|
   |
 |
|
Journal of Deane Rink
(Deane is Video Producer and leader of the LFA 2 field team.)
Brief stopover at Rothera, long enough to drop off six mesoscale radar
array workers and to have us herded into Rothera store where I managed
to drop $60 on esoteric t-shirts and baseball caps (Ever hear of the "Rothera
Rangers"?) and BAS first-day covers featuring Captains Cook and Scott.
As it was Xmas Eve, nobody wanted to do anything more than horse-trade,
but I finally got to see a base I've been trying to get to for years;
one of the most spectacular settings on the Peninsula, marred by an ugly
long stone runway that handles the Rothera fleet of Twin Otters and the
military DeHaviland flights from the Falklands (perhaps I should say Malvinas,
since there are Chileans and Argentines aboard this vessel, who may be
lurking over my shoulder) that carry in their heavy equipment. How a base that has less than 100 people on it rates an aircraft hangar
when McMurdo with over 1000 and infinitely more plane traffic, and with
bigger birds, has none, is a mystery known only to the gods and the NSF.
Anyway, at the end of Rothera's runway sits an immense grounded iceberg
that has been there for years, and that serves as grim reminder of a 1994
Twin Otter crash that killed five or six people and occurred because the
plane was so heavily loaded that it couldn't generate the required lift
to take it over the iceberg in time. It was that I had in mind as I watched
two Twin Otters take off and circle round to buzz us ("Just showin'
off, mates!") before they went their merry ways to outlying field
camps. I have trouble understanding all this till Julian, my East Ender guide
whose every third word is barely comprehensible, mentions, sans accent
in my rendition, that the sea lanes to Rothera freeze every other austral
summer, making sea resupply dodgy at best, as he points up to the huge
piedmont glacier that dominates the base and says, "That's where
we used to land the planes till the runway was installed six years ago."
Julian hasn't left Rothera in twenty months and has two more to go on
his contract, and actually prefers the winters when the base winnows its
population down to 15, so I'm not quite sure what to make of him or his
stories. I do sight a silvery new bioscience lab there and realize that the British Antarctic Survey will be soon poised to give Palmer a run for its money in the marine biology areas, a new development, since Rothera is primarily known for atmospherics and geophysics... Now it's on to our mission, the replacement of an Automated Weather Station that had been installed two years ago on Santa Claus Island. We think the island will be deserted since we will be doing the reinstallation on Christmas Day, and Santa Claus usually gathers his Northern Hemisphere frequent flyer miles in that time frame. We hope Donner and Blitzen, his lead penguins, have at least left some of their families around, as Santa Claus Island is a reputed breeding ground for Gentoos and Chinstraps, two species of penguin I have yet to experienceup close and in the wild.
El Duko Polare sets anchor a few hundred yards off Santa's isle. At least
ten attempts at landing by zodiac on this rocky outcrop have been made
over the last few months, but all have failed, as this island has no natural
landing site. It is as forbidding to ships as Pitcairn's Island, but this
Christmas Day is sunny and clear, and the waters are calm. Hopes run high. The zodiac is dropped overboard and the first contingent outboards to
our putative landing site. The rest of us await, dressed in out float
coats and yellow rubber pants and boots. The zodiac returns with just
the operator and Marine Projects Coordinator, so we know the first wave
has landed. We climb down the rope ladder and pile in, and are swiftly
ferried over to the same rock cliff where the first group awaits. I see
Scott on the rock cliff, filming our arrival. Gary, the zodiac operator,
rams the rubber inflatable boat into the rock, and Al, M.P.C., throws
a line ashore. It is secured and we clamber onto this algae-infested,
slippery rock. We off-load our equipment and load it onto a banana sled,
starting the long haul up the snow-covered ridge to where the weather
station awaits. When we get on the island's summit, perhaps 200 feet above
sea level, we look around and see Hugo Island across the way, and the
redness of the Polar Duke out in the bay. White snow-capped mountains
in the distance, it looks like Everest-by-the-sea. And Santa has been
generous. Every rock outcropping, including the one on which the Automated
Weather Station has been erected, teems with Gentoos and Chinstraps, all
guarding their rock nests and sitting on two eggs each. We see why the weather station has ceased to function. The 12-foot-high
frame has been bent by what must have been hurricane-force winds, and
the propeller for the wind vane has been sheared off and is eventually
located, in three non-repairable parts, 100 feet away among the gentoos.
The electronics wizards begin their repair and replacement, and Scott
and I roam the 500-yard-long island, paying nest visits to small colonies
of these two distinctive species of penguin. We watch and shoot them nesting
and stealing rocks from one another and braying like mules, and nervously
spying skuas who glide noiselessly overhead. Every once in a while, a
bird will stand up from the nest and re-arrange the rocks that surround
the eggs, but it takes us over an hour to catch one doing that while we
are ready to tape the activity. I spy a group of silently-sitting Giant Petrels down a small glacier
from where we are, and Scott grabs them with the long lens, though they
don't seem to be as active or as nervous as the penguins. The place is
permeated with the aroma of partially-digested krill, stained with red
and orange krill parts that have somehow encouraged the lichens and algae
to give the rocks a dappled hue. We walk three or four steps away from
Gentoo and Chinstrap nests, and the birds do not move, do not fear us,
and even watch with gentle curoisity as the scientists and constructions
people rebuild the weather station. About two hours into the island visit, Santa returns! He is being drawn
by a human in a banana sled, complete with red coat and white long beard
and hair. He carries a blue velvet bag, but unceremoniously falls off
the sled as the bumps in the snow make his ride rougher than it earlier
had been on rafts of air. Our Santa is Tony Amos, a London-born oceanographer
who is now a U.S. citizen residing in Texas, the technician in charge
of maintaining this array of weather stations that dot the Antarctic.
This is his 33rd visit south of the Antarctic Circle, and the velvet bag
contains a nice Chilean Chardonnay, Tony's way of thanking the hard-working
troops who have fixed his station by volunteering to work on Christmas
Day. We pause an extra hour to film the Chinstraps with as much attention
to detail as we had earlier gotten with the Gentoos. Then it's back into
the zodiac and back to the Duke, where a proper Christmas feast awaits.
Everybody has worked up an appetite, but no one is prepared for turkey
and a whole roasted pig, ice sculpture featuring birds and exotic flowers
made out of fruits, five different desserts including a Chilean specialty
on which rum is poured and lit ("Baked Antarctica"!!!) and a
custard laced with Gran Marnier. A Christmas to remember on Santa Claus
island! We silently hope that the Captain will choose the Lemaire Channel to sail back to Palmer, because it is a million-dollar ride, scenery not to be believed, with almost-guaranteed close encounters of the cetacean kind likely. But the captain shakes his head. In Norwegian, this doesn't necessarily mean "No." Most likely, it means "I'll think about it and look at the chart. We'll see, Ja, we'll see." One last Xmas gift, Father Karl, and Tusen Takk for the holidaze.
Deane Rink
| From The Field | Video Information | Researcher Q
& A |
|
||
|
|
|
