Life Beyond the Beaker

 Merry Christmas from Rothera! Hope you are all having a wonderful time :)

Last week we spoke to over 200 children across the UK to mark world Antarctica day. From the BAS facebook page: ''Children aged 7-9 yrs old from Selborne Primary School in Hampshire enjoyed speaking to marine biologist Sarah Reed at our Rothera Research Station. And here they are all dressed up for speaking to Sarah as part of their 'extreme survival' module'' Throughout my time here I have been connecting with various different schools; here is a video John Law the meteorologist and I made for a school he was in contact with. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4EaRXC1g5g&feature=youtu.be Kat Morgan my childhood friend is a teacher at a school in England, her class sent me lots of questions to answer! This is the letter I sent them.   Kat has also made a funny 3D model of me for her school board!   Last year I spoke to Sue Hamilton Peach and her school in Southampton  - this is the board she made about science in An...

Kate our diving officer recently got a risk assessment approved for us to go diving on ice bergs. The conditions need to be calm on the surface and we an air temperature of > -5 oC, the icebergs also need to be grounded and fasted within fast ice for us to get close to them, if not then we can look at them from a distance.       When there is no fast ice, ice bergs move with the wind and currents, unless grounded. During this time ice bergs are too unpredictable to dive on, as below the surface is 3 x the height of what is above the water. Even on a cold day icebergs can roll and break up.   Kate Stanton's photo Here is a wide angle shot of the ice berg in Hangar You can see the excitement in my eyes!     One day last week we went diving through the main hole whilst Ben's controlled his remotely operated vehicle (ROV) called Debra through the safety hole and videoed our dive! It was such an incre...

    In the last week of October Al and Rob went out to Fossil Bluff to begin the opening up of the hut at Fossil Bluff. I then went into Fossil Bluff and Rob got moved onto Sky Blue, so I helped Al to finish off getting the site up and running for the summer after 8 months of being winterised. Fossil Bluff Fossil Bluff is used as a refuelling site for the twin otters that fly from Rothera to Sky Blue and then further afield to the Berkner ice shelf where there is a traverse of scientists or onto Halley and other remote sites. I managed to spend a few days here last February (I wrote a blog post called the silent sound). Fossil Bluff has an amazing mountain type hut (photo above) beneath the ridges, the building itself was brought over from Stonington when BAS were the FIDs and then it was rebuilt next to King Geroge IV ice shelf. We had a big list of jobs to do, I won't lie, it took me a few days to get into the swing of digging as I reall...

So I thought I would enlighten everyone on what job I am actually employed here at Rothera to do. I am here as a marine assistant for BAS to maintain a long term data set called the RaTs programme which is a data set that has been running since 1997 collecting biological and oceanographical data around Rothera.   Here is some great drone footage showing exactly where I live and work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3r4jrKmuBo You can see from this graph that we have large fluctuation in air temperature and surface winds (Julian day numbers). Before I talk about the science I am doing I would just like to note that living and working at the same place means that not only am I here at Rothera for science, but also to assist in keeping the base up and running. This can be from cooking tasks, to cleaning rotas (we called it gash).  In addition to this as a wintering team we are trained up in fire response and oil response.  That's me in ...