Mawson and Greenpeace #6

from Tim Page

on the Australian Icebreaker "Aurora Australis", in the Southern Ocean

January 16, 2000, 2:00pm

Hello there to the students and staff of Winthrop, Block Island, and Doyon

Schools!

PRESENT POSITION: 53 degrees South Latitude, 118 degrees East Longitude

DIRECTION HEADING: 60 degrees (northeast)

SHIP SPEED: 17.5 knots

DISTANCE TO TASMANIA: 1330 nautical miles

DISTANCE FROM MAWSON STATION, ANTARCTICA: 1832 nautical miles

AIR TEMPERATURE: + 4.8 degrees Celsius

WATER TEMPERATURE: + 4.4 degrees Celsius

WIND SPEED: 23 knots

HUMIDITY: 87%

Hi there everyone. I hope you guys are having fun, since I certainly am.

We are heading north on our way back to Australia, and should be there in 5

days. It was sad to finally leave the pack ice. We have been inside the

ice since December 4, so we were kind of getting used to it. Inside the

ice, the sea is much calmer because all the ice flattens out the waves.

Since we are now in the ocean, the ship rocks a lot in the big waves and

many people are seasick (luckily not me!). The animals are also different

in the ice compared to out in the open ocean. We now don't see penguins

and seals anymore, but we do now see albatrosses, which are fantastic in

their own right! You may also notice how warm it is now. I was amazed to

see the water temperature rise above freezing for the first time since

December 3! This is because we have passed over the Antarctic Convergence

(also called the Polar Front), and so we are now in warmer waters coming

from the north rather than the cold water from the south.

Anyway, you are probably wondering what we've been doing since my last

email, well the answer is lots and lots! When I sent my last email, we

were almost at Mawson Station, which is the furthest west of Australia's

continental bases. One the way in, we went past "Iceberg Alley", which is

an unbelievable area with hundreds of huge icebergs grounded on the bottom

of the sea. We sailed right through the middle, with these giant things

all around us. It was about 2 in the morning, but we could see very well

because it doesn't get dark here in the summer, but the nature of the light

does change. So late at night the light often looks orange and pink and

lights up the icebergs like neon signs in the Las Vegas Strip!

The Captain, Tony, drove the ship through miles and miles of fast ice,

until we were about 10 miles from the station. The fast ice is completely

flat and white. Off in the distance you could see large, brown, pointy

mountains rising out of the ice cap on the continent. They looked

absolutely huge, but the light can play tricks on you down here. These

mountains are 900 metres high, but look much bigger. There is an old story

from the 1950's when some Australians were in this area during a blizzard.

They were surprised to discover a completely new mountain range way off in

the distance. They then realised that what they were looking at weren't

mountains many kilometres away but husky poop only a few metres away! The

light had fooled them.

After dinner we all jumped off the ship to play on the fast ice. There

were long lines of penguins, both Adelie and Emperors, all over the place.

They were travelling between their homes and the open water, where they get

food. We played a big game of touch football. An Adelie Penguin decided

that he wanted to play, but we thought that he probably shouldn't, since he

didn't know the rules. He was very unhappy with this and took a lot of

convincing to leave the field so he wouldn't get hurt by us running around.

Two of my friends, Mark and Mike, had a scary experience on the ice. They

lay down for a snooze, and were awoken by a skua flying very close to them

to check them out. Skuas are big, brown birds with sharp claws and beaks.

Skuas are often scavengers and look for dead things to eat, and it was

looking to eat Mike and Mark! Luckily Mark and Mike were able to

demonstrate quite forcefully that they were most definitely alive!

The next day we had a wonderful jolly. We all got to fly in choppers to

Mawson Station. It is a colourful collection of buildings that sits next

to a rocky harbour, just on the edge of the ice cap. We walked over to

West Arm, which is a rocky peninsula on the edge of the harbour. I was

sitting on the rocks looking at the beautiful ice cliffs, when I heard this

really loud breathing, but I couldn't tell where it was coming from. It

stopped and then came back again. I finally worked out what it was. I

could see a seal's snout sticking through a small hole in the ice. It was

a Weddell Seal taking some breaths from under the ice! It then raised its

head and started chewing on the ice hole to make it bigger. This is how

these seals can live in such thick ice miles from the ice edge.

I also found some small, bright white snow petrels huddled in small nooks

in the rock, where they make their nests. From here, you can see the ice

cap rising above the ice cliffs and going all the way to the horizon.

People use quads (4 wheeled motorcycles) and Hagglunds to get across the

ice. A "Hag" is a Swedish tracked vehicle, a bit like a small tank. You

have to be very careful on the cap because there are crevasses, which are

big, deep ice holes. A girl who was here to study penguins fell down one

of these crevasses right near Mawson Station while riding a quad a few

months ago. The Search and Rescue Team were able to pull her out of the

crevasse with ropes. She had to go home because of her injuries, but she

was very lucky not to be hurt even more badly.

The next day we were back on the ship, helping with cargo. The helicopters

were flying fresh food, new people and their gear to the station. The new

people were taking over from people who had been at Mawson all year. As

you can imagine these people are anxious to get home and see their family

and friends after such a long time.

We had one more sad duty to perform before we left Mawson. A man named

Graeme Germain spent a great deal of time working in Antarctica, at Mawson

and other places. He loved the place dearly. Sadly he died in Australia a

month before we sailed, so his parents asked that his ashes be buried in

the sea ice off Mawson. We had a short service in this beautiful place.

Rob, the Voyage Leader, read a message from Graeme's family. Even the

penguins came to pay their respects.

One of the people we picked up at Mawson was a friend of mine, Greg, who I

met on the ship last year. He has spent over a year down here! This is

what he has to say about it:

"Hello. My name is Greg Rocke and I am one of three Diesel Mechanics at

Mawson Station. I am 34 and come from Berwick near Melbourne in Australia,

where I live with my Wife. Let me tell you about my time at Mawson.

"I am a Diesel Mechanic. My job is to maintain all the vehicles, power

station and mobile equipment at Mawson. Our power station is very important

to us so we spend a lot of time looking after it. We have normal four wheel

drive vehicles as well as Honda Quads and large oversnow vehicles. I came

to Antarctica to experience a different way of life and to see somewhere

totally different to Australia.

"I am a fully qualified Diesel Mechanic and Fitter & Turner. I completed

twelfth grade at school before going on to do more specialist studies. When

in Australia I usually go to night school one or two nights per week to

gain extra qualifications.

"We have a large heated workshop at Mawson to do most of our work in.

Sometimes we must work outside which is difficult in the extreme cold and

high winds. The coldest it's been is -29.8 degrees Celsius, the hottest was

+6.7 degrees. When its -25 you can only have your hands out of their

gloves for about 30 seconds before they hurt from cold. Luckily it doesn't

rain (it's too cold) so we don't get wet. If it was a bit warmer and it

rained I think we would be much more uncomfortable. Mawson is one of the

windiest places on Earth.

"We normally work in our jobs for eight hours per day. If extra work is

required we work for as long as necessary. We also do other jobs as well.

I help look after the Hydroponics. We grow vegetables for the Chef.

"Some people have asked me if I feel like I'm going crazy confined in a

small space at the base for so long. Not really. We are very lucky at

Mawson as we have a large Emperor Penguin rookery at Auster about 50 km

away. Penguins are the most popular animals by far. The Emperor penguin is

my favourite. The Emperor stands about 1 metre tall and is very graceful.

The penguins are not afraid of people so we are very careful not to scare

them when we are near.

"Mawson has many high mountains just inland that we climb even in winter.

There are field huts at some of the mountains as well as one near Auster.

We go away for weekends to the field huts which stops us going crazy.

"It is very difficult being isolated for such a long time. We have the

phone, email and the internet but its still very hard being away from home.

I get along with all the people here at Mawson. There are 21 of us this

winter so its important that we get along well together."

Thanks very much, Gregg, it sounds like you had a wonderful year.

Do you know where the name Mawson comes from? It is named for Douglas

Mawson, a very famous Australian scientist and Antarctic explorer from

early in the 20th century. He originally came down to the Antarctic with

the Irish/British explorer, Ernest Shackleton in 1907. Mawson was one of

the first people to locate the South Magnetic Pole. He was more interested

in science than discovering new land, so he lead his own Australian

expedition in 1911. In fact we sailed very close to his old wooden hut

near the beginning of our voyage. His old wooden huts are still standing!

Our voyage leader, Rob, is leading a voyage to help restore the huts next

year. If you're interested, there is a website about it at

http://www.mawsons-huts.com.au/ . Mawson is famous for making a

sledging journey of over a 100 miles completely on his own. His two

companions had died, one down a crevasse, and he had to push on through

incredible cold to get back to the huts. Incredibly he finally made it back

My, this email sure is getting long. Before I finish, I have to tell you

what happened a couple days ago. Throughout our voyage, we have been

receiving emails from a Greenpeace ship called "Arctic Sunrise". The

Greenpeace captain, Arne, was on our voyage last year as the ice pilot, so

he has many friends onboard the "Aurora".

Greenpeace are an independent activist organisation who try to stop the

destruction of our natural world. They are down in the Antarctic to follow

the Japanese Whaling fleet. Most countries have stopped killing whales,

but Japan continues. The Japanese argue that eating whale meat is part of

their cultural heritage. They also argue that the whales they hunt, the

small Minke, are in no danger of extinction and in fact there may be more

of them now than ever. They also claim that the few whales they take

(about 300 per year) are put to good use for research. In fact this is how

they are allowed to take whales, as part of "scientific research". Having

said all this, I think it is a great pity that whales are still being

killed. I think they are wonderful animals who should be left in peace.

There are many other things to eat in the world; no-one really needs to eat

whales.

So anyway, it so happened that the Greenpeace ship was on our way home. We

were very excited to see another ship since you almost never see any ships

down here. We met up late at night. Their ship is much smaller than ours,

so it rocks around much more in the waves. It is too dangerous for two

large ships to come close in the open ocean, so the Greenpeace ship

launched an inflatable boat, which pulled up beside our ship. We passed

them some fresh food, because their supply was running low. They passed us

a video showing their activities over the past few weeks, coming very close

to the whaling ships.

We continued on our way. The next morning we spotted another ship on the

horizon. Amazing, it was becoming like Grand Central Station around here.

When we approached it, we discovered it was one of the whaling ships,

called the "Toshi Maru" ("Maru" means ship in Japanese). It was also

smaller than our ship, and had a large harpoon gun mounted on the front

(pretty scary looking). The "Toshi Maru" is one of the catcher boats, so

it's small and fast. After they catch a whale, they transfer it to the

factory ship, the "Nissen Maru". The Greenpeace people try to stop this

transfer and they film the whole thing to try and increase the publicity.

Our voyage leader, Rob, read a prepared statement saying that the

Australian Government disagrees with "Scientific Whaling" and then our two

Japanese scientists onboard our ship, Yuzuru and Akira, wished the crew

well in Japanese. It was amazing to see up close what we hear about on the

news all the time.

We have to remember that Japan has a very long Antarctic history of its

own, going all the way back to the early explorer, Nobu Shirase, in the

early 20th century. They have a base relatively near Mawson at Syowa. In

fact we were rescued last year by the Japanese icebreaker "Shirase" when we

got stuck in the ice!

RESEARCH QUESTION

--------------------------------

I've talked a lot about the Australian bases in Antarctica. Can you find

out which other countries have bases down here? Can you find out the names

of the American bases and where they are?

I'd better go now before you fall asleep reading all of this. We get back

to Australia in 5 days. I will send an email from the ship when we get in

with a list of all the animals we've seen, and I'll try to send one from

Japan or from London when I get home. After January 21, I'll be back on my

old email address: penguintim@hotmail.com .

Have fun!

Tim Page

PS Well, one more thing. Here are some questions from Miss O'Brien's

class:

1) What is the fastest speed your ship can travel at?

It so happens that right now we are going about as fast as we ever go, 17.5

knots. Yesterday we were up to 20 knots because we were surfing down the

sides of big waves! A knot is one nautical mile per hour (a little bit

faster than a regular statute mile per hour).

2) Have you seen any whales (orca whales)?

You bet we have. I asked the whalos onboard for a count of how many whales

they have seen far, and this is it:

- Minke Whales: 136

- Orcas: 103

- Humpbacks: 23

- Blue: 3

- Fin: 1

- Southern Bottlenose: 1

- Unknown Whales: 20

3) What is the most interesting animal you have ever seen?

I think it would have to be the Sperm Whale. Did you know that they can

dive many KILOMETRES beneath the sea! They collapse their lungs so they

don't get the bends by going so deep. It's so dark down there, they can't

see a thing, so they use sound (echo location) to find the giant squid that

they eat. Now if that's not cool, I don't know what is!

4) When you were in second and third grade what did you want to be when you

grew up?

You know, I wasn't too sure. I used to like to draw and I really liked

history and playing soccer. I was pretty keen to find something

interesting to do. In fact, I haven't changed much, I'm still not sure

what I want to do, but as long as it's interesting I will be happy.

5) Did you always like travel, discovery and animals?

I sure did. I had great pets when I was younger, lots of gerbils, a cat

called Shadow and a dog called Vicky. I was always interested in travel, I

think mostly because of my family. All of my family on all sides have

travelled a lot. Both of my grandfathers were in the navy and travelled

the world, and so was my father. They all married women who also liked to

travel (in fact, so did I). I heard many stories from my father about all

the amazing places he has been to. He made me a desk when I was in the

third grade. Instead of painting the top, he put a world map there,

covered in plastic. So whenever I got bored of my homework, I'd look at

the map and plan where I'd like to go one day. I still know where lots of

obscure islands are around the world thanks to the many hours I spent

staring at that map!

6) Lastly, how did you get started?

I got started doing fieldwork with animals because a friend of a friend of

mine, Erin, was studying kangaroos and asked if I'd like to go and help

her. I did and it was wonderful, so I tried to get on other research

projects. After you've done a few, it's easier to get on new ones because

you have experience and because you meet many people. I consider my two

trips down to Antarctica as sort of a pay off for the many years I spent

doing other projects. Oh boy was it worth it!!!