by
our camp every afternoon on their way back to their breeding colonies from
their foraging grounds. They have made the decision to hike several miles
in the snow rather than swim through leopard seal territory. Rough break
for them, but for me I get my own little march of the penguins everyday and
watching their little wobbly steps or them sliding on their bellies is
pretty entertaining even in the worst of weather. I even had the surprise
yesterday of opening the front door to the cabin and seeing a penguin
hiding from the wind only about 3 feet from where I stood. I think he was
about as surprised as I was. I felt bad when he eventually got scared off
by our activities and had to go face the wind and snow again.

We also did a walk two days ago to check out some elephant seal haul outs.
There were about 13 seals down there with two large males and several pups.
Anyone who doesnt know elephant seals, they are huge, squishy, and make
some ridiculous sounds. There were also a handful of fur seal males
sprinkled in along the way.

In other animal news, we also saw a couple snow petrels, which means very
little to me, but I am told that they are one of the birds that people who
pay up to $10,000 to take a cruise down this way look for and want to see.
And I saw it on my second day, so thats fun. We also had a sheathbill
(bird) come tapping on our cabin window yesterday morning at about 5am,
which was not ideal. We are going to do some scouting today or tomorrow if
the wind dies down to look for any tagged weddell seals and leopard seals,
as well as counting male fur seals along our study beaches. The female fur
seals should be showing up relatively soon. We may even try to go tag some
of the elephant seal pups.

More to come soon. We have been uber busy unpacking everything and
shovelling snow. Anyone who has ever said I am a wimp for living in
California and never having do deal with shovelling a driveway... I am
making up for it now. Everything is covered in about 4-5' of snow. We live
in the snow. The outhouse (unheated) is surrounded in snow. All you see is
snow. So my debt is paid.

Cape Shirreff over and out.