I had the opportunity to work from the HMS Protector for a few days last week. We were only on board for 2 and a half days but completed work on 3 different islands a few miles away from Rothera. The Protector is a Royal Navy Ice patrol ship.
An impressive crane!
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| I do hate these ladders |
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| We had to carry survival gear with us which included tent, food and stove encase we got stranded on one of the islands. |
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| We had three main missions. From Rothera we travelled to Horseshoe island, then Pourquoi Par and then Lagotellerie and then back to Rothera |
Our first mission was to go to Horseshoe Island where I was responsible for swapping out an old sea ice depot and replacing it with new stock. Horseshoe used to be a BAS (then FIDs) base back in 1955 where meteorology and geology was carried out, it is now looked after by the Antarctic Heritage Trust. The purpose of a sea ice depot is for BAS winter travelling from Rothera across the sea ice, it is put there to use in an emergency encase the sea ice party get stuck at Horseshoe in the worst case scenario that the sea ice breaks out.
Lots of cruise ships and yacht visit Horseshoe and in the past our emergency stores have been raided so we spent a bit of time writing on the drums.
We did find some chocolate that had already been opened and not claimed....from 1992, the year I was born!
The team from the Antarctic Heritage Trust are currently fixing and indenting the buildings at Horseshoe, so the depot will be put in this small hut once they've completed their restoration work.
Emily and Ali also had some terrestrial sampling to complete. We collected soil and lichens for some of the biologists from BAS. 
My second major mission was to install a sea ice camera on Pourquoi Par island. Al assisted the install with his excellent knot tying skills. This simple set up of a gabian basket, tripod, small solar panel, battery box and Cannon 700 D will take a photo every hour for one year until Zoe the next marine assistant picks it up next year! Hopefully it will all work, the camera and memory card was set up and tested at Rothera and when we left it was taking a photo every hour so now the camera is in the hands of the weather gods.
We placed the camera on moraine (rocks that have been picked up and then dumped by a glacier). I chose this as the perfect spot to capture icebergs carving off the Moradier glacier as it's high enough to get the whole glacier whilst also giving a view of where the icebergs then travel. The island is also usually shrouded in cloud with an inversion a bit lower down so hopefully this placement should give us more photos than if it was up higher!
This sea ice camera is in collaboration with BAS through Dave Barnes (DKA) and Bangor University. More information about what this type of data can provide can be found here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13523/full & affiliations with Bangor University: www.asccc.co.uk
Chris a geologist was also on the island with us sampling erratics, these are rocks that have been moved and are exposed by the glacier, they are important for dating movement of the glacier. This type of geology is called cosmogenics, as the rock is dated by using isotope signals to see how long the rock has been exposed to the sun for. Chris was interested in rocks that were high in quartz. Below I am assisting him to clear up one of his sampling sites by knocking off the edges.
My third mission was to assist Emily and Ali on Lagotellerie Island, Marguerite Bay, Graham Land an Antarctic Specially Protected Area (ASPA) where the aim is to protect environmental values, and primarily the terrestrial flora and fauna but also the avifauna within the Area.
The reason that this island was made an ASPA is because it contains a relatively diverse flora typical of the southern Antarctic Peninsula region. Especially the abundance of the only two Antarctic flowering plants Deschampsia antarctica and Colobanthus quitensis which form stands up to 10 m2
These are amongst the largest stands known south of the South Shetland Islands, being only 90 km north of their southern limit.
In addition to this, mosses and lichens form well-developed communities on the island. A few of the mosses are fertile, which is rare in most Antarctic locations.
Deschampsia antarctica at the highest recorded altitude south of 56° S.
Amazing to see how green an island can be in Antarctica - exactly the reason why this island is so special!
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The second exciting thing about this island, apart from the fact that it was so green was the penguin colony!
Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) and one of the farthest south colonies of a few dozen blue-eyed cormorants (Phalacrocorax atriceps) at the south-east corner of the island. Numerous pairs of brown and south polar skuas (Catharacta lonnbergii and C. maccormicki) breed on the island.
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| These guys look like they should be in the court room! |
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| Using the GPS to get a distance from the Penguin colony. |
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| Bum sliding is always faster |
A great few days work, a great thank you to the HMS Protector and it's crew for assisting us with some important work! 
