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.

Sometimes...one should just look up

The view from the bottom up. The cracks bring the scenery to life.

As a seafloor ecologist, I spend most of my time underwater looking down. I frequently miss the sharks (when in the tropics), rays, large fish, and definitly seals that circle me as my face is firmly planted in the mud. Its my happy place and one that is striking.

The seafloor, like the surface can be covered in ice - somehow anemones like these can continue to live in this frozen region.

While we see ice on the seafloor, the ice above is really what sets this place apart in many ways. And it is difficult to capture on photo - that is one of the reasons I feel so privileged to have Lily here to help translate that into a way that others can appreciate.

The cracks in the ice are a window back to the cold above but the blues are indescribable without experiencing them. The main point of this dive was to get Lily more time to vision how to translate this environment to those who may never get the chance (or the maybe the oddity, to want to) dive here.

Lily had the best tour guide and colleague on this dive - Rob Robbins, who is here doing what we often need to remember to do... look up.

All dives must come to and end, but on our day "off" it was nice to get in the water and look around - it is all part of the project which aims to use every means possible to inform and excite as many people as possible about the importance and amazement of Antarctica's marine realm.