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…