2017: return of the sea!

 

 

Zoe my replacement has arrived!

 

Love the colour difference in our drysuits!

We know each other from Plymouth University so there were no awkward greetings...just awkwardness from us both being awkward people - we get on really well so should be a fun handover! Zoe brought a package with her from my parents, in it was this dress that I wore for Christmas and as I am always so classy of course I got my foot stuck in the grating whilst trying to take a nice photo.

 

 

Lovely photo of some of the girls that are here at Rothera this Chrismtas!

 

We are out on the boats again as the sea ice has melted and blown out yay!

 

The wildlife has returned with the sea...unfortunately we have already seen lots of leopard seals. From the left side of a leps face we can identify them and build up a wildlife catalogue. You can see lots of brash and pack ice still floating around Ryder Bay in the background.

 

Courtesy of Theresa Murphy (New DO)

 

 

 

A penguin with no head!

 The phytoplankton bloom is very dense so it's like diving in pea green soup! This photo was taken on our new dive officer Theresa's first dive in Antarctica where her and Kate could not see each other from a hand length apart.

You can see how big the peak in florescence is!

The past few weeks we have managed to have a few awesome runs on stork bowl, snowboarding is great fun when there is deep power, I've just got to keep practicing my carving.

 

Stork bowl with the sea ice in Ryder Bay & Sheldon glacier in front


Photo kindly taken by Denzel

I am also trying to ski...not going as well!

 I've been doing lots of work on the Sewage treatment plant (STP) with the tech services. The other week I teamed up with the new Doc Jen and microbiologist Shoba to do some gram staining on the samples to see exactly what bacteria we are getting in both the biomatrix of the STP and the outflow. The results are pending, never knew our sewage could be so interesting! This is another thing I love about this job and working in Antarctica, there is always something new and unexpected to be learning - I love the variability.

 

 

We had a visit from the Palmer which was exciting as the sea ice had only started to fully melt a few days before they arrived, it was great to see their ice breaking capabilities.

 On New Years eve we had our traditional 10/5 km run around the run way. Still find it bizarre that we can run around the cold dry air of Antarctica in the same clothes that I would at home!

 Great cheering on from the crowd.

On Wednesday (12th) the RRS James Clark Ross (JCR) arrived for relief! I was on mooring team with the rest of the marine team so we were responsible for attaching the ships bow, stern, breast and spring lines to the shackles! It has been a busy few days of on loading and off loading cargo. Lots left to unpack!