Kowalski, we found humans!

This past week McMurdo Station got a surprise visit from Emperor Penguins, a flock of more than 50 individuals! In the middle of the day, just as we were about to head to the Dive Locker, time paused for everyone at the station. In less than 20 minutes, Andrew filed the field plan permit (eFoot Plan) and we were on our way on the sea ice just in time to receive them!

Words truly cannot describe our excitement of seeing penguins in Antarctica for the first time this season. As the curious emperor penguins made their way towards the entrance of the station, you could hear their calls to their friends to come and see the humans. From the sound of their steps in the snow, to their "thump" sound as they go in their bellies to slide around, these 3ft+ tall birds quickly became one of our core Antarctic season highlights.

As established in the Antarctic Treaty, we only approach them to no closer than 5m (15ft) to avoid disturbing them in any way. Keeping our distance allows us to also see them in their natural habitat and behavior!

If there should be a written rule about our team's daily plan, it is: there is always time for penguins! Antarctica is full of surprises, and each one of them has only brought us closer to nature and taught me the importance of being present in the moment.

Leave No Trace Halloween

One of my favorite aspects of life in Antarctica is the Antarctic Treaty—a deeply inspiring example of many countries coming together to commit to decommodification (the continent cannot be used for commercial purposes) and environmental conservation. An important element of that stewardship is the concept of “leave no trace.” 

The extremely cold, dry air in Antarctica means most things (like this thousand-plus year old seal mummy in the Dry Valleys) decompose very very slowly. Which makes it all the more important to leave no trace while there.

If you spend time in other wildernesses or protected areas, you are likely familiar with this concept of packing out one’s own waste and any other debris. In Antarctica, we commit so deeply to this concept that when we are off-station, we collect our urine in a “pee bottle” while we are out. Pee bottles are typically repurposed Nalgene drinking bottles (carefully labeled with the letter P to avoid any disturbing mix-ups) If we are in the field, the pee bottles are then emptied into a large barrel back at camp and ultimately transported by helicopter to station, and the put on a vessel back to the United States for proper sewage treatment. If we are just out on a day trip from the research station, we keep the bottle with us and empty it in the bathroom at the end of the day. They are then sanitized and re-used.

from left: Andrew Thurber as a scuba diving "down line" with flashers, Rob Robbins as an Anglerfish, Paola Santiago as Cody the Penguin from Surf's Up, Dexter Davis as an Ice Type Pokemon, me (Lily Simonson) as a pee bottle, Lauren Liggan as an Antarctic dragonfish

Another important Antarctic tradition is creatively putting together Halloween costumes with whatever spare parts and trash are lying around. I love the spirit of innovation that thrives at McMurdo, where you can’t just pop over to the Halloween store or order something online if you want a costume. 

So for Halloween this year, I wanted to pay tribute to both the Antarctic commitment to environmental stewardship, and the tradition of crafty innovation by making a pee bottle costume out of whatever I could find lying around the recycle dumpsters on station. So using cardboard, found rope, and a clear trash bag, (plus some blue paint from my makeshift studio) I cobbled together a pee bottle costume… and voila! Happy (belated) halloween!

Drill Team 249

You now know that we dive through holes in the ice to do our research here in McMurdo Sound, but where do these dive holes come from? We have to go drill them!

This time we're drilling the hole at our main site, Cinder Cones, where methane gas seepage began in 2011.

It starts by flagging where we want the dive hole to be (crossed red flags), and then we bring out a bulldozer carrying a drilling machine behind.

The drill creates a hole 4 feet in diameter down through the ice sheet, around 6 feet thick. Then, we clean it up by shoveling the spillover snow, and scooping out ice inside the hole.

Once we had approval from our site manager, a very cute Weddell seal who was eager to check out the new hole, we move our dive hut over top of it. We'll become great friends with dive hut 8, as soon as the heat is turned on inside.

Thanks to the McMurdo carpenters and our dive team, we now have a new protected dive hole where we can research the role of methane in Antarctica.