November 11, 2002 18 deg F, no wind

Four of us went out to Randy Davis’s seal camp, nicknamed Weddell World. Joe, who is the local installer of solar and wind power for field camps had a repair to do, so I went out with him for the day. More and more field camps are now being provided with solar and wind for their primary power (with a fuel-powered generator for back-up). Even out on the polar plateau in remote observatories, they are trying wind and solar since propane requires a delivery by large aircraft with three or four people required to plow a runway and unload. Wind is common on the plateau, even in the sunless winter.

Davis is a large camp with a nineteen-section Jamesway that serves as home, kitchen, living area, computer space, and laboratory for seven people. It is a temporary camp in that it is set up on the sea ice (and thus will be taken out when the ice begins to thin in December)… and it’s not far from the Razorback camp that I visited a couple of weeks ago. They have one seal dive hole that is actually enclosed at the end of their hut and a seal that surfaces only there (since the hole is too far away for the seal to swim to another hole). Most of the seals with pups are a short snowmobile ride away; the pups are now about five times bigger than they were when I photographed pups at Razorback two weeks ago—their milk is 80% fat!

Randy Davis is looking at the foraging and roaming behavior of free-ranging Weddell seals. These seals dive deep in the ocean; they can descend several thousand feet. But, since they have to breathe every seven or eight minutes, they have to hold their breath under the sea ice and then come up at a breathing hole or crack. While they are under the water they have to eat… but nobody knew much about how they did all that until Randy started putting instruments and cameras on them.

I went out with Randy and several of his group while they located one of the seals, which had hauled out to rest on the ice. They captured it and put its head in a plastic bag with holes, and then replaced its video cartridge. Their seals have been fitted with a variety of monitoring equipment. Each is effectively a working lab and video cameraman. The monitoring lasts for only a couple of weeks, and then all of the machinery is removed, and the seal is no longer tracked. While she carries the monitors (and they are non-pregnant females), she provides amazing video footage of her eating and diving. I watched stretches of it on their video screens. You can see the seal’s head out front and then the hole up above as she rises to breath, the fish that she gobbles, and other seals that pass by. I was not enthusiastic about subjecting seals to such an ordeal before I went. The Weddell seals are large docile creatures with no predators here, so they don’t run away from humans. I did feel better after I saw how carefully the equipment had been attached and how little the seal seemed to mind carrying it. She makes no effort to roll over and get it off and she eats and dives normally.

What isn’t great is that I trashed a lens somehow, my favorite 24-85 zoom. I didn’t drop it or knock it. The zoom just stopped working. It will have to be sent to Nikon for repair. I’ve ordered another one to be sent down…and with several people along the way expediting that process (thanks, Bernie!), it should come in a week or so.

Several people have asked me what the social scene is like here in McMurdo. Do people who work here have families off the Ice? Isn’t it strange to have so many folks without their usual familial relationships around them? First of all, McMurdo is a family of sorts, a giant one but no more or less dysfunctional than any other family. For some people here, that family is all they have that matters to them. They have close friends from coming here for many years. Since everyone here works very long hours, they get to know fellow workers better than they know friends off the Ice. Most people here do have families off the Ice. Many have wives and children. They come here because the pay is good, and they need the money, and work in Wyoming or Alaska isn’t great in the winter. I know one man who has been coming down for 15 years; he has 4 kids and he and his wife have worked out an arrangement that works for them where he is there part of the year and gone to the Ice the rest of the time. Other folks have partners or spouses here with them. They fix up their dorm room with a couple of beds pushed together into a king-sized bed, find a chair and a couch, and make the place a home. They work different jobs during the day and find time to eat together and relax in the evening. A number of couples have wintered-over together. Many others are single… and the dating scene here is reportedly quite wild for those young at heart… but since I am neither single nor young, I can’t report first-hand on that.

November 12, 2002. 12 deg. F, 15 mph winds, -18 deg F wind chill.

I’m awaiting a flight to Terra Nova Bay, where there is a small Italian base. Yesterday, I waited around until after lunch to join a friend who was driving out to Windless Bight, a site on the south side of Ross Island. He was waiting on the vehicle’s return, which didn’t happen until early afternoon, and then it turned out they didn’t have room for me since another mechanic had to go along. I worked at my computer, checked out the new arrivals in the aquarium, and generally futzed around, but by the time I was sure that after all I was not going, it was too late to plan anything else. One must always be flexible here. Flights here are often cancelled or delayed. Vehicles break down. Waiting is part of the Antarctic experience.

November 13, 2002, 8:30 A.M. 6 deg F, wind 24 mph, -34 deg F wind chill.

The flight to Terra Nova is very pretty. The pilot flew the Twin Otter, along the Ross Island coast line and then over the sea ice. His route over the base of Erebus provided a grand view of the volcano—until the katabatic winds coming down off the glaciers began to toss the plane around. The sea ice looks thinner than it did a couple of weeks ago; the leads of water are bigger. I got my first view of the Ross Ice Shelf edge, the Barrier as the early explorers called it. It is the place where the frozen, floating ice shelf meets the sea ice. It was a major obstacle for early arrivals by ship, since it is high and provides no easy access on to the polar plateau. As we approached the Antarctic coastline, the weather began to close down, and by the time we had landed on the ice runway, it was snowing.

A visit to Terra Nova, the Italian base a couple hundred miles to the north of McMurdo, makes you realize how distinctive each of the bases on the Antarctic is. Terra Nova has style. The buildings are in a plan similar to the Kiwi Scott base, where all the main work and living spaces are connected, and they are all painted a spiffy blue and orange. The main complex houses galley and dining room, labs (much better equipped than the Kiwis), living quarters (4 bunks to a room with a bathroom down the hall), and a beautiful new command center on the top floor where they can manage both aircraft and vehicle activity. About 20 scientists work on their program, and the base can house up to 90 people. Unlike McMurdo, which is now about 40% women, the Italians have only 4 women on base. The Italian parkas and wind pants are slightly redder than the American issue and much more stylish. They are not clumping around in baggy clothes and giant bunny boots like we are. (The good news about the American issue is that the clothes do keep you warm…but theirs do that as well!) You wouldn’t think of the Italians as being adept at cold-weather logistics and clothing, but evidently their program hired folks who had worked as mountaineers in the N. Italian mountains.

What is most distinctive about Terra Nova is its food. “Of course, the cook is from Naples,” Giuseppe deRossi told me. I was there for lunch, which consisted of freshly-made pasta with grated Parmesan, a bean soup, homemade bread, tender veal piccata, green beans, fresh lettuce and tomatoes, with kiwis, good cheese, and chunks of chocolate for dessert. In the center of the long tables were a choice of red and white Italian wines and water, both natural and sparkling. Everything was delicious! After lunch, everyone walked next door to the coffee bar where they have a very large Italian espresso machine. Here at McMurdo, there is no liquor of any kind served with meals (you have to go to a separate building, Gallaghers or the Coffee House, and buy a drink there). McMurdo residents mention Terra Nova often. They would love to go there, and of course they cannot, and especially they talk longingly about the food.

Originally, I had been told that I would only have an hour on the ground to photograph at Terra Nova, but fortunately the pilots weren’t in any more of a hurry than I was. After lunch, Giuseppe took me on a quick tour of the facilities and drove me up behind the station for a view of Terra Nova Bay. It was snowing so visibility was low. On a clear day, it must be dramatically beautiful. Mt. Melbourne, which I couldn’t see at all, towers over everything, just as Erebus does here. Since they are several hundred miles further north, they have a more benign climate, slightly warmer and with more moisture, more like the Peninsula. The coastline is rocky, not the fine volcanic stone that McMurdo is built on, but large rounded granite boulders. Finally, the pilots radioed that they were getting ready. Giuseppe drove me out to yet one more beautiful viewpoint (unfortunately mainly invisible with the snow) and then down to the runway. We had managed a reasonably satisfying conversation with his bits of English and my Spanish and a lot of hand movements. I thanked him, we exchanged email addresses, and I left reluctantly for the flight back to McMurdo.

My office in Crary is next to offices for ITASE, a four-year project that is ambitiously traversing parts of the polar plateau. This year, the American group is going from Byrd Camp to the S.Pole, doing ice coring and other scientific observations. Their program is very ambitious. Their observations using penetrating radar, 3-inch ice cores, surface glaciology, chemical analysis, and atmospheric testing are designed to help understand the last couple hundred years of climate change. The Antarctic is the best place to study climate over time, paleo-climate. Far from being separated from the rest of the planet, the ice cores from here clearly record the Chernobyl disaster, major volcanic eruptions, and the subtle fluctuations of chemical changes, temperature, and moisture accumulation that have affected climate planet-wide.

Twelve Itase members, headed by Dr. Paul Mayewski, leave tomorrow to fly out to the polar plateau to Byrd and will arrive at Pole on Christmas Eve, if all goes well. I’ve become friends with Betsy, a teacher and former Olympic cross-country skier, who is thrilled that she gets to accompany them. At the moment, they are discussing the difficulties of keeping ice cores uncontaminated, given the need to keep fingers warm at –50 degrees. You can’t allow any nose drips to fall. You are supposed to use plastic gloves but they don’t make any big enough to go over the layers of fleece that you need on your hands. And… how do you keep your wine from freezing? (Yes, they get wine because they provide it themselves!) Important questions. I was amused a few days ago to overhear them discussing how to pronounce “Itase.” Since they aren’t sure, I guess any pronunciation is OK. I did a portrait of the group and one of Paul.

November 14, 2002. 9:00 A.M. 4 deg F, 25 mph winds, -43 deg F wind chill.

It’s not too pleasant outside again this morning, so I’ve started photographing some of the Antarctic fish in the downstairs lab aquarium They are strangely primitive looking creatures, mostly between about 7 and 10 inches long. I have the greatest respect for anything that can survive in these waters. Gretchen Hofmann and several of her crew helped set me up with a small thin aquarium and to move the fish in and out. First attempts were a little soft, even with flash, but not too bad. Since I have little depth of field, and the fish are constantly moing, it’s not easy. With bright lights and an underwater camera, it might be easier. I have nowhere to go for gels, backdrops, and similar props… and I have no intention of going in 28 degree water with them. (I really admire Norbert Wu’s underwater images from down here, but I’m leaving that whole underwater territory to him!) At least with digital, I can put the images up on the computer immediately after taking them to see how it’s working. I’d like to photograph the lovely little octopus with blue eyes that is down in the tank if I can figure out a way to do it.

November 16, 2002. 20 deg F, 12 deg F with wind chill.

After several days of blowing wind and snow, the airplanes and helos are back to flying. It’s pleasant not to have to put on quite so many layers. Last night I walked the couple of miles over the hill from McMurdo to Scott Base to meet an Australian friend who was in town briefly. It only takes about half an hour to do the walk but the wind was blowing at 30 mph, so I had to put on a balaclava, wind pants, and a hat, in addition to the usual layers of fleece, gloves, and parka. By the time I got there, I was huffing and puffing and very ready for dinner.

The day before, Seth and I drove out to Windless Bight, about an hour’s drive out on the Ross Ice Shelf on the back of Ross Island. This is the route followed by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, Wilson, and Bowers on their winter journey to collect Emperor penguin eggs (written up as the Worst Journey in the World, one of the classics of expedition literature). Of course, it was crazy to do any major expedition in the dead of polar winter when it is totally dark, day and night. They started off under a full moon, which helped them see during the crossing of the ice shelf, but after they got in a major storm and were delayed at Cape Crozier, they had to do the return journey in pitch darkness. As we drove along in our heated Mat Track (a pickup truck with treads instead of wheels), I could imagine them trudging along. They nearly lost their tent in the storm at Crozier, which would have been the end of them all, since there is no shelter along the route. I love the picture of the men before their journey and after their return, when they look like they have looked hell in the face and barely survived to tell the story.

Today, at Windless Bight, there is an infrasound monitoring station for detecting nuclear blasts, one of eight stations that the US has agreed to install (sixty stations are planned globally). As the name indicates, wind velocities in the area are lower than elsewhere in the McMurdo support range, and windy conditions can interfere with detection of the desired signals. The station can detect small pressure waves carried from tens of thousands of kilometers away from large marine storms, explosions, volcanoes, and Space Shuttle launches, as well as atomic testing. It’s not a whole lot to photograph—a pentagram of antennas and a small orange control building. Several of the techs had set up tents on the sea ice, so I photographed them and the inside of their small food tent. Just as I was packing up to leave, the sun came out briefly and lit the back of Erebus, which was impressively large from this side of the island.

We also took another trip out to Cape Evans. This time I got a few better shots of Ponting’s darkroom with all his chemicals and a shot of the seal blubber in the outside hallway. The weather was unpleasantly windy when we were there, so strong that it was hard to keep a footing walking across the sea ice to the hut. We finally decided to leave a little early and head back before visibility closed down to zero and we couldn’t see the flags along the route.

Next week should be challenging. I’m slated to go to the South Pole on Monday and to stay for four nights. I’m anxious about the photographs there. The altitude of 10,000 feet bothers many people. The cold is severe (it’s been –50 below most of this last week), and I don’t know how I and the gear will hold up. People say that every outdoor task takes six times as long at Pole as it does elsewhere.

“Out of whose womb came the ice?
And the hoary frost of Heaven, who hath gendered it?
The waters are hid as with a stone,
And the face of the deep is frozen.”
—lines from the Book of Job, carried by Shackleton. When he was forced to abandon ship, he tore out the flyleaf of the Bible, along with the handwritten inscription by Queen Victoria, and the page of Job with these lines.