Friday morning started with Scott and I running late, just missing the hot breakfast food. The kitchen pulls all of the food promptly at 7:30, and as we arrived they were taking it away. I was forced to eat a bowl of Golden Grahams with evaporated skim milk instead of my usual scrambled eggs. I made a mental note to set my alarm for 10 minutes earlier from now on.
Our first meeting of the day was with the McMurdo NOC, or Network Operating Center. Our goal: to figure out a solution for mirroring POLAR ICE locally. They were more than accommodating, and once they found out we didn’t need them to do any application support, just apply an update fix every couple of weeks, they gladly offered the use of one of their servers for this project. We chatted with them for almost an hour, discussing how we could help them with some of their overwhelming support issues. One of the topics discussed was the online helicopter flight request form that Monika could really use. They seemed thrilled that we were willing to look at the code that is currently in place, but doesn’t work. They’re network people, not web programmers, but unfortunately they get hit with all of the web issues that come up. As our primary charter is not just POLAR ICE, but software to support science as a whole, we’re looking to do whatever we can to support the workcenters. Fixing this form for Monika is a small undertaking that will make her life much easier.
Next we headed over to the Crary Laboratory. This is a 46,000 square foot facility that was built in three phases. Karen Joyce, from the Denver office and yet another Courage Classic rider with me this summer, gave us the secret tour of the facility. Every Sunday at 2:00 there is a public tour, but Karen showed us all kinds of nooks and crannies that the general public never sees. This is a truly fascinating building.
The tour started in the CSEC (Crary Science and Engineering Center Library), on the second floor of Phase I. This library also serves as a lounge for the grantees, and has a tremendous view of Mt. Lister and the rest of the mountains across the bay. Trivia tidbit of the day: Mt. Lister is the tallest in the Royal Society Mountain Range across the bay, at 13,205 feet high. It was named after Dr. Joseph Lister, whose research into antiseptics eventually led to what is now known as Listerine. There are quite a few other peaks in this range that are nearly as high, and the fifth tallest peak is named Joyce Peak, after our very own tour guide. Karen has been in the program long enough that a mountain has been named in her honor. Pretty cool stuff.
Near the entrance of the building is a display case full of all kinds of amazing artifacts. There are skulls of many different types of seals, petrified wood from an Antarctic forest millions of years gone, and even several meteorites that have hit the continent. Karen knows a lot about everything in this case and we spent quite a while just gawking at all this cool stuff.
Phase I of the Crary Lab houses all of the science groups studying biological sciences. We were given brief overviews of many of the projects taking place on station and I was fascinated with the quality of science taking place on station. I felt fairly humbled walking through this building, knowing that I was in the presence of some of the most brilliant minds on the planet.
Phase II is home to mostly geological science. The largest project in this sector is the Mt. Erebus Volcano Observatory and Laboratory (MEVOL). Mt. Erebus again is the southernmost active volcano in the world. It stands 12,448 feet high. Its crater is 900 feet deep by 2,640 feet wide. Dr. Phil Kyle leads the MEVOL project, which has set up a video camera at the summit, peering down into the crater. This video feed is transmitted back to the Crary Lab, where you can watch live footage on a large TV set up in a common area. There are also some video clips on demand of previously captured eruptions. Watching this massive volcano bubbling away was a truly captivating experience. Karen said she often gets trapped here, never wanting to leave for fear of missing an eruption. The project also has placed many seismic sensors on the volcano, which can detect earthquakes anywhere in the world. It even detected when the B15 iceberg broke in two and slammed into Ross Island.
Also in Phase II is an Italian experiment that measures the ozone hole. Whenever you hear any report about the ozone hole you can be assured that all of the data came from the room in which I was standing. They have a giant green laser that shoots up into space, taking constant measurements of the hole. The ozone hole covers a large chunk of Antarctica, which, combined with all of the UV reflecting off the ice and snow, makes this the most marketable environment in the world for Coppertone.
After gawking at all this tremendously cool stuff we headed down to Phase III of the building, which houses the aquarium space. Dr. Art DeVries is one of the most famous scientists on station, as he has been coming here for over 40 years to research why fish blood doesn’t freeze. A while back he proved the existence of an antifreeze protein in the fish blood and has been furthering his research ever since.
For some reason I expected a giant fish tank like you’d see in some snooty 5-star restaurant, but the aquarium is actually just another laboratory with large pools of water. This water is actually pumped in and out of McMurdo Sound, using some fairly sophisticated equipment that goes under the sea ice. The water is the coldest water you’ll ever touch, at 28 degrees Fahrenheit. How is that possible, you ask? It’s salt water; the salt lowers the freezing point a few degrees. Any colder and it would be ice.
Karen explained that just under the ice, right in front of the station, is the richest ecosystem in the world, even more so than the Great Barrier Reef. Apparently the cold water allows all kinds of interesting life forms to thrive in this section of the world, many of which aren’t even documented. Dr. DeVries often goes out and drudges the bottom of the Sound, at 1800 feet below the surface, and brings up new and interesting “critters,” many of which have never before been seen by man. Amazing stuff happens here.
One of the tanks had two enormous Antarctic Cod. These are the fish that Dr. DeVries focuses on, and they are huge. They’re the main source of food for Weddell seals, and the two in this tank had several scars on their bodies. Since Dr. DeVries only cares about some of the internal organs, once he dissects the fish the rest of it is given to the kitchen. Once there is enough fish meat there will be Antarctic Sushi night. Everyone here has told me that this fish is the best fish you’ll ever taste. I hope I get a chance to try it.
Another tank housed Antarctic “water spiders,” which are giant spiders that live in the ocean. Sara, being a major arachnophobe, would have hated this, so I snapped a couple of pictures for her. The spiders are the size of dinner plates and would take more than a tissue to kill if you ever had the misfortune of running into one.
After gawking at the star fish and other Antarctic sea anomalies our tour had concluded. We ate too much for lunch and then hit cubeland again for a routine afternoon of work. We focused on getting everything ready for our new McMurdo POLAR ICE server. Hopefully that should be up and running by the middle of next week.
After work we decided to climb Ob Hill again, since Scott had never been up. I was all for it, as I really need to burn as many calories as possible. There is no “lo-cal” option here, all the food is very calorie-dense. We learned in Snowcraft I that eating fuels your internal furnace, and that the process of metabolizing food will warm up your body. I don’t need that much warmth.
The day was beautiful, except for the irrepressible wind, and the views from the top of Ob Hill were just as stunning as last time. I think I might make this hike a daily activity.
After dinner Scott and Josh went back to bldg 175 to blog, and I went to the Coffee House to see the presentation given by one of the women on the AWE expedition of the early ‘90s. This was the Antarctic Women’s Expedition, where four women set out to trek across the continent by pulling their own sleds and surviving without the help of men or dogs. They made it as far as the South Pole before they had to stop, but their journey was fascinating. It makes my one night of Happy Camper School look pretty lame, but hey, you’ve gotta start somewhere, right?
There are a few pictures of the aquarium with this update.
