Sun and Snow

I decided tonight to take a little time and write this up as opposed to
reading and going to bed like I should. We will see how far I get since I
was up pretty late last night compiling data for some updates to my boss
and for our weekly "sit rep" (situation report).

As of Christmas day, I am the acting camp leader here at the Cape. Our
previous camp leader left on the ship and the next one doesn't come in
until early January, so I get to play the responsible one. It's a little
nerve wracking at times, but it's also a very good experience. Its rare
that they let us lowly contractors be camp leader, so a lot of eyes are on
me and, really, the whole crew. I'm sure we will do fine!

So the weather recently has been… complicated. In one day- ONE DAY- I got
decently sunburnt and had to worry about frostnip (funny name, but it's a
real thing. Its like frostbite lite). Pretty much every day for the past 4
or 5 days has had a mix of beautiful sun, blue sky, light to moderate wind,
and occasional snow flurries that leave visibility at about "I'm pretty
sure I'm walking in the right direction to make it home." On the plus side
of things, the tides have been extremely low around midday for the past
week (thank you full moon that I'm informed is somewhere up there), which
makes getting around easier because instead of sinking up to your knees in
the snow every step you take and then having to slowly walk/ wade through
the snow and slush mixture that you are pretty sure has to get better in a
few steps but actually seems to give into that belief, you can just walk in
the intertidal.

There is nothing more pathetic and disheartening than being on a nice dry
patch of land, seeing your next dry patch maybe 20 feet away, and just
watching your feet and knees disappear as you try to take as few steps as
possible to cover the great crevice-like expanse that in reality is a small
stream melting out under a couple feet of snow.

In other news, we also completed our cape-wide fur seal pup census this
weekend. Being paid to spend all day hiking around looking for baby fur
seals is not the worst job in the world by any means. That being said, it
was a little depressing because our numbers are down significantly from
last year. About 20% down. We did expect about a 10% decrease because
that's just what has been happening to the population for the past decade.
However, doubling that is a bit disheartening. Luckily though, the pups
that are here appear to be bigger overall and growing fast than in the past
2 years, which is a good sign!

Also in good news, at least for now, is that we are only just starting to
get leopard seals trickling in. That's not to say they wont show up in
greater numbers soon, but every extra day the pups get to grow bigger,
faster, and smarter might give them an extra fighting chance. If nothing
else, if the pups are bigger when they are eaten, then maybe the leopards
will only need 3 or 4 to feel full instead of 5 or 6, allowing more pups to
survive! Silver lining?

We ate lots of food for Christmas and are still working on leftovers
tonight (turkey enchiladas!). No big plans for new years really other than
staying up. Now that solstice is behind us the daylight is slipping away!
We are down to only about 20 hours now! And the dusk/dawn that is night
feels just that much darker! In reality it will be a while before we need
flashlights to walk around outside at night, but its fun to pretend like
these are "real world" problems. Despite the snow flurries this is my 4th
consecutive summer with no true winters in between (bouncing between
hemispheres has its perks).

Happy Holidays

Hi all,
I know its been a while and I apologize for that. Things have slowed down a
little here (thankfully), but we still are busy doing a variety of things.
Luckily though, it is Christmas and we will all be helping to make tons of
food (much like Thanksgiving), swapping little gifts, and working only a
half day or two.

We actually have the ship due to arrive on Christmas Day to pick up our
current camp leader and take him back to Punta Arenas, so we are doing our
Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve. Our next camp leader comes in in
early January with the resupply ship (same ship but its on its way out of
the Antarctic now and has to go pick up our fresh food and everything). In
the interim, I will actually be acting camp leader, which is a little
terrifying but also a really great resume builder/ experience for me. I'm
still debating whether to call myself camp leader or expedition leader...
hmm...

In other news the weather had been amazing for a couple days with temps all
the way up into the 40s! It was actually too hot and I was overheating, but
in a good way. Plus there was sun and little wind and playful puppies-
doesn't get much better than that. Unfortunately tonight it decided to
change that. The forecast predicted about 5 mph out of the east. It is
currently blowing 45 with some gusts in the high 50s. So you were close
forecast, but not quite there. We will see what tomorrow brings. Hopefully
it does not impact the boat schedule and Doug is able to get out fine.

Our fresh food is pretty much down to the hardiest of vegetables. We have
lots of canned and frozen goods though so we will persevere. I made a huge
batch of mac n cheese the other night that we ate the following night as
well and still have some left over for lunches. Portion control is not my
speciality.

The fur seal pups are getting bigger and just starting to really become
playful and curious. I think I have the more stubborn defensive beaches
unfortunately where pups are less likely to approach you, but I'm working
on winning them over none-the-less. I've had a few chew on my backpack, my
skipole, my fingers, whatever they can get their little mouths on. I did
unfortunately witness our first leopard seal attack of the season, but so
far we have only really seen 1 or 2 leopards in the area so the pups have
been safe.

Penguin chicks are just starting to hatch out, which will lead to some
hilarity out in the penguin mines. Fuzzy pears with beaks and noodle-like
flippers pretty much speaks for itself.

We still have a lot of ice around the cape in the form of various sized
icebergs. Every once in a while one will get smashed apart by the reefs and
waves and fill a beach or cove with basketball sized blocks of ice. Its
pretty amazing considering last year if we saw just ONE or TWO icebergs we
got excited. It really makes you feel like you are actually in the
Antarctic and that that is NOT normal for most people.

OK thats all for now. I hope everyone has a good holiday and gets to relax
a little. I dont know if anyone is still reading these posts really, but it
is nice to think someone is listening. And Yoshi, thank you for keeping my
mom informed of what I am doing by keeping up with this!

The photo by the way is a female young adult Weddell Seal lounging and
enjoying life on the Cape!

Full Swing

It feels like it's been a while since I updated this. In reality, it's only
been about a week. However, a lot has happened in that week. We've
officially gone from very slow with only occasional action to all action
and pretty much no slow.

As I mentioned last week, we've started perinatal captures, which really
are the heart of the pinniped program for the AMLR program (see links for
what that is if you don't know already). Our mandate is to track trip
durations and dive behavior for 30 female fur seals and to track the growth
and survival of their pups. In recent years, we have upped it to 32 females
because we lose so many pups these days we just could not get enough data
to show anything really.

These 32 captures all take place around the peak of pupping, which often is
around Dec 7-9, but this year we think is later. Apparently South Georgia
island, where a TON of fur seals breed, is also experiencing a delay. It
still means doing all these captures typically over about a 2 week span.
That's 14 days to do 32 captures, which isn't terrible in the grand scheme
of things, but when you start adding in crappy weather days, phocid and
other survey protocols, oh and just general having other things like
cooking and cleaning and showering, it means you stay very busy.

Today (Tuesday) I took my first shower since last Saturday. That's Saturday
November 28… So, officially first shower of December! I got the mixture of
boiling and ice cold water just right this time around too so it was pretty
amazing. I definitely needed it. I've been up until nearly 1am the last few
nights entering and reviewing data, prepping capture gear, and setting up
instruments (time-depth recorders) for fur seals. These days its pretty
much non-stop work from about 9am until at least 11pm, often longer. I
managed to sneak in the shower today because everyone just tried to get
moving early and worked extra fast throughout the day.

I did get to do some laundry yesterday, but really that just meant quickly
washing my long underwear tops and bottoms (we use a bucket with hot water
and a plunger type deal), rinsing them, wringing them out with our fancy
old-school clothes wringer, dumping all the left over water back in the
original bucket (now mostly a light brown color), then throwing most of my
dirty socks into said bucket and letting them soak all afternoon. I say
most because I had to make sure I would have a few dry socks to wear over
the next couple days. I'm not sure if the socks actually got "cleaned" at
all or if I just redistributed the dirt and grime, but I threw some
peppermint scented body wash in there with them and now they smell lightly
of peppermint, so I am pretty pleased about that. I will probably do a more
thorough cleaning once perinatals end. We will still be plenty busy, but it
wont be quite the same organized chaos.

And just to give you an idea of why its so busy, I'll explain the day a
little more. Everyday after breakfast we (the pinniped team) go out and do
our resights just to see who is on the beaches and who has pups. This is
part of our season-long monitoring, but also helps us decide who to capture
on any given day. After resights its usually a quick lunch and then
prepping for the captures. This year one of my goals has been to reorganize
some of the gear, particularly to make it easier for the penguin biologists
who help us by working up the pup while we work on the female (they don't
exactly suffer or complain when we ask them to spend 10 minutes working on
the pup followed by 20 minutes of playing with it and letting it nap in
their laps…). We have also been trying to assimilate more capture
information and behavior data on the females before and after we catch them
to get a better idea of how they react to gas anesthesia and just the
experience overall. This means that once we figure out who we want to go
after, there is a bit of a scramble to look up past data on those animals
and just see what we are working with. It also helps us decide who should
get the time-depth recorders or not.

When the gear has been organized and past data collected, I repack up all
the capture gear, mix bleach for marking pups, heat water for epoxy, load
up my backpack with about 60 lbs of gear and nets, and head to the site.
Once we reach the site, we scout out the target females, determine our best
line of approach, distribute jobs (there is usually one netter, one person
on the pup, and 2-3 people controlling surrounding bull fur seals to make
sure the other 2 don't get bitten), and set up the gear in the best
location available. Recently most of the beaches have been more knee-high
slush than anything, so "best" location becomes a bit relative. Capture
then commence, often with us having to relocate in between. That includes
not only moving my gear, but also moving bamboo bull poles, oxygen tanks,
slings for weighing animals, and a 50+ lbs wood box that we use to let the
females recover from anesthesia in peace.

So if that alone isn't exhausting enough, you then get to haul all the gear
home (at least leaving the boxes and poles at the beach), unpack it all,
clean it up, and set it out to dry because its inevitably going to be wet.
Oh and then you get to also restock everything you just used, which
includes pulling out more sample collecting vials, swabs, bags,
transmitters, etc. You also have to draw up more drugs, prep the next day's
instruments, oh and you now also have a pile of samples from the current
day that need to be processed and put away. Plus there's then all this data
that must be entered into various spreadsheets and the database along with
your other daily data like resights and censuses, which we do everyday on
pups and females to help determine the peak of pupping. Its not just me
doing this work of course, the other pinniped tech helps enormously, but
even then it's a lot of work. Of course every few days one of us also has
to cook dinner and do the dishes for everyone, so that just adds to the
whole process.

Overall, despite the craziness, these captures are pretty amazing. Not only
do we get tons of useful data, we also just get to be hands on and up close
with the animals. When you run your hands through fur seal fur, you
understand immediately why they were hunted so heavily. It also is a time
to test your knowledge and ability to read the animals on the beach. I've
gotten pretty good at predicting how each animal will act, but occasionally
one will surprise you. Its not always good to have a bull suddenly come
charging at you over the helplessly waved bamboo pole to try to steal the
female you are currently moving in a net, but it happens occasionally. The
second you take things for granted or get complacent, something happens to
remind you that these are wild animals. Big, wild animals with minds and
agendas of their own. If nothing else, you get to play find the asshole
bull on the beach. There's always at least one who likes to just cause
trouble.

First Fur Seal Captures

First off, since I cant remember if I wrote anything about it when it first
came out, here are some links to a video about weighing fur seal pups that
we do down here (I think all 3 links lead to the same video). There may
also be some leopard seal related videos from here around these sites as
well. I haven't seen the video, but no I am unfortunately not actually in
it (despite what my own mother thought).

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmvorNG1WIs

Blog with embedded video:
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/12/fur-seal-pups-
ferociously-cute-worth-protecting/

National Geographic video page:
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/missions/expedition-raw/151112
-sciex-exraw-seal-pups

K now that thats done... We have our first Antarctic fur seal perinatal
capture set for tomorrow morning, which will have already happened by the
time this is posted. Perinatal captures take place during the peak of
breeding when moms and pups are closely bonded on the beaches. These
captures allow us to track mom's comings and goings and correlate that to
how her individual pup is doing. We place a small transmitter on her so we
can know the exact time she leaves the beach and how long she is gone for.
Then, by comparing that time gone with how much weight the pup gains, we
can estimate essentially if it's a "good" year or a "bad" year.

Generally speaking good vs. bad years tend to relate to krill populations-
krill being small shrimp-like creatures that make up a huge amount of
biomass around the poles and are the main food source for just about
everything around here from whales to seals to birds. The year type is a
combination of krill location (how far away are they), krill abundance (how
many are there and how densely packed are they), and krill size (even if
there are lots of krill, if they are tiny it can't provide as much food…
obviously).

Unlike in California where marine mammals often suffer greatly during El
Niño years (get ready for even more sea lion strandings unfortunately), the
fur seals down here actually tend to do better in those years. Early
reports coming in are already suggesting that there are more krill in this
area than past years and that they are much bigger than usual. All that
could spell good news for the local seals.

Typically during a good year, moms may only have to leave their pups for 2
-5 days. During bad years that can be stretched to 6-9 days with some
females even leaving for close to 2 weeks! When that happens the pup is
nearly starving every time mom returns and it greatly restricts the pups
ability to really grow, especially since a huge amount of its energy
resources just go to staying warm. That being said, this does happen and
even those pups can and do make it- these animals are amazingly hardy.

In other news, I helped put up our second small wind turbine today. We are
mostly putting it up to test the system and just for fun. At the end of
last season we installed a whole new set of high power solar panels along
with a new set of lithium ion batteries the size of car batteries. We also
already had one wind turbine installed. All these features combined to
giving us an amazing amount of power. So needless to say, the second wind
turbine is maybe a little overkill, but it does help ensure we do not go
wanting for power.

For anyone wondering, we also do have a small generator we can run for
extra power. We use this to power certain appliances like a freezer (which
only actually needs to be turned on once every few days), a microwave, and
personal computer batteries. Nearly everything else is run from the battery
bank either through DC power or an inverter that converts it to 110V AC
power. While our set of electronics is maybe well reduced compared to your
house, we still get away with lights, charging computers, boot driers for
everyone, a small projector (new this year!), and the ability to grind
coffee.

Also, through the combination of a few mostly snowless days and even a
little rain, we have lost a fair amount of snow on the Cape. This is all
happening much earlier than last year, but the past three years have
actually had more snow than usual so who really knows what is going on.
There are still more icebergs than I can count parked between the shoreline
and the horizon, so that's still pretty exciting. Makes me feel like I'm
really in Antarctica!

To leave on a happy/ funny note I will just say that we are starting to get
more and more fur seal puppies and its pretty awesome. For as badass as
these little guys are- being able to survive below freezing temperatures
with windchills and snow that can drop to around -20C (-4F)- they are
basically fluff balls with noodles attached. Big, flat noodles, but noodles
nonetheless. And for their first week or two they might as well have
noodles attached because it takes a ton of effort for them to get all four
moving in the same direction, with hilarious results. Small dips in the ice
become glacial crevices that might require rope and tiny climbing harnesses
to traverse. Getting from point A to point B also requires face plants
every 2-3 steps. Its adorable, especially when they are trying to act
tough. They will growl at you or a (350+ lbs) bull then try to run away to
hide nuzzled next to mom. This would be fine if they didn't always seem to
turn to run then faceplant in the snow. It doesn't help their cause of
being taken seriously. Of course, we are still talking about basically a 12
lbs ball of fluff with big eyes and a few flat noodles attached to it
trying to be taken seriously. Not happening puppies, sorry.

Sorry for low resolution photos, but its new to even be able to send
anything out.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! The five of us down here have pretty big meal
plans shaping up already. We are going to be smoking 2 turkeys and a very
large filet of salmon (roughing it in Antarctica!). We should also have
mashed potatoes, green beans and/or Brussels sprouts, deviled eggs, pumpkin
muffins, pumpkin pie (which I'm actually not a huge fan of, sorry), gravy,
maybe some gluten free stuffing if we get around to it, and whatever else
we can mix up. Its usually a pretty good day down here and we only have to
work a half day!

These days a half day isn't really saying much since its still been fairly
slow, but that's about to change. Just today I had 5 new female fur seals
show up (up to 7 total on my beaches, 15 total on the study beaches). There
are also 3 or 4 pups on our study beaches and a few of those females looked
pregnant, so there may be more tomorrow. I also had 2 tagged females, so
our work is definitely about to kick in.

The females are a little off this year. I think the weather and ice are
making some things difficult, but its not too unusual to have them
fluctuate by a few days. Typically older females show up first, who are
often not pregnant. That being said, most females show up on almost the
same day every year, which is extremely impressive when you think about it.
They also are usually on shore for about 1 day before they give birth.
However, if the weather is really crummy, they have been known to delay
coming ashore a day or two, which therefore means consciously delaying
giving birth! It's a little crazy when you think about it…

These ladies are also extremely tied to one specific spot, referred to as
site fidelity. I think I wrote about this last year, but its another
impressive feat of theirs- often, if they are tagged, even if you can only
get one or two digits of the tag, you can tell who it is just based on
where they are when they give birth. I could probably go to the beaches I
walked last year and tell you within about 30 feet where each female would
come ashore. The downside, as a population, of having such high site
fidelity is that it makes them very slow colonizers. Like salmon returning
to their natal stream, these fur seals don't tend to stray far when it
comes to breeding. Therefore, if things like climate change continue to
really affect everything down here, they can have a hard time shifting
their habits to adapt.

Even at the cape, fur seals were completely extirpated (locally depleted)
until the 1960s by Russian fur traders. Sometime in the 60s a few seals
happened to wander off course and come back to the Cape (they do breed in a
few areas around Livingston Island). Since then they steadily climbed in
numbers until peaking around 2002 or 2003. However, over the last 13 years
there has been a fairly substantial decline in the local population. I
learned today that a beach I monitored last year and counted a max of maybe
180 pups on used to have over 500 pups on it only a decade ago. It's a
little sad, especially for the people who have been coming here for many
years who can actually see and feel the differences.

On a happier note, we had an elephant seal weaner visit camp again today.
We've had 3 or 4 hanging out around camp chewing on any dangly bits they
can find- they really like some wires hanging off an old solar panel and
any pieces of string or rope hanging from the eves. They also enjoy laying
in our small trash pile because plastic bags are warmer than snow (they
probably like the smell too with their weird ability to lay in a wallow of
their own feces). Occasionally one of these guys (or girls) drops down into
the walkways we've dug out and finds itself confused as to how to get out.
The other day one was trying to nurse off the door to our outhouse and
today that same one came right up to one of the cabin windows to look in.
We actually were able to play peek-a-boo with it for a while and it seemed
amused, or at least confused/ intrigued. We could pop our heads up and he
would look at us, then when we hid again he would lift up trying to look to
see us. Tony and I have also gotten really good at speaking weaner (Tony
especially has a way with animal language) to the point where we can often
get them to call back to us and sometimes even start coming over in our
direction thinking we might be a friend! Its pretty much impossible not to
like these big squishy balls of awkwardness.

Anyway, that's it for now. We will probably start catching fur seals in the
next couple days as more come ashore. One of the females on my beach is a
target animal based on age and not having been captured in a long time, but
she is one of only 3 females on the beach with about 15 males, so it would
not be the best time for us to try to get in there. The boys need more
distractions before we get ourselves too much in the thick of it.

Some other updates

We had our first female fur seals show up yesterday! Basically the males
get here a couple weeks early to beat each other up and establish
territories, then the females start to show up and give birth. It typically
starts as a trickle, then suddenly there are moms and pups EVERYWHERE. The
overall noise levels on the cape jump dramatically (unless you are in the
penguin colonies, which are like downtown NYC all the time except with
squalks and trills and slaps instead of buses, helicopters, and street
performers.

Also, it sounds like our SitReps have started to be posted. SitReps (or
Situation Reports for the full fancy name) are our weekly updates of
essentially what is going on on the Cape. It has info about seabirds,
pinnipeds (seals), weather, and camp life. Most likely you wont find the
numbers overly meaningful, but they can still be a fun way to keep up with
what we are doing, especially as I trail off of actually writing anything
here. It also should include a picture or two!

The link is to the right (I think), or else its
https://swfsc.noaa.gov/aerd-field/

I am also working on possibly posting a picture every once in a while. It
will be small resolution to work with our email, but it still might be fun
and I think it will still work on here through just email (in case anyone
is wondering, all this is updated through email since we still have no real
internet down here).

Thats about it for now. Again, sorry this was not that fun or exciting. Its
been a lot more of prepping gear and just making sure everything is ready
for the onslaught that is coming in the next couple weeks.

Oh we did have one fun story. I already wrote about elephant seal weaners
and just the overall ridiculousness that is them. We went out to tag some
more the other day and caught one girl who was the biggest weaner I have
ever seen. She was rounder than most of the previous ones were long. It
looked like she had eaten another weaner. There were jelly rolls folding
over flippers, which barely touched the ground without extreme rolling. The
best part, though was that she knew she was big but she also was not going
to take any sh*t from us lightly. Often when animals get big like that they
kind of adopt a "I'm too big to be messed with" attitude and actually prove
to be much easier to work with overall. Not this girl. No Clertha/ Big
Bertha decided she would make it as difficult as possible for us to do
anything. I was the main wrangler, so my primary job was to control her
head and body. Anyone who has met me knows I'm not huge but I'm not exactly
a small person either. I have about 200 lbs to throw around when needed.
Well she knew that and just didnt care. She was the first weaner (really
the first animal I've ever worked with/ restrained) that just straight
picked me up and took me for a ride. She had both my knees off the ground
and carried me down the beach while trying to toss me off every which way.
Eventually I calmed her down, but then when Doug and Whitney (2 other seal
biologists here) went to touch her flippers, she flipped out again. They
each tried to restrain her hind end while I worked on the front and they
both got tossed like, well, a cowboy on a bucking bronco. In the end all 3
of us had to pile on her to slow her down again. Of course when you only
have 3 people, that makes then working on her difficult because everyone is
in a dogpile. So the pile did break up eventually, we got the work done we
needed to do, and we let her go as good as new. The stare she gave us at
the end though really said it all. There was no fear in her eyes, it didnt
even look like she was angry at her surprise awakening. To me it was more
like, ya you want to go again? Bring it on... humans. I like her.

We've seen her a few times since and she continues to show no fear. While
the other weaners around her will often start to run (bounce) away as we
walk up, which is normal whether you've captured them already or not, she
will stand her ground and just continue to scratch her belly by slowly
wriggling back and forth in place because I'm pretty sure her flippers
couldnt reach.

Quick Updates

Sorry I have not had time to write a full real update. The work has been
steadily increasing, though its certainly nowhere near full capacity yet
(we are probably working more like 6-8 hours instead of 10-12...).

The wind has been howling the last day or two. We had gusts up to 58 mph,
which is probably an underestimate since that anemometer is actually
blocked slightly from easterly winds, which happens to be the current wind
direction. Out at the bird blind by the penguin colonies the were
registering winds up to 67 mph yesterday afternoon and the winds only
increased overnight. Between that and an ever inquisitive sheathbill (bird)
deciding to peck at his reflection in every single window we have this
morning, it was a bit of a rough night for sleeping.

In other new, we have started range testing some of our VHF transmitters.
In simple terms that means we have some tags that emit a high frequency
beep that can only be heard by special receivers (its the same thing as
when you watch a nature documentary and see people with big headphones
walking through the forest with a big, multiprong antenna in their hands).
We have these handheld receivers, but we also have 2 permanent listening
stations on two of the hills around here, so we have to set those up and
calibrate them. We also try to figure out where exactly their coverage is
weakest, so we know that if we tag any animals in those areas, we may need
additional means to track their comings and going.

Otherwise its just continuing to set up and test gear, make sure we are
fully prepared for when things actually get going. We've continued to make
some good food- I made a shrimp and scallop scampi over linguini the other
night and we had a delicious group-cooked taco tuesday with some kind of
southwest style corn, sweet potato, garlic, onion, honey, and spices
filling. I will shoot for more real updates soon, but things will start to
get busy in the next week or so, so no promises.

Sorry this wasn't funny either. I try, but when I write in the morning my
brain is still working on just functioning. Also, we got word of the Paris
attacks the other day (we were a few days late). Our hearts definitely go
out to anyone connected to that area. There is never a just reason to
commit crimes like that. Sometimes its nice to check out from the world a
little down here...

Stormy Days

Quick update on this since I wrote it a couple days ago: I did shower and
it was phenomenal! It was also continued to snow, but the wind has died
down for the moment...
----------------------------------------------------------

The past few days have been slow. Work is limited by the lack of animals on
beaches and the wind has restricted even what we can do around camp. For
several hours today we had sustained winds of 30-40 mph with a few gusts in
the 50s. If you don't know what that feels like, lets just say it can knock
you off your feet.

Of course, the wind is just intensified by the snow already on the ground.
In its perennial attempts to rearrange the snow on the cape, the wind has
been making it essentially snow from the ground up, constantly spitting a
cold wet sneeze right in your face. In the time it took me to open one
door, close it behind me, then open another directly adjacent, then return
through both doors, I got essentially soaked with snow. Of course it's nice
to have a nice (relatively) warm cabin to return to, but this just makes
the snow melt and soak you even deeper.

All this is not exactly being said to gain any kind of sympathy. I
understand that growing up in coastal California I never had the joys of
shoveling a driveway or shoveling out my car (or snow days for that
matter!). And while I got a taste of that joy in college near Philadelphia,
I still was living on campus where someone else plowed the paths to class
and a dining hard was just a few slippery steps away. HOWEVER (and I'm sure
I talked about this last year, but here it is again) I seriously doubt any
of you snow dwellers had to get up every morning and shovel out your
bathroom! How about your pantry or refrigerator? Basically if I want to go
pee in the morning, I have to don a bulky jacket, gloves, hat, warm pants,
real shoes, and often glasses or goggles and go shovel out the back door,
followed by the outhouse. That or you just brave the cold in minimal
clothing, run through the night's drifts, and just pee in the snow behind
the buildings. Of course this not only is a shock to the system, but runs
the risk of the snow behind the buildings actually being a 3 foot snow berm
that you and your sandals are now knee deep in. Trust me there has been
many a morning where I've woken up early and just laid away holding it and
suffering because it just wasn't worth it yet.

In other news, since we had a lot of time on our hands, I made a pretty
awesome dinner for everyone tonight. We had chicken cordon bleu (with blue
cheese instead of swiss and Serrano ham), roasted asparagus with a homemade
hollandaise sauce, and quinoa with sautéed vegetables and balsamic vinegar.
Oh I also- surprisingly for the first time despite my love for it- made ice
cream. Cookies n cream to be exact. And Whitney, my awesome new pinniped
assistant made brownies and fresh bread because she was bored…

Next few days should bring more elephant seal weaner wrangling, setting up
some final things as the wind dies down, range testing our vhf tag
receivers, and beginning our fur seal censuses. Ooo I also plan on
showering on Thursday (so hopefully its already happened by the time this
goes up). My last shower was Monday. Of last week… We've been here about 16
days so far. I have taken 1 shower, worn 3 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of
underwear, 2 sleeping shirts and 2 work shirts, deodorant once, and have
shaved zero times. Actually fun anecdote, Whitney showered yesterday and
today she was standing next to me and I asked her what that smell was. Not
in a mean way but just in a strange way. She said it was cleanliness and
deodorant. I was clearly thrown for a loop by it all. I put on deodorant
after that and just felt weird. Sure my armpits maybe smelled slightly
better, but the shirt I was wearing still smells bad, along with my socks
and the rest of my clothes. Just a reminder that deodorant and baby wipes
only go so far I guess.

Keeping Up As Best I Can

Unfortunately I do not have much to write here. Of course I tend to say
that then get on a ramble that turns out, in fact, to be very long indeed.
Regardless, it's not to say that nothing has happened, just that, for the
most part, it has been uninteresting to most "normal" people. We got our
weather stations and tag transmission receiving stations set up (for later
fur seal monitoring), we started prepping our lab and continued finding/
unpacking things around camp, we have done a couple cape-wide phocid (seal,
not fur seal though) censuses, and we finally today went out and actually
did some work with elephant seal weaners.

I have to imagine I wrote about the elephant seal weaners last year, though
I will be honest I do not remember what exactly I wrote and don't feel
bothered enough to look it up. I do remember explaining though that they
are called weaners because they have recently weaned from their mothers (or
really the mothers forced them to wean by leaving).

When elephant seals wean, they are literally too fat to swim. Well,
hopefully they are at least- if all went according to plan and mom had
plenty of fat to pass on. They are butterballs in the shape of a sausage
with big eyes and a few undersized flippers stuck on in a way that they
rarely actually reach the flattened snow beneath their massive bellies
except during the great undulations that slowly bounce them around the
Cape.

They also tend to not be the smartest of all animals. Pretty much all they
know at this point, other than basic bucking, squirming, and chicken-like
squawks as defense mechanisms is the game "Does this fit in my mouth and
can I eat it?" It's a lot like watching a toddler discover the world one
mouthful at a time. Except this toddler weighs 200 lbs and has their feet
and hands attached directly to their torso, bypassing the need for legs or
arms altogether. That is how an elephant seal do.

Of course this bumbling awkwardness of jelly rolls and gumming snowballs
does give them some very endearing qualities. It is just about impossible
not to smile when you see one. Watching the effort they go through just to
be able to see you around their own bellies makes you just want to go up
and squeeze them. Even, despite the fact that they are, like most elephant
seals, covered in a mixture of their own feces and that of others, you
still want to just cuddle them. There was a group of three closely huddled
together today that I really wanted to just join as a middle spoon. I'll
tell you one thing- it would be plenty warm in there (did anyone else just
get the image of the ton ton on Hoth from the Empire Strikes Back? Maybe
you have to actually be very cold trudging through the snow when looking at
these guys to jump there…).

Anyway, that's my brief introduction to elephant seal weaners. For more
information, please consult www.google.com. If a friend asks you about
them, feel free to send them a link from www.lmgtfy.com (it stands for let
me google that for you and is a very entertaining little tool. It continues
to be cold here, with occasional glimpses of sun and warmth. I don't think
its been above freezing for more than a few hours in the last 4-5 days and
we are getting some decent winds tonight (30-40mph). Apparently there is
also a storm coming our way early next week, so that should be fun. Luckily
the bulk of our work (fur seals) has not showed up yet. Literally. There
are only a handful of males on beaches at the moment, though there are more
showing up every day. We also have seen an unusual amount of crabeater
seals, particularly young animals. That includes several juveniles and a
pup crabeater, which offhand nobody could remember ever having seen here
before! We have a few weddells as well, including a few ladies with freakin
ADORABLE pups. Just saying.

Goodnight y'all, I'm going to try to go to sleep before the wind picks up
and keeps me awake!

Back At It

I had not planned on continuing this blog during my second time around in
the Antarctic. However, I've had a lot of encouragement from friends and
family to keep it going, so I will just say that I will do what I can. I
will try to not repeat stories from last year too much and will do what I
can to continue to be funny (though I admit you can only laugh at someone
for so long…). So here goes nothing! If you're new, then welcome. If you've
stopped in before, then you should probably find more exciting things to do
with your life (but thanks for staying interested all the same).

I'm back! Officially landed in Antarctica this past Monday October 26. For
those of you who don't know or have forgotten in the little hiatus, I am
back at Cape Shirreff on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands
off the Antarctic peninsula. I am working as a contractor for the National
Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as part of its
Antarctic Marine Living Resources program (see the links to the right ----
).

I work primarily with Antarctic fur seals, but also do a lot of work with
leopard, southern elephant, and weddell seals. We also periodically see
crabeater seals, but don't do any real research on them. In addition, I
frequently help out with penguin science that also happens at the Cape. I
live in a small camp (yes there are real structures, though its fairly
rudimentary- no running water or anything like that) with 4 other people, 3
men and 1 woman. Three of us focus on seal work, while the other two mostly
work with penguins and other sea birds. I am here for the next five months
and get back to Chile around late March. Oh and while I'm here I only have
very limited email and satellite phone options so don't plan on being able
to get in touch with me. If you have questions or concerns, feel free to
leave a comment below and I will try to have someone monitoring them for
me.

Ok getting into it…

So for the first time ever, we had a real scare of not being able to make
it to Cape Shirreff due to ICE! I have to say, it was pretty cool actually
plowing through various ice flows to get here. Arguably it wasn't exactly
like trying to scrape ice off your windshield, more of a dragging your
spoon through pudding kind of experience, but still. I got to be on an ice
breaker (sorta) breaking ice! And there are tons of large icebergs floating
around too! So that's exciting.

Luckily, despite all the ice, we were able to make landfall with the
zodiaks and fully deploy all our gear. We even managed to get a ton of
awesome volunteers, who were on their way to Palmer Station or were stuck
on the ship doing various kinds of research, to come help schlep gear for
us. That combined with the fact that the snow levels were eerily low this
year means we are actually way ahead of schedule for opening camp. Usually
we spend half of our time these first few days just shoveling out doors and
windows to attempt to start to organize things. This year we had every door
open by day 1.

And before you start asking, no I do not know why the snow level was so
low. Did climate change play a role? Probably. Is it just a weird year?
Probably. El Niño? Sure why not? We did look at our overwinter temperature
logger and it did seem to be a particularly cold winter, so maybe that
played a role? And as I mentioned, we don't usually have ice around here at
this time of year, so something strange is definitely going on.

There is a ton more I could start to say if I let myself ramble, but I'm
going to cut things off here and leave it mostly as an intro post. Again
thank you to anyone new who is interested. Writing this is a little weird
because I pretty much never actually see the reverse side of people reading
it or talking about it, but I like to pretend lots of people care. If
nothing else, maybe it starts to make up for my missing tons of birthdays,
holidays, and other social events (sorry!).

Happy Halloween! We might do some trick or treating at each others bunks…

Alaska

I just wanted to let everyone know that this summer I will be returning to Alaska to work with Steller sea lions on Marmot island near Kodiak. It is unlikely I will be as good about keeping up with the blog there since there is much less going on with that project and my access to internet is even more restricted. That being said, I will see what I can do and maybe will come up with a few new insights that I haven't covered already. Or I will just ramble on as I once again slowly slip into insanity caused by isolating yourself from anyone and everyone.

As a side note, I will also be going back to Antarctica again in October. Whether the blog will continue there is yet to be determined.

Also, thank you to everyone who has kept up with this. I really didnt expect to have nearly 1000 page views when I returned. Its a little scary to think that at least a few of you actually paid attention here, but its nice to know the effort at least went somewhere. I have also fixed the comments problem (hopefully) so anyone can comment.

From Berkeley, over and out.

Some Lighter Notes

It has come to my attention that my posts are getting a little too deep and
I am obviously spending too much time alone with my thoughts. I dont think
the person meant it as an insult or questioning of my mental state, but
anyone who knows me knows that I dont like to get too serious with things.
So these will hopefully be some lighter, more fun notes.

We are in the final throws of science on the Cape. Just two more weeks of
seal and penguin work, then we stop all science and just focus on packing
things up for a week. Less than a month from now I will be sitting in a
cushy hotel room with running water, flush toilets, and a real door
separating me from anyone I damn well want. Should be pretty magical. Until
that time though, I am trying to really soak in where I am. I climb at
least 4 large hills everyday to look for seals, but sometimes I kind of
forget to look out at the view while I'm up there. Or more often than not
these days, its too foggy to see anything anyway, so you might as well look
where you are going and avoid tripping over a rock or bitey-end-up seal.

That being said, occasionally we get that freak gorgeous day with sun,
mostly blue skies, and ideal little to no wind. In truth, that almost never
happens (you can have sun or no wind, rarely both), but a couple days ago
we got about as close as we have come to it since December. It was sunny,
relatively non-windy, and visibility was good enough to see most of the
cape from my high perched vantage points. So I went right up to the edge
and look out, doing a full 360 to take it all in. After nearly losing my
balance and falling down the cliff, I really did take that deep breath and
just kind of feel myself relax. It was pretty nice I have to say. This is
one of those places most people will never ever get to visit and that makes
it very special.

So of course, my next move was what I assume comes naturally to every male
(and probably some females, though physical and safety restrictions might
come it play more). I unzipped and peed right off the cliff. As my mom can
(and readily will) attest, I have always enjoyed peeing outside. Its one of
those simple pleasures of being in nature and being free! If you have never
peed off a cliff especially, I highly recommend it. This is one where wind
can actually be beneficial, though you have to make sure you don't get
blown off as well. Nobody wants to end up bloody and broken at the bottom
of a cliff covered in their own pee. Guys- just do it. Girls- find a way,
because if peeing off cliffs is wrong, why does it feel so right? Its the
ultimate bout of freedom, that perfect combination of exposing yourself to
the world while simultaneously marking it as yours in a cascading stream of
human dominance over nature. Or something like that…

Thats my main story for tonight. In other news, we have our 4th and final
round of pup weights tomorrow, where we go out and catch/ weigh 100 pups.
100 doesn't seem like that much but the leopards have been hitting us hard
this year and finding all 100 is tough (at one point I suggested it might
be easier to just weigh the leopards at the start of the season and again
at the end and figure out the difference). Not to mention, the puppies are
officially getting kind of wise to us, especially when they see a crew of 6
people approaching with a small wave of other puppies running out in front.
That and their freakishly large size all of a sudden that gives them added
speed and maneuverability is going to make it quite the spectacle. I'm just
a little excited. Its like the rodeo with adorable baby seal. I will have
lots of banjo music playing in my head and don't be surprised if I end up
diving into a tide pool after one. Sometimes you just gotta do what you
gotta do.

Immediately following the puppy weights we have penguin chick banding (well
ok its the next day). This should be equally entertaining in that it
involves corralling piles of penguin chicks, who are, to be extremely
generous, "uncoordinated" and slapping some bands on them. One of the
highlights these days of heading out to the penguin colonies is just
watching parents come back from sea and having their chicks chase them
around the colonies trying to get food. Sometimes its not even their
chicks! You might get a whole herd of chicks chasing one adult. They're
also in the process of molting, so most are part downy softness, part real
bird. Often this results in very confused looking birds with a feathery boa
around their neck or mohawks on their heads. I also saw one trying to nap
on its belly the other day but it was so fat its wings and feet barely
touched the ground so it was mostly just superman-ing and dreaming it was
soaring through the air. Or whatever it is that penguins really dream
about…

Ok thats it. Not challenges, no big life questions, just what do you think
penguins dream about? Write it down. Maybe walk up to a complete stranger
and tell them your answer and then try to describe the confused look on
their face.

Privacy

A major challenge of living in a remote field camp with 5 other people is
privacy and personal space. Its a little like being back in the college
dorms, except now I have 3 roommates instead of one. When you are forced
into a situation like this, you begin to lose any concepts of true privacy.
The curtain separating me from the world feels like a wall, even though
every cough, fart, toss, turn, or accidental bang of the head on the
ceiling is easily heard. This small box, the size of a twin bed is my only
escape.

Now thats not to say that I am never alone, or that there aren't places I
can go to be alone. When I am out working, I am generally alone. When I
shower, or go to the outhouse, or work in the lab, its usually (hopefully)
just me. But these places aren't "mine." My bunk is mine and I have grown
to appreciate it.

That being said, coming into this situation, I had no expectations of
privacy. Its amazing how accepting you can be when your initial
expectations change. It is routine to stand in your underwear in full
public view, or to be stepping around other people's things to get to your
own. You minimize the amount of stuff you have out at all times because
theres just nowhere to put it. In addition to the general clutter of this
many people living on top of each other (literally- the beds are bunked),
you have to remember that these 5 other people are literally the ONLY human
contact you have for upwards of 5 months. Trust me when I say you get to
know each other real well. You know when someone isn't feeling great, when
they had weird, expired boxed indian food for lunch, or when they have to
go pee twice in one night. Its very personal.

The nice thing about people who live the field camp life routinely, as
everyone here does, is that nobody cares about privacy. Usually you know
someone's stomach is upset not just by the extra stench in the outhouse but
because they come back and tell you all about it. We have frequent
discussions about whether or not dinner last night caused anyone to get the
"meat sweats." Arguably, some of this likely also has to do with biologists
generally having pretty strong stomachs- we also frequently discuss seal
scats (worms and all!), penguin puke, and dead animals around the dinner
table.

So likely none of this is really all that surprising to anyone. Most of us
have been to summer camp, or spend time in a college dorm, or some similar
social setting where you couldn't escape the people around you and you felt
like your privacy was at best compromised. What is sometimes a surprising
revelation is to say that this is actually THE MOST PRIVATE I have ever
been in my life. My phone has not been connected to the internet or any
kind of cell network in 3.5 months. The computer I am currently typing this
on has NEVER once been connected to the internet. In these days of NSA,
Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc. it is rare that anyone can say
that you are completely unconnected. Our satellite phone can't track my
movements. I haven't seen an online ad since before Halloween!

Of course, I can connect to a certain extent (phone and email), and I
suppose is someone really were inclined they could read these emails, but
nobody is spying on me here. When I hike up my hills looking for seals, I
can look around and not see a single person. Whats more, even though I know
5 people are hiding somewhere, those are the ONLY people for nearly 100
miles in any direction. Its a little trippy.

So i would challenge anyone reading this to look at your life and ask
yourself, how much privacy do you really have. This isn't a comment on the
benefits or dangers of the Google empire, I don't mind a certain amount of
my information being known and apps like Google Now can actually be pretty
handy. But just look around and ask yourself when was the last time you
were truly alone. I would also challenge you to try disconnecting sometime.
Even if its just an hour, or an afternoon, or a day. Leave the phone and
computer at home and just go outside, as far away from anyone else as
possible (without too much work, and maybe tell someone where you are going
ahead of time just in case…). And when you are out there, remind yourself
that for that brief moment, you get to just be you.

Chicks, Mud, and Skeletor Pups

I apologize first off for being so slow at adding posts here. Days continue
to be long and I've generally just been tired at night and not felt up for
writing much. Plus, we have been losing daylight at an alarming rate (down
to only about 17.5 hours a day). With the earlier sunset, its actually
getting dark here for the first time, which is strange, but also makes me
more inclined to actually go to bed at a reasonable hour (that and the
constant work). We actually were able to see a planet the other night,
though still no stars really. We should be seeing stars by the time we
leave in March. Well, that is if its ever clear enough to see the sky,
which is rare.

As for the chicks, they are starting to be everywhere. Thats penguin chicks
of course. Unfortunately, a lot of the penguin nests failed this year,
largely due to the increased amount of snow making actual nest building and
egg incubation tough. There were actually some hilarious (though somewhat
sad) penguins that ended up in a hole about 3 feet deep where their little
butts melted the snow down while they sat on their eggs. But that being
said, the ones that were successful now have chicks, and boy do those
chicks grow fast!

Gentoo and chinstrap penguins both typically have 1 to 2 chicks each year
(not like the emperors you always hear about with their one). Like other
penguin chicks, these chicks do look like fuzzy, grumpy little old men with
big bellies and their pants pulled up way too high. They are pretty cute
when they are clean, which is never. More often, they are covered in a
highly coordinated smattering of feces, mud, and feces soaked mud. Much
like their parents, gentoo chicks can projectile poo several feet, with
almost pinpoint accuracy often targeted at their nearest neighbor (in truth
they aren't really aiming, but when the colonies are as crowded as they
are, its almost inevitable that someone receives an unwelcome surprise).

In the next few days/ weeks the chicks will also begin to creche. If you
ever watched March of the Penguins, or Frozen Planet, or basically any
documentary on penguins, this is where suddenly all the chicks are huddling
together/ running around like the weirdos that they are while their parents
go off to forage. Its supposed to be a pretty entertaining time in the
penguin mines. Even more exciting is the penguin dash, when a parent comes
back and is subsequently chased halfway around the colonies by hungry
chicks. At first its often ALL the chicks, which then get whittled down to
just that bird's offspring. Its kind of like walking into a college party
holding half a pizza. Chaos.

As I mentioned, the chicks are usually covered in mud (among other things).
Thats because 1) penguins are filthy birds that live in their own waste and
2) because much of the Cape is now covered in it. We have gotten several
days of rain this week, which has left everything just kind of soggy. The
plus side is that a lot of the snow is gone now, making snow shoes and skis
unnecessary (finally!). But now you just kind of slurp around in a
different medium that leaves more of a mark on your clothes, hands, face,
whatever it can find its way onto.

Mud here is also true mud. Its not that "oh I was jogging in the park and
stepped in a puddle and some dirty water splashed on my perfectly white
running shoes" kind of mud. This is the "i'm gunna steal your boot and
maybe part of your leg if you don't move quick" kind of mud. Often times it
feels more like walking in quicksand than on dirt. A common strategy to
avoid the sinking feeling (get it?) of going nowhere is to jump from rock
to rock. The only problem is when you step onto a rock the size of your
head thinking, ah this will surely act as a good base of operations as I
plan my next step, only to find that now you AND the small boulder are
suddenly becoming part of the earth around you while those little puppies
are all somehow growing remarkably tall around you. Fortunately I have
managed to enhance my cat like reflexes, allowing me to scamper from rock
to rock without losing any limbs or major articles of clothing.

As for the puppies, they continue to grow. Unfortunately, so do the bellies
of the leopard seals and we have lost a LOT of pups. Its getting to the
point of being a little depressing actually. On the upside, the remaining
pups are hopefully a little wiser than their leopard lunch counterparts,
which gives them a better chance of making it back here someday. In
addition to getting big, some are starting to molt, meaning they are losing
their jet black coats in favor of the more grownup silver. I haven't fully
pet a molted pup yet, but apparently they get SUPER soft right after the
molt.

Unfortunately for the pups, as they go through the process, it makes them
look a little ridiculous and borderline creepy. If you dont know who
skeletor is, theres this new thing called Google (though I'm probably
spelling it wrong). No no, you dont actually have to go look, he looks
creepy anyway, but he was a villain that I think was originally part of the
legion of doom from the old super friends cartoons (EDITORS NOTE: I clearly didn't have google, Skeletor is actually from the He-Man cartoon series. Legion of doom leader was just bald...) . I am pretty sure the new Captain America also had a Skeletor looking villain as well. Basically
its a man with essentially a skeleton head. While the puppies do still have
fur, their molt tends to start on their heads and move backwards. The
result is an all black pup with a sleek, silver head that kind of makes
them look like Skeletor. They are still pretty cute though, at least the
few that are still around.

Thats it for now. Its late and I need to sleep. Its my birthday on
Saturday, so we are having a little celebration (I dont like making a big
deal of my birthday, but others insisted. Plus its just an excuse to have a
bbq and stay up late. Its also the last weekend that the Dutch science team
will be here so we can celebrate with them.)

Stay warm east coast, and stay cool west coast (seriously 70 degrees?!)

Also! I highly recommend checking out a singer named Old Man Ludacate (or
Ludacit?). He has a few good songs, but when much of your world revolves
around food and cooking as it does here, his song Joy of Cooking can really
hit home…

Language

Language. Language is one of those crazy aspects of life that we often take
for granted as part of being human. Many people might even say its part of
what makes us human. Personally I would have to disagree with that though.
If you work around animals, you know they have a language. If you've ever
owned a dog, you know it has its own language, both for communicating with
other dogs and for communicating with you. Most animals don't use words
like we do, or nearly as many sounds, but its usually pretty easy to read
them if you know the signs. Female fur seals growl or snarl or snort when
aggravated and often their eyes are all huge and buggy. Male fur seals
whimper or growl. They all do this BEFORE they try to attack or bite or run
away or whatever. They give you warning signs that are pretty universal to
understand.

However, I have recently learned there is one language in the animal
kingdom I may never fully understand. Dutch.

As I may have mentioned previously, Jan 7th brought an influx of people to
the Cape. A helicopter arrived that day carrying a crew of Chilean
researchers. However, they weren't all Chilean. One sector of the group is
actually a dutch girl and her assistant. She is technically half Chilean,
but is pretty much full on dutch for all practical purposes. Luckily she,
and her assistant Pete, speak english quite well because otherwise our
communication would be better off with Pete whimpering and Elisa just
snarling while staring at me with big buggy eyes (this is not to imply they
are constantly aggravated by me or threatening to attack me, we actually
have gotten along quite well thank you). Sure you might understand a few
words here and there, like listening to REM's Its the End of the World as
we know it (ya, go listen and prove to me you know any line other than the
one), but overall part of you will always feel like they are just making up
sounds on the spot with no real meaning at all just to confuse you. Even
words they repeat for you, slowly at that, you cannot pronounce. And don't
even think about trying to read it because whatever rules you thought
existed about consonants and vowels are just tossed right out the window.

Also, fun fact, it turns out they do not actually call it a Dutch Oven in
the Netherlands. Nope. Its a stovenpot. Or some other word that starts with
a 'B' but is near impossible to say let alone remember. And yes, I realize
that stovenpot (probably spelled way wackier) actually kind of makes sense
for a big pot you can put on the stove. My next mission is to discover why
the Dutch live in the Netherlands, which is the same as Holland.

Language also brings up other issues for me, namely how spoiled/ terrible
the US is about them. I was lucky that taking a foreign language was a
requirement at my high school, and our teachers were actually pretty
decent, so i speak a little spanish. But when you compare Americans to
people from other countries, it just sad. The Dutch girl here speaks dutch
and english fluently, spanish decently, can understand german and french,
and probably by combining all those would do ok with italian and who knows
what else. Her argument is that nobody speaks Dutch but the Dutch so you
have to learn other languages if you ever want to communicate. That is
true, but it just speaks to how spoiled we all are to speak english. Most
of the world has been pressured to conform to our standards.

I'm not saying that every person must speak multiple languages to be a good
person or anything, but I do think understanding another language gives you
greater insight into another culture. With more insight into culture comes
more understanding, respect, and cooperation which would make the world an
overall better place.

People also need to learn languages earlier. Its no secret that children
learn things, especially language better than adults or even adolescents.
When we are born, we have the ability to understand and hear any language
in the world. ANY LANGUAGE. We wont necessarily comprend it, but we hear
it. As we get older, we lose the ability to hear certain sounds that are in
languages outside of our own. There is a reason its much easier for an
english speaker to pick up spanish or french or german than to learn
Swahili (or Dutch…). Many african languages use over 100 different sounds.
English uses forty something (look it up). By learning different languages
earlier, even if they use the same sounds as our native language, we mold
our brain to hear that language better and set ourselves up to learning it
a lot easier. If you have the opportunity and ability to raise a kid
bilingual, and I mean from early early on, I say do it. Ya its a lot of
work, but they will be lucky in the end. If nothing else, teach them
Spanish or Chinese because spanish is becoming the dominant language in
many parts of the US and the Chinese are going to take over the world
sooner or later.

This concludes my random thoughts on language. I have had a lot of fun
recently talking to the Dutch crew and making a fool of myself trying to
learn a few worlds, or even just city names outside of Amsterdam. I do like
how they say "no" (like in english). Its a very deep, almost scottish
sounding "oh" where it like you are trying to open your jaw as wide as
possible while still keeping your lips pursed together. There are a few
other good ones too.

Oh and in case anyone is wondering, they also don't have a term in Dutch
for when you are in bed with someone, fart, and pull the covers over their
head to make them smell it, which is also commonly referred to in America
as… you guessed it, a Dutch Oven.

Non-Animals

Almost all of these posts refer back to animals. Theres a few obvious
reasons for that- 1) I really like animals (duh). Its why I'm here, well
that and a decent paycheck. 2) Because everyday revolves around the
animals. They become part of your life, your family, you job, and your
surroundings. When I get up, I hear moms and pups calling, terns yelling at
me, skuas screeching about nothing. When I go to sleep, its the black
bellied or wilsons storm petrels, or terns continuing to yell at me, or
often the same moms and pups calling to each other. I've learned to check
when I go out to pee to make sure there isn't a fur seal or elephant seal
hiding around the corner where I am about to draw smiley faces in the snow
and when a giant petrel swoops just above my head in its search for dead
stuff to eat, it hardly phases me anymore. Needless to say, animals are a
big part of life here…

But animals are not the only part of life here. The psychologist in me (one
of my minors in college) wants to know what its like living in a small,
isolated group for an extended period of time. And to that I say its
surprisingly easy, if you have the right people. Now I'm a pretty easy
going guy and I think I get along with people really well, but I have also
been very lucky with who I have lived with both here and in Alaska. In
truth, these jobs are fairly self selecting. If you don't deal with other
people well, you rarely make it more than one season in a remote field
camp. However, people often do not get along with campmates and its
something that just has to be dealt with.

All that being said, I've found that in the "normal" world, things aren't
all that different. Whether in high school, college, grad school, or just
at home, I tended to hang out with the same 3-10 people on a routine basis.
While bars and social events provide the opportunity to talk to new people,
I think most groups of friends end up just talking amongst themselves
anyway. So really the only difference is I didn't get to pick this group of
friends (which, again, can be a big deal, but often works out). You also
build a sense of camaraderie very quickly in places like this. Not only are
you all in it together, but you really do depend on each other. It would be
tremendously difficult for us to get all our fur seal work done without the
help of the penguin biologists, and vice versa, they often get our help on
bigger projects. You also rely on everyone for other things, like support,
friendship, and daily frustrations. The truth is, when you are missing
Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and your own birthday, the people you
are with become your family, for better or for worse. There are definitely
things I would change about the people I live with, but there are also many
things I've learned to love about them. I probably laugh more here than
anywhere else I have ever worked or lived.

…

Other non-animal aspects of living in Antarctica: Icebergs, dirt, daily
life.

Icebergs. We get them passing by occasionally. Some are small, only a few
feet across. Some are huge, maybe a mile or more across. We are far enough
north that we dont get pack ice here and the icebergs come and go fairly
infrequently, but its still pretty cool to see them out your back door. I
think people often think of icebergs as big, but not huge. Something that
at least might sneak up on your boat in the middle of the night, and there
are plenty of those around. But many of the ones we see are actually HUGE.
They can be miles across and hundreds of feet high. Sailing into one of
them would be like skillfully navigating an Ikea parking lot in your car
only to slam into the side of the store itself. It doesn't exactly come out
of nowhere. There are stories (if you read some of Shackleton's journey) of
sailors not knowing if something is land or just a giant iceberg. Its
pretty impressive. Then you realize that used to be part of a glacier and
get a little sad inside…

Dirt. Like snow, it becomes part of your daily life. Its funny to think
how, at home, I work hard at keeping (most) my pairs of shoes out of the
mud to keep them relatively clean. Here, you just walk through it. I'm
typically wearing boots made for that sort of things, but still. Its really
nice to just know you're going to get dirty, be dressed appropriately, and
not have to give it a second thought. If your boots are dirty, drag your
heals in the snow (or sand). If you smell, you smell. Maybe grab a few baby
wipes and treat yourself to a luxurious wipe down. If your work bibs are
dirty, you better just get used to it because thats going to keep
happening. Its just nice to not have to care about how I am dressed or the
condition of my clothing (or myself for that matter). My hair is usually
messed up. My beard is long and orange and I dont care. Everyone should try
it someday. Just wake up, grab some random clothes you don't care about and
just walk wherever life takes you. If the opportunity arises to get dirty,
just get dirty. At least YOU can come home and shower…

Routine: I think that routines can be really good for people. Structure
helps people accomplish goals, plan their lives, workout, etc. However, it
also just gets boring really quickly. We have structure here. We usually
get up between 8 and 9am (I realize some people would say that wide a
window is not very structured already). I do my tag resights everyday, but
after that you never know. It varies by day, weather, time of year, how you
feel, how the boss is feeling. My day a couple fridays ago was one of the
busiest I have had this season, but it was awesome.
8:30am- Get up, eat breakfast, maybe entered some data, waste time, suit up
10:30am- Leave camp to hike to Punta San Telmo, the southwestern most point
on the cape that we monitor, to conduct weekly phoned census there. The
hike is about 2.5-3 hours roundtrip and you usually encounter fur seals,
lots of weddell seals, leopard seals, penguins, and a whole mess of birds.
2pm- Resights
3pm-Lunch
3:30pm- Hexacopter ground station operator training- basically while the
pilot flies the hexacopter (like a quadcopter but with 6 rotors), I monitor
a video feed from the camera and some of the flight data. We are going to
attempt to map the entire coastline of the cape with aerial photos taken
from the hexacopter. I help direct the pilot where to go.
4pm- Seal captures to remove summer intruments
5:30pm- Head over to penguin colonies to help put out VHF telemetry tags on
penguins
8:30pm- Dinner
11pm- Bed

I love the variety and while the work is hard, it makes the time go by
quickly. It feels like it has been a long time since I was home, but it
does not feel like I have been here for going on 2.5 months now. And the 2
months I have left I know will blow by because of all the different
projects we have going.

I am going to cut this off here because it is getting long, but since it
has been a while since I've written anything, I will likely post something
very soon in addition to this. Possibly even at the same time. In the
meantime, check out our Sit Reps (link should be at the bottom of the page)
to see some photos from christmas time!

Resupply

This comes a few days late, but we had our first, and really only, resupply
the other day. It came on New Years Day to be more specific. There was lots
of good news to come with it as well, the first being that the ship would
in fact show up around 5pm, not 5am like originally planned. Considering I
didn't go to be until just before 4am, this was a plus (though I kind of
liked the prospect of just staying up all night). We did still have to do a
full regular days work ahead of time though. Other good news was the
arrival of fresh produce. I actually had not been missing it too badly yet,
since we've only really been out for a couple weeks, except for things like
potatoes, carrots, and cabbage. We eat so well here that its easy to forget
about little things like fresh tomatoes sometimes. I also got a new pair of
boots, some awesome gloves with the flip cover fingers, oh and my new
computer which I am currently writing this on.

The resupply also brought a somewhat alarming influx of people ot the Cape.
When you've spent the entirety of the last 2 months with 5 other people a
bunch of snarling, cackling, calling, whimpering animals, having about 20
new faces show up is a bit of a shock. It threw me off that there were so
many footprints in the snow and that I could not tell who they belonged to.
The other slightly strange aspect of this land assault on my precious
homeland was it was almost entirely young women.

Now I dont find krill and plankton science to be particularly attractive, and when everyone is dressed in fairly heavy duty snow gear, its hard to get particularly excited by a few new people. But when you've only seen one (human) female for 2 months, your standards can become shifted. There was
actually some worry that, as one of the only single members of our party, I
might start whimpering like a bull fur seal to establish dominance over the
harem. Luckily for everyone involved, I kept my cool and just whimpered
quietly to myself. Plus, as quickly as the came, they fled the cape for the
safety and leisure of the boat/ Palmer Station with its gym, hot tub, and
bar…

The onslaught also brought a new member to our camp, and yes he was
actually intentionally left behind. David is our NOAA Corp engineer/
logistics person. NOAA corp is a uniformed service that typically runs all
the NOAA boating and logistics operations around the world. David is here
to help fix things, improve things, inventory our piles of crap, and add
some variety to a fairly stagnant workcrew.

David is a good guy, but I have to admit, its weird adding a new person to
the tribe. We had our routine pretty well down- where people sit, which mug
everyone uses, which pee hole in the snow we are currently working on
excavating. With his addition, it throws those things off. He is quickly
figuring it out, but it still just feels like a little bit of an invasion
and makes the space feel a little more cramped (he actually shares a room
with my boss, so he isn't in the main hut all that much). That being said,
he brought all our goodies, so all is forgiven.

I hope everyone had a good New Years Eve. Ours was lowkey, but fun. We took
a group photo at midnight outside without even needing the flash. We have
also just crossed our halfway point, which is a little scary that we still
have just over 2 months to go, but also means its all downhill from here.
We keep busy as always and the days go by quickly. I am definitely looking
forward to being home again, but its not too shabby here either.

Final thought: Men, try whimpering at a pretty girl and see if it gets her
more interested in you. Women: if you see a man whimpering at you from
across the bar, give him a shot, he might just be smart enough to know a
little something.