Visitors!

Oh boy, I have not done a good job keeping up in the blogging department! Over the past couple weeks, we’ve had several exciting visitors down here at Palmer Station.

First and foremost, we had an amazing opportunity to meet the crew of the Spirit of Sydney, a 60-foot expedition yacht. In celebration of the 100 year anniversary since Roald Amundsen become the first explorer to reach the South Pole, the crew has several things planned. The expedition is led by Jorgen Amundsen, a descent of Roald Amundsen. Beginning in Ushuaia, Argentina the yacht made its way across the Drake Passage (I don’t know about you, but I would NOT want to take a boat that small across the Drake) and on to the Antarctic Peninsula. On their way down the Peninsula, they decided to anchor in our harbor and check out Palmer Station. I was actually able to go over with a few people and set foot on the yacht. It was really neat to learn about where everyone is from and their part in the expedition. That evening, the crew came over to station and gave a more detailed talk about the expedition. On person presenting was Grant Redvers, who is the only person since 1893 to complete the entire Transpolar Drift – which entails spending close to 2 years on a research yacht frozen into sea ice drifting with the current across the North Pole. Yikes. In addition to the celebration of Amundsen’s anniversary, the Sydney is advertising an environmental campaign called SING FOR THE PENGUINS. The campaign focuses on how climate change is affecting the Antartic and its wildlife; overall the point is to have people from all over the world sing a tone for the penguins which will then be put together into a choir (if you’re interested: http://spiritofamundsen.com/singforthepenguins/). For the rest of their journey, the crew is skiing onto the main Antarctic continent and doing some mountaineering in Amundsen’s honor. Such a cool group of people.

The Spirit of Sydney in Arthur Harbor

The Laurence M. Gould came again at the end of November, this time however, to take some scientists with it. Of course, in their honor we completed a polar plunge…check out the video my friend Luke made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaYXDaLoyCA. And yes I know my jump is really lame, but I think my sparkles make up for it. 

To top things off, we had our first cruise ship of the season come to visit! On Thanksgiving Day, the National Geographic Explorer barreled into Arthur Harbor and brought over passengers via zodiacs. Note that these people pay $10,000 - $30,000 for the cruise – crazy! The passengers get a short tour of Palmer Station, swing by the gift shop, and then come into the main galley where we have posters set up and us scientists stand around for questions and conversation. Later in the evening, some of us went over for a question and answer session on the ship. It was neat getting to introduce myself and answer a question, although I was surprised at how few people raised their hands when we asked how many actually believed in climate change. It was about 10 or 15 people out of over 130.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, we celebrated the day after with a large feast. A few of us helped set up the galley by moving all the tables around to make a big family table, and decorated them. During dinner, instead of our normal buffet style, we put all the food in dishes and passed it around the table. We had a multitude of pies - I proudly made a 3 layer cheesecake, pumpkin, and pecan pie that went over well with folks. 

Dinner time!

All the pies

Despite all this excitement however, since we’ve hit late November and early December we have not been able to go out sampling once! As scientists, we’re happy that the sea ice which is good for the krill and ecosystem is still around this late in the season – but dang it, we can’t go study it! We’ve been filling our days fine-tuning personal statements and CV’s, doing some art projects, t-shirt designing, and hair dying.