YES, WE DO ACTUALLY WORK...

YES WE DO ACTUALLY WORK...



The 'pig' or 'pig of drama' entering the water by way of skidder at the boat ramp

Over the last few weeks since the arrival of voyage 2 in early January, Pud and Ben our two dive supervisors have been working hard getting the diving side of things under way. There is a lot to do, all the dive gear needs to be sorted, checked, rechecked and prepared to go, setting up the re compression chamber in case of any emergency and sorting out the 'pig' (the pagadroma'- our diving work boat, affectionately known as the pig or pig of drama because more goes wrong with it then right). Finally on January the 28th, i managed to get in the water for my first dive. Whilst it was only to 6m and in about 2m of visibility, it was a great moment, finally achieving a dream 4 years in the making. Glenn and i achieved out goal of finding a tide gauge and getting ourselves familiar with all the gear and procedures. Since then, we have had more dives collecting all things great and small for the researchers working on various animals back in the labs.

V3 arrived early on the 7th of February and now we will change our focus to the main objective- to provide an environmental assessment of the current sewage outfall and to determine the feasibility of an upgrade/new system. Unfortunately, the weather hasn't been too kind this week, with only 1 dive due to winds of up to 50kts. The weather looks set to return to sunny days next week and we hope to ramp up the diving with two teams operating and hopefully 4 dives a day.

My PhD is chugging along nicely, the bulk of samples i need will be collected along the way with the divers picking up the odd animal at the end of our dives. We also hope to return to do a bit more fishing (we've been a bit slack lately)and will also set up a baited video system, where we can view the fish remotely over a period of about 5 hours. I also had my second birthday in antarctia (28th overall) and it was a great day, receiving lots of unexpected presents (from mum and friends down here) as well as getting strawberry cupcakes and sticky date pudding for desert. Couldn't of asked fora better birthday! Unfortunately our planned trip away looks like it wont happen, the weather looks too set in this weekend. Hopefully we will get a chance again before V4 rolled into town and we head back home in mid March...

Till next time...

A bit of scenery along the way to our dive site



All kitted up and ready to go before my first dive

Glenn and me...

Bombs away!!!

Glenn in the murky depths...

Glenn and me mucking around on our safety stop...

Some of the cool things we get to look at...

More cool things...

Some urchins collected on a dive...

Boys at the beach waiting for us to return....yawn...

A darky Davis sunset on the beach...

Christmas and New Years

Christmas started off on Christmas eve as it does, with a fairly rowdy night at the bar. After a few merry G&T's it was soon Christmas morning, where we had a nice cooked breakfast at 10am in the Wallow (hang out area) followed by a visit by Santa in a red hagglund. Chris Kringle was a great treat, everyone got a present from someone (unknown) on station, including the 6 Russian geologists that had come for the day (from a nearby hut) to drink our bar dry and partake in the festivities. Some folk went to great lengths to make great presents and its amazing what some people got from the tradies... (personalised bottle openers, picture frames, engraved mugs, just to name a few).


Christmas eve ar bar Ninas

Christmas breakfast was, of course, followed by Christmas lunch (2pm) which was a mountain of lobsters, oysters, turkeys, mussels, etc etc, a selection of 5 different desserts and of course station wine. Most folk went to bed early due to the previous nights partying (except the Russians who carried on till dawn)...


Santa arriving by red fire truck hagg with his little helpers


Santa handing out Chris Kringle




Christmas lunch


The gap between Christmas and new years was filled with a little work and a little play, a short walk to the old wallow provided a few wildlife highlights on a nice sunny day...


Elephant seal, actually awake (for once)


3 little birds...


Looking out from the old wallow...



Emperor chook maulting on the way back from the Old Wallow...


New years was a 'Hollywood' theme and there were some great costumes, everyone getting really into the dress ups and having an absolute ball...


Mads, our station doctor raisng the bar in the costume stakes...


Yours truly as Hugh Heff, the Oscar, and Bianca on the side...


Dont ask, there were some weird ones...


After new years i went on an overnight walk with a few friends to Watts hut, about 4 hours walking over the Vestfolds and about the same return via the fjord. The sea ice had since been closed so we were lucky to be one of the last to travel on it. The sea ice n the fjords is basically the last to break out, i cant wait till it does so we can get in and see what sort of things are living down there.

Since new years, its been a bit of work in the lab, and a bit of work out in the Zodiacs (yes we do actually do work). On Wednesday we had a great afternoon out on the water, we took a trip down almost to the Sorsdal glacier where we had to change over some batteries on a camera that's based permanently down there to capture movements of ice bergs. The camera was based on top of a small island that was covered in a Adelie penguin rookery...complete with little black baby fluff balls... I thought i'd spare you the penguin photos this time, i'm sure you've seen enough.

Glenn doing his driving thing on the zodiac...


The view from the top of island where the camera set up was...

This week we are looking forward to the arrival of voyage 2 and a changeover of some personnel and the arrival of others. Its sure to be the catalyst for another great meeting at Ninas, especially with the arrival of a few close friends and work mates. Later on in the week, we should get back to a bit of snorkeling and hopefully a few day out sampling on the water.

'till then.

Welcome the Xue Long...

Welcome the Xue Long... The Chinese research and supply vessel that visited Davis just before Christmas.

(The Xue Long.. at 130 odd meters long its about 20m longer than the Aurora Australis and a serious looking icebreaker)

Waking up one morning and trudging off down the hill towards breakfast in the LQ (living quarters) i noticed a big white ship parked out front of the station. 'Strange' i thought, 'that wasn't there yesterday'...

Soon enough, our station was taken over by small pods of Chinese expeditions in bright red jump suits. They had come to visit for the day, to check out the station and tour the buildings or more realistically to photograph anything man or otherwise made. I had seen the Xue long before, last year at Casey it had come for a week to pick up some dignitaries that were flying into Wilkins runway on their way to the Chinese station, just down the coast from Davis. Most of the station was able to visit the ship and had a very 'merry' time. We were unlucky working hard that day, and didn't get a chance to vi st the ship. After our Friends departed, my thoughts soon turned towards the possibility of getting the chance to jump on board. Sure enough, Cath the science manager asked if i wanted to vi st... 'Hell yeah' was the cry.

Later that evening we jumped into our own red jumpsuits (immersion suits) to board the large helicopter for the 33 second flight over the water and onto the Xue long. 20 lucky expeditioners got the chance to vi st for dinner and swap a few stories with our Chinese expeditioner comrades...


The dignitary lounge, where the high ranking Chinese officials (and us) get to hang out, it was seriously plush...


The bridge, it is so big you can of fit 6 table tennis arenas inside and still have room for an ice cream stand.



Dinner, Sadly it was just us, the rest of the crew had eaten hours ago, and strangely were all asleep by 7pm... we never saw anybody except our 'minders'. (Note the 'Antarctik' beers. They collect the water from a glacier, ship it back to china, brew it there, then ship it back to Antarctica. You can only get it on their station or on the ship....We just brew ours in big buckets.



'Baby water'...They just loved that thing... it was their mascot or something.

Chickens in Choppers

Workin out on the sea ice....chopper style

nice berg stuck in the sea ice

the view from Platcha where we had lunch

Last week we spent most of our time out on the sea ice and in the fjords drilling holes through the sea ice to collect the algae growing underneath. This is a small component of my PhD, but fairly important in determining what eats the algae. As the surface of the sea ice was getting slushy and the edges becoming unsafe, the best option to reach the outer edges of the ice and into the fjords was through helicopter. I don't know how many marine biology PhD students get to use a helicopter to get to their field sites but i don't think it would be too many! Along the way we collected some Weddell seal poo to check out if we could see any human influences in their diet.

We also had our first day in the water dip netting (which we also reached by helicopter). The first hour and a bit we spent flying around looking for suitable sites up and down the coast, finally settling on a narrow section of Ellis fjord where the ice had melted due to the faster flowing tidal movements. I jumped in the water and had a bit of splash with Glenn and we attracted a nearby Weddell seal who wanted to know what all the fuss was about. We collected about 50 urchins for Jake's project and scooped up a small fish. While waiting for the chopper to take us and the urchins back home we cracked open the Camembert and blue vein cheese....

Sometimes i can't believe the stuff we get up to down here.

PS just spent a drink on the chinese research ship...more to come on that and christmas!

-C

Resupply and beyond...

Since landing at Davis we've had a couple of busy weeks. Straight into resupply, we didn't get much of a break doing anything other than making sure containers, fuel and water came of the ship. The station refuelling and water were round the clock, and the container unloading was 8 till 8. My involvement was limited to being a dogman, helping the cranes hook onto the containers at the ship end out on the ice. A slightly precarious job when your 8m up on icy containers which were being loaded onto large trucks parked on sea ice. The resupply lasted a week and the station handover went smoothly, culminating in a large BBQ in the deso's shed.

Last week was resupply hangover, with all sciency things needed to be unpacked and sorted in the lab and field equipment into the field store. Early on in the week we had a quad bike training day, where nine of us went out on the quads to several huts at the end of the fjords. There were a few seals and penguins on the way and and we all had a great day spinning around on the slippery blue ice. Being travel trained meant that we could go out on our own without the aid of a Field Training Officer (FTO)and start out field work. Over the following few days Glenn, Jake and I went out collecting sea ice algae. This involved drilling holes through the sea ice, unfortunately it was a little more difficult than anticipated and left us feeling a little frustrated at the lack of algae which is usually abundant on the underside of the sea ice. We will head out again early next week to try and grab the last samples before the ice turns rotten and is unsafe to travel on.

Glenn and the sea ice drill

Weddel seal, quads and a few chooks...

Weddel seal

Adelie's checking out the ice drill...

By far the best experience of last week were the two helicopter flights. The first being to the Larsman Hills (about 30mins away by chopper). We needed to get some aerial photographs of a few features for some new maps the AAD is producing, so we spent about and hour or so hovering over the hills. We even got to land which was a real treat. Nearby are a Russian and Chinese station, both of which look rather different(and somewhat rundown)than ours.

Larsman Hills...

Weird russian thing...or chinese...

The second flight was on the following day for about an hour or so, flying very low over the Vesterfold Hills where Davis is situated. We needed to have a good look at the area for potential places to snorkel and diving later on in the season, as well as to get a good idea of the large number of islands and fjords in the area. It was pretty cool whizzing over glaciers and icebergs only a few feet away. We even managed to fly 120ft below sea level over a frozen lake not more than a km or so from the ocean. Very nice.

Vestfold hills...

On Saturday I had slushy duty, which means you help out in the kitchen for the day. We have two cooks on station and they both work long hours. Obviously they cant cook and clean for 90 people so 2 people a day are rostered on to help out in the kitchen. Its a good job, as slushy gets to pick the music for the day which is broadcast over our local radio, which everyone on station can hear if they tune their radios to the frequency. Saturdays are special nights were we all dress up and the cooks go all out. Last night we had roast duck with plum sauce and blue eye cod. A pretty tasty treat. Sundays are day offs so today i'm just lounging around and taking it easy. Ok, catch you next time!