Camping Cape Evans Experience

To round out our field season we did two overnight camping trips to Cape Evans. We went to collaborate with Andrew's previous student Dr. Sarah Seabrook and her team through the New Zealand Scott Base.

While the pancake ice and icebergs were beautiful, this is the first time Cape Evans has had open water this close during this part of the season; a reminder of our changing climate.

While we've been diving out of dive holes this year, at the sea ice edge we had to get creative. We spent hours sawing, chainsawing and ice picking a staircase down to the water edge and a hole to recover the kiwi lander.

The local Adelie penguin colony was very interested in our work, checking out our pop up dive tent, tripod and recovery lines for the lander. We do stop science to take pictures and hangout with the penguins, at least for a little bit.

One was particularly interested in our chainsaw, but he didn't have the proper training or PPE so we told him no. The chainsaw was also turned off and cooled for the record.

As divers we were there to support cleaning the lander, returning it to the shore for the kiwis and redeploying it after switching out their instruments for another year of sampling. We also took some opportunistic samples to study the microbial and animal communities surrounding the methane seeps here. Here Alex Brett, Andrew Thurber, and Steve Rupp get ready to dive.

I thought it was quite cool seeing the instrumentation used to study these seeps from sensors on a lander, lift bags and dry suit SCUBA divers, to even a small Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) named Luna. Science in the 21st century is pretty awesome.

Overall I'd say it was a highlight of the season and the most memorable camping trip I've had. From waking up to an iceberg in front of my tent to penguins running through camp with home cooked meals, it certainly felt like a dream.