Like many other things about life in Antarctica, diving here is difficult and definitely not straight forward. Forget about the challenges of diving in really cold water, the list of things that will keep the dive team out of the water in the first place seems endless and varies from weather, sea-ice, charismatic megafauna (especially big sea pandas – Orca and sea-voldemorts – Leopards Seals) and well being of the dive team itself to whether we have enough personal on station to operate a decompression chamber in case of an emergency. So my morning routine now involves the attempt to equalise my ears as soon as I wake up and a short prayer to the weather gods before I frantically check on wind, waves and visibility outside my window.

Generally whether, where and who is diving is decided first thing every morning during boat brief, here a bunch of scientists (me very much included), who are desperately waiting to collect data, have to prioritise what gets done on which dive and who will have to wait for another day – a scene pretty much resembling feeding time at the zoo. Once called to order by our diving officer, the dive team gets assembled consisting mostly of 4-5 people (2 divers, 1 supervisor, 1 coxswain and if necessary 1 tender). The divers then prepare their equipment and get ready to suit up. And this is where I generally get caught out. I am not a big breakfast person first thing in the morning (I know – most important meal of the day and all that) so I tend to skip it, thinking that I either will not be diving that morning or that the dive will be so late that I’ll have time for smoko (second breakfast). So every morning that I am told I’ll be diving straight away, I get surprised all over again (very much like the UKs grasp on snow during winter) and then spend the next 15 minutes frantically stuffing myself with any kind of food available in the building. I might not be big on breakfast but nobody wants to spend lugging heavy equipment around and diving in 0°C water without some fuel in them to burn. A lesson very quickly learned in Antarctica.

Sometimes a dive site is more remote or takes longer to reach because of brash ice on the water or heavy swell and that is where chocolate comes in. Chocolate is basically its own food group down here and can be a substitute for any type of meal – whether breakfast, lunch or dinner. And it is more or less essential pre- or post-dive.

Diving here is demanding, mentally and physically, even when all the stars align and we do get to go out. To protect ourselves from the cold (water conducts heat 20 times faster than air) we are wearing several baselayers, specialised undersuits and a thick neoprene drysuit (unlike a normal scuba suit it means, apart from hands and head we are staying dry during the dive, at least theoretically). Because of all the layers we are wearing, we tend to be very buoyant and require extra weights to sink – which we wear as part of a harness. One of my foes here is the BCD (basically a vest that can be filled with air) which has two steel cylinders attached holding our main breathing air and a bail-out system (in case of emergencies). It is incredibly heavy, difficult to handle because of its size and just generally unpleasant to lug around, especially when your movement is already restricted by your drysuit and you are about to collapse from heat stroke because of the many layers you are wearing. I have to admit, that when it comes to loading up the dive boat I tend to eschew the issue, until it becomes very apparent that no knight in shining armour is going to pick up the slag for me and I’ll just have to bite the bullet and lift it myself (we are all about equality). Once we arrive at the dive site the divers get kitted up. This involves putting on a full face mask which apart from the obvious benefit of keeping your face dry and allowing you to be in constant communication with the boat, definitely adds a touch of star wars to the whole operation. Any additional equipment needed during the dive, such as knive, collection bags, cameras etc. are being clicked onto the harness or BCD within easy reach (A great blog on the kind of science we do by the outgoing Marine Biologist, can be read here). So by the time, a diver is ready to roll into the water he very much resembles a cross between a Christmas tree and a storm trooper.

Getting cold is a more limiting factor than air consumption. And generally, after 30-40 min in the water we are more than happy to return to surface, where we are greeted by the boat team with hot tea or coffee, hot water bottles (which were used to keep our kit from freezing on the way to the dive site) and more chocolate. Upon return to base all of the kit needs to get carried back into the dive store, disassembled, rinsed in fresh water and dried before we go and do it all again. On very good days we do this 3 times a day, on good days – twice, ok days – once and very bad days – such as when wildlife strikes not at all. However one of the many benefits of all of this is, that by the end of the day you can collapse on the sofa (again – it’s a tough life down here) and continue to munch all of the chocolate without the slightest bit of remorse – your body needs refuelling right?

Yesterday the sun has set at Rothera Point, for the first time in 6 weeks and although it will still be a long time until darkness returns and we have nights again, it made me reflect on the time I have spent here so far.

Things haven’t always been easy and sometimes were challenging, in areas which I least expected. For me going to Antarctica was about the physical challenge of living in such an extreme environment (coming from the person, sitting on her veranda in the sunshine, sipping peppermint tea, while typing this) and the mental challenge of coping with the remoteness and the desolation of this place (casually uploading photos to Facebook).

Interestingly neither of these have shown problematic so far, the problem I seem to be having is adapting to the pace of working in Antarctica. Working as part of the marine team, we heavily rely on boats. Most of which are hardbottom inflatable boats (RHIBs) – and because conditions down here are so harsh (high UV radiation, brash ice and icebergs floating in the water) they are taking quite a battering. It is providing a challenge for even the most ingenious of our mechanics and the most dedicated of our boating officers, to keep the spark of life going in the rusty hearts of our boats engines. And we do  wonder whether the working ones are only held together by hope, desperation and a bit of ice as well as the constant tender care of the boating officers. Not ideal conditions for a dive team, which is dependent on boats to get them to dive sites but also cannot have them fail during dives so that divers can be picked up out of the water immediately after they surface and thereby limit their exposure to leopard seals, orcas and other curious marine wildlife which is a lot bigger than the average diver.

Efforts are underway to replace these old trusty workhorses and some new shiny boats have arrived, which we are all very excited about. Yet, although they have been here for a while they still need to be properly serviced after their long journey South before they can go for their first dip into the cold Antarctic sea. After a short while you quickly pick up on the fact that man power and spares are extremely limited here which means dealing with problems such as a broken engine requires patience, flexibility (neither of which I am particularly known for) and creativity.

The knock on effect of all this is that the marine team has been high and dry for a while, as a task focused scientist (or beakers as we are – not always – lovingly called here) this is not always easy to take. So the moments when we do get to go out on the water are precious and come with an extreme high. Recently, I had the opportunity to have my first boat training, so that eventually I can be trusted to handle the boat by myself (I still need a lot of training! And with that I mean – a lot!). Although once on the water many of these issues and problems, that rule everyday life – even here, just seem to melt away and this place regains its magic. Greeted by humpback whales which are returning to these nutrient rich waters in the wake of the phytoplankton bloom we zoomed past majestic icebergs and explored the rugged islands which mark the edge of our boating limit. Wildlife is richer and in greater abundance there and represents a little piece of heaven for a marine ecologist.

It seems as easy and natural to get caught up in everyday problems here as it is back home, however every time I see a penguin waddle across the runway or I get to go for a skiing trip swooshing down the slopes to the majestic backdrop of the sparkling mountain ranges of the Antarctic Peninsular (the hard life of a Polar Hero!) I cannot believe how lucky I am to have made it here and although I might be able to hold myself back from doing a little jig whenever I get excited, I am most definitely pinching myself to make sure I am not dreaming.

Adaptation is a funny thing. In an ecological sense it means individuals using certain behaviours or change body shapes to thrive in different habitats. In an evolutionary process, adaptation could ultimately lead to a species becoming genetically split into two (see Darwin’s finches). So I do hope that I can adjust to living in this environment in an ecological sense of way by working on developing all these character traits which I am very clearly lacking (such as patience, flexibility, calmness and did I mention patience) and do get to leave before I evolve into a semi-elephant seal (easily achieved with 5 meals a day).

Having just completed my last shift on the JCR, I arrived at Rothera covered in mud, slightly damp, a bit disorientated and in a whirlwind of emotions. Since the team had worked to the very last minute – goodbyes to old and new friends was short and overshadowed by the fact that we (another scientist staying for a couple of month and one of our engineers destined on the next flight to her new assignment) were about to be craned off the ship – as usual under time pressure. So here I was at Rothera watching the JCR (my security blanket) steaming away, while everybody was busy moving the few bits of cargo we had brought with us away and, as it was Christmas evening, finish work as soon as possible – leaving me feeling a bit blue after the buzz of the cruise, slightly panicked and full of anticipation and excitement for the weeks to come.

However, after having scrubbed off most of my mud and in search of a comfort cup of tea, I ran into some familiar faces from wintering training which instantly helped to make this place feel more like home. It feels good to know that the wintering team 2019 is almost completely assembled and we are here to help each other out.

One of the first things I learned as soon as I arrived on station, is that life in Antarctica requires an intricate layering system of personal protective equipment (PPE) and adherence to station protocol to protect you from the anger of the gods (Depending on the situation, they might be represented by the weather or station management). So to start a day, you are strongly encouraged to

1. Apply a layer of factor 50 suncreme (To shield you from the unfiltered UV through the Ozone hole), then you move on to
2. Thin base layers (based on weather conditions and work requirements) after which you move to
3. Normal wear (this could be anything from ballgown to boilersuit) and
4. Outer wear (again choose according to weather conditions). All of this will be toped up with
5. High visibility attire, including hard hat and vest (Because we are living on a building site for the new wharf) and accessorise with
6. Steel toe cap boots and
7. A handheld radio as well as
8. Sunglasses (completely non ironically, as the sun may burn your eyes out) and last but not least
9. Gloves

Once you managed all that you are then required to walk to one end of the station to indicate on a big tactical board which zone you are planning to spend your time in and come back and alter your position on the board as soon as you are going somewhere else (So that you may be found in case you manage to manovour youreself in an embarrassing situation or to make sure you do not need rescuing out of a burning house).

As my scatter brain is way too busy thinking about worms and mud and what’s for lunch I generally have trouble remembering all the necessary steps in my attire or in station protocol. So I have come up with a system to appeal to my competitive nature. Every time I manage to leave the house appropriately dressed and sticking to protocol I get one point. Every time I forget something I lose one. – Needless to say, I am not even breaking even (I moved to -0.5 points if I only forget one item – it makes no difference). Fortunately there are many kind souls on station who shout after me to wear a hard hat or sign me in and out whenever I’ve, again, walzed past the sign-in board in complete obliviation. We do have a saying in Germany: What you don’t have in your head, you have in your legs – I expect to return from Antarctica thoroughly fit.

However, once you master the art of dressing appropriately, Rothera has so much to offer: The station is surrounded by majestic icebergs and still incredibly clear waters (As plankton bloom hasn’t fully arrived yet) with a view over the mountains of the Antarctic Peninsula. We have two ski slopes for general use, a runway used to run or cycle on – if not occupied by planes or elephant seals, a few tracks around the area – for some peace and quiet and bird, seal and hopefully whale watching and an incredible team of people. And although turnover rate of people arriving and leaving the station is pretty fast, it is amazing how quick you can make really good friends here. Of course, the timing of my arrival was impeccable as I got here just in time for Christmas and New Years.

Although I did stick my head into my new and shiny office now and again – between the holidays – I was mostly busy with training, such as how to drive skidoos (Surprisingly easy), gaitors (- Not doing well if I need to pull a trailer) and how to tow boats with a tractor (- People actually fled when they saw me coming) as well as some recapture of first aid techniques and my field training which includes spending a night in a tent in the field (That requires a whole new layering system of sleeping bags and sheepskins which I am relying heavily on our field guides to remind me off – surprisingly warm though). The holidays, are surrounded by stations traditions and so we celebrated in style starting the day skiing, moving on to some truly sublime feasts – courtesy of some very hard working chefs – and finished with a walk up to the memorial to ring in the new year.

2018 turned out to be a brilliant year (personally – not politically), here is fingers crossed for a snow, fun and Antarctic marine ecology filled 2019

After 20 days at sea my time on the JCR has come to an end. We had an incredible productive time at Borgen Bay and my new homey, Sheldon glacier at Ryder Bay, and I can’t help but think back to some of the most amazing and surreal moments I’ve experienced during this time and feel like I have to jot them down quickly so that they won’t be forgotten or diminished by new experiences at Rothera.

Naturally, as a marine biologist, I was mostly interested in all the little critters living on the seafloor and how they change with distance to the glacier. However, this meant I seemed to have spent most of my time on board with my head stuck in giant sieves, patiently extricating teeny tiny worms from amongst gravel and muddy bits (sometimes there were more exciting animals too, but mostly it was worm central down there). Spending all your time within an enormous tube should mean you wouldn’t have to worry about the increased UV radiation in Antarctica right? This is where choice of material becomes really important. Turns out metal sieves reflect UV rays and you still burn although you feel like a giant mole most of the time – Factor 50 it is, even for furry underground rodents. When in full work mode, it is easy to forget where you are and whenever looking up now and again it is almost a startling experience as the beauty and difference of this place strikes you again and again. Even spending several days within the same small bays doesn’t get boring as the light constantly changes and every day new wildlife appears.

Head stuck in giant sieve. Photo credit A. Guzzi

More heads in sieves. Photo credit: K. Retallick

During the cruise one of my favourite moments, was working on a nightshift helping the grab team. Grabs are almost like big digger shuffles, to sample everything living on and within the sediment of the seabed. When they are being retrieved they are generally filled with mud and need washing and – surprise, surprise – sieving and sorting. It is incredible muddy and cold work to prepare the samples to a degree that they can be brought into the wet lab for the rest of the team to sort through and because certain members of the team had made a solid scientific case (this enthusiasm, funnily enough, wasn’t shared by other team members at the time) for sampling more stations than originally planned we were under time pressure. So while I was busy on the aft deck washing my sample at 2o’clock in the morning, our engineer – kind soul that he is – had made cheese toasties for the team. Since I didn’t want to stop working on my sample, he eventually took pity on me and started feeding me. So here I was in the middle of Antarctica – on a research vessel, watching the midnight sun, picking out worms from a pile of mud, being fed cheese toasties while a group of penguins floated by on an iceberg. Life doesn’t get much better than this!!

First big icebergs on our way to Rothera

Midnight light at the Antarctic Peninsula

Penguins floating past

Yet, there were so many more happy and wonderful experiences I have made during the past four weeks, such as sitting in the conference room of the ship, working on my laptop while somebody played the piano and I could see the incredible landscape of the Antarctic peninsula floating by, or getting up in the morning to find the ship enclosed by sea ice making it possible to see seals and penguins resting on it from very close up. And even though at times work was hard or exhausting or sometimes we were incredibly tired and everybody on board pretty much resembled the precursor of a zombie apocalypse the underlying feeling was happiness and seldom a day went by without my stomach muscles aching from all the laughter. My supervisor called the James Clark Ross the Goldilocks ship, and he is spot on – she is just right. Big and strong enough to withstand some of the most dangerous seas while at the same time small enough to feel homily and be able to get to know everybody on board. It is a strange thing to feel anything for an inanimate object, though my heart went out to her when I saw her sailing away after she dropped me off at Rothera. She has kept me save and has brought me to this incredible place.  Now, a new adventure beckons…

Or the story of how engineering trumps science – big time

Writing this I am surrounded by Borgen Bay a landscape similar to what I imagine the fairy land of Terry Pratchetts queen of the elfs to look like. Glaciers softly sloping down to a mirror like sea sprinkled with icebergs and the stark whiteness of the land interrupted by the foreboding black ridges of an incredible high mountain range. Constant changes in light and weather combined with the incredible brightness of this place, play with your ability to perceive distance and size and constantly add new features to these strange and new surroundings. We sailed into the bay on a foggy and gloomy day causing a very eerie feeling as suddenly shifting windows in the fog revealed this new environment by bit, yet closed just as quickly as soon as the ship had moved past.

We have fared considerably further south making the difference between Marion Cove on the tip of the peninsula (Banana belt!) and Borgen Bay clearly perceptible and I am starting to get an idea of what life for the next 18 months will look like. My friends and colleagues are also getting a view on what their next 18 months might be like…a Desha shaped hole at Christmas, on JCR and in Cambridge..)

We had left Marion Cove victorious 20h earlier and ahead of time having managed to complete all our sampling stations. However half way through our time there this did not seem likely let alone possible. This was mainly owing to one major piece of equipment failing – the multicorer from hell! During the cruise several major pieces of equipment are being deployed (e.g. Grabs – to take sediment and specimen samples from the bottom or CTDs to take water samples at different depth levels), each generally coming with their own dedicated team whose projects are centred around these specific type of samples. The main reason I was asked on this voyage was to provide a helping hand to the multicorer team. Generally, the multicorer is an ingenious piece of equipment featuring 12 (not any more!) hollow tubes (cores) set around two pieces of weight. When lowered to the seabed the weight will drive the cores into the sediment which will trigger the release of a catch causing the top of the cores to be closed, creating a vaccum within the cores which allows for the extraction of the sediment. Once the multicorer gets lifted up from the seabed another catch is released closing the cores on the bottom, allowing them to be safely returned throughout the water column to the ship. Just a bit of a shame if that trigger doesn’t work and all you get are empty cores that might have contained mud (repeatedly all fecking night long).

Because operating a ship in Antarctica is tremendously expensive, science time on board is precious and whenever we reach a sampling station, scientists work around the clock in shifts – having 24h of daylight means the transition between days becomes very quickly very blurred during these times and the only way to distinguish between both seems to be the abundance or lack of food. Multicoring fell within the graveyard shift. So after dinner at 8 o’clock I got ready for my first real science gig in Antarctica throwing on my sparkling brand new and very orange waterproofs and hard hat. Tumbling over each other like excited puppies under the supervision of a very patient engineer we got the multicorer ready for its first deployment. We were full of anticipation when it came back out of the water, the lab team ready to extract the mud cores and slice samples for various different projects into containers, and slightly underwhelmed when realising we only got three cores from this deployment (we need 15 each from a total of 5 stations). No matter however, we were all still full of energy and got the engineer on the case to have a quick look at why the closing mechanism didn’t trigger for some cores. Full of confidence that everything is fixable and was fixed the multicorer was cleaned and redeployed only to come up with absolutely no mud cores whatsoever, not even a teeny tiny one, nada. Clearly not having learned our lesson we continued our quest for mud with a constantly low success rate throughout the night. The multicorer seemed to sense the general shift in mood and whenever we were close to giving up would tease us with a full core or two, and like the fools we are we took this as a sign that things had arbitrarily turned around (yes even scientist find it hard to be reasonable when they really, really want something to happen). At 3 o’clock in the morning, when tiredness and disappointment had kicked in our engineer stepped in for some serious fixing. While he worked away, rounds of tea were brought around and the inexplicably muddy (where did it come from with all this lack of mud?) Aftdeck was cleaned. The rollercoaster of hope soared high as the multicorer successfully triggered on a dry run only to plunge into depths of despair when it –again – came up absolutely, completely empty after re-deployment. By this time we had used up all our allocated time for the night and there was nothing left to do but to go to sleep, dreaming of better days and leaving our engineer, who must have been almost crushed by the weight of our dreams and hopes we had pinned on him, to try and work out the problem.

Work on the devil’s own torture device continued and by the arrival of the second night the engineers declared that they thought there is a 50 % chance of it working. However, the first multicore was to go to a different team and it is remarkable how testy people can get over the potential of receiving a few slabs of mud (myself very much included). So when we got ready to deploy the multicorer the whole team assembled. Watching it come back up from the deep – the tension was palpable and was broken by an incredible cheer when we realised we had got 6 tubes of fresh, brilliant Antarctic mud. Having to give these precious cores away was difficult but we were sure the vicious circle was broken and we would just get the next ones. The multicorer – instrument of the demons, however, had different plans! As if exhausted from the effort of producing 6 good cores, it then proceeded to fail every single deployment. Very much aware that the definition of crazy is to repeat the same action and expect a different outcome, we couldn’t help ourselves but do exactly that – surprisingly enough we were not successful. By 4 o’clock in the morning most of the team was asleep in the coffee room and again it was time to call it. We went to sleep knowing that we had failed and since we were leaving the next day that we would not get our samples.

I woke up the following morning feeling a bit dejected but, knowing that I will have no work to do during the day, decided to have a leisurely morning taking my time to get ready. As soon as I stepped out my cabin looking for my first jolt of peppermint tea I got confronted with a picture of the morning team holding fresh mud cores which, in a considerate, collegial manner, had been left in front of my door. Not believing my own eyes, I gave up every thought of minty refreshment and immediately went downstairs to the wet-lab. Here the early risers of the multicore team where assembled working away on the samples taken this morning. Our engineer – true polar hero that he is – had called the people responsible for producing this mechanical manifestation of pure evil (must have been costing quite a bit to ring Hell from Antarctica), while we were asleep and after having made clear to them that he is not just dabbling in engineering they came up with a workable solution (basically removing the over-engineered black heart of the multicorer).

After this successful exorcism the multicorer is now reliably producing mud cores to our hearts content. This meant we had 6 hours to complete all the sampling we were meant to do during two 6-hour shifts. However, this is when the beauty of working within a team becomes apparent. All scientists assembled and came to help, crew members, including the captain rallied and facilitated us as much as was humanly possible. The winch lifting the multicorer never stood still, cores filled with mud were constantly brought to the lab, and the lab itself was a blur of orange (Scientist wearing PPE)

and bit by bit every core was processed and all the sampling stations completed. While finishing the last core the James Clark Ross headed for the open sea, leaving Marion Cove behind and leaving us, covered in mud but very content and looking forward to a massive glass of wine!