Jan Strugnell skiing !Submitted April 6 by By Jan Strugnell, British Antarctic SurveyWe’ve just spent the last few days at Rothera research station. Rothera is in a really pretty setting on Adelaide Island off the West Antarctic Peninsula. The base is covered in snow and is dotted with Adelie penguins, fur seals and a few elephant seals. The ice in the bay is really beautiful - lots of it is brilliant blue in colour and other pieces are completely transparent - and many of them are really spectacular shapes too. The icebergs are truly an astonishing variety of colours and shapes.
We’ve mostly been working unloading cargo for Rothera and loading up lots of their cargo to take back to Stanley and the UK, including live animals for back at BAS and waste from the base to be disposed of. Thankfully, however, there has been plenty of time for fun in between the hard work!
The highlight yesterday was that the field assistants took us skiing! The ski run was a pretty good one and we could certainly get some pace up! The field assistants would tow us to the top of the ski run using their ski-doos and then we skied back down. The field assistants also took us to the other side of the slope where they have a little caboose where we had a hot drink and some chocolate right up in the slopes. It was a fabulous day!
Adrian and Chester skiing. Photo: Jan Strugnell, BASThe following day we left Rothera. We were the ‘last call’ at Rothera and so the 20 or so scientists and support staff on base will be there alone for the winter, with no further visits from ships until December! I think it was quite a moving moment for them to be standing on the dock waving goodbye to the JCR.
From February 19th until April 10th 2008, British scientists are embarking on the British Antarctic Survey’s (BAS) research ship RRS James Clark Ross. This project is part of the BAS program known as BIOFLAME (Biodiversity, Function, Limits and Adaption from Molecules to Ecosystems). Scientists onboard are studying marine fauna from the ocean shelves and slopes from a little-known region, the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Seas. This is part of the Census of Antarctic Marine Life. Follow their route on the CAML-Cousteau Expedition tracking page.