This is a picture of the remaining summer Bonner Team. Mel and myself in the dive suits, JJ the lone male, then Sian and Amber from Edinburgh Uni doing PHD’s, Terri the marine assistant (going into her second winter down here) and Colette the new marine biologist taking over from Mel.

Today was my last dive down south. It was blowing in the morning from the south and although it was only 20 knots it was bouncing up against the wharf so it wasn’t prudent to launch the boat. Luckily after 3:30 it started to abate so we went out for what is most likely Mel and I’s last dive down south with base commander John Withers driving the boat and JJ dive officer supervising.

We went for a ”biosurvey dive” as we are not allowed to recreationally dive down here. With a large low pressure sitting over us our no deco time at 24m was only 20 minutes but it was an amazing dive.

We dropped in at Anchorage on the wall – the visibility was stunning and the wall is full of life. We came across a pretty denuded gulley with a submerged iceberg which was really cool.

Then at 19m we found the sponge that everyone talks about. It is so large you can stick your head inside of it.

When we got to our safety stop at 6m there was a penguin who came swimming around us underwater. It was very curious and had a good look at Mel. Although a short dive I did get one very cold finger however, not cold enough to go looking for the Humpbacks that went swimming by while we were underwater.

So basically a pretty epic dive to finish on!

On Sunday afternoon I dragged Cheese (real name Iain) up the hill despite -8C and 20 knots of wind. He then dragged me up Pink Moon which is an ice climb that took almost three pitches to get to the ridge of Middle Stork. By the time we got to the top it was 7:10pm and the sun was setting at 7:45pm. It was snowing hard and Iain gotee and mustache were well iced up!

The visibility was OK although it was snowing when we got to a little windscoop where we took off our glacial travel coils. Cheese then headed up the sloop putting in ice screws which I belayed him. Once he got about 50m away he put in two ice screws and anchored himself to it and belayed me up the 1st pitch. We swapped places and he took off again with me belaying him. He had to go across the slope first before heading up so he wasn’t able to see how much rope was left and my voice was carried away by the strong wind which was blowing snow all around.

The visibility closed down very quickly so that we could hardly see the skidoo below us and eventually it dissappeared altogether. I removed all the anchor screws and belay and started climbing to stay with Cheese so that he could find another place to anchor himself and wait for me at the end of the pitch. The horizontal climb was actually quite hard work and nerve racking with the ice being so brittle under a layer of soft powder. It was hard work to get a good grip for the ice axe and hammer.

About 30 meters from the end when Cheese was standing on the ridge out of view my crampon fell off my left boot. So what was a hard ice climb became even harder! I yelled up at Cheese but the wind made it impossible for him to hear. The visibility drew in more and it started to get dark. So I did what we do in the marine team and ‘manned the f*** up’ as there was nothing he could do as even if we had a spare crampon I was on a 80% slope so I wouldn’t have been able to fit it! I then proceeded to step up with my right boot digging the front points of the one crampon in and then cut a step with my ice axe for my left foot. Needless to say it took a while.

Once on the ridge we called back to base on 18 told them we would be an extra 30 minutes past out original ETA and that all was well. Seeing as Cheese had not done Stork Ridge before and didn’t know where the crevasses were and the contrast was so poor I led the way. We were again roped up for glacial travel. We crossed the crevasse I knew about from when Adam fell into it at the beginning of the summer. I could then see two hollows in the snow just before Stork Bowl and found there were two more crevasses that had opened up. My right crampon was holding me and I was half skiing with my left boot sans crampon down into Stork Bowl. To get out of the Bowl you have to climb up over a little cornice and then it was a short trot back to the skidoo.

Sunday dinner which we were late for and was put to one side for us was delicous then it was time for early bed as I was exhausted!

The red line is the route up the bottom part of Middle Stork.

This is a picture taken at the height of the Phytoplankton bloom in the summer.

And this is a picture taken last week at Rose Gardens where the visibility was in the region of 150 feet. It was stunning.

The girls doing CTD say there is basically no phytoplankton really in the water anymore. Bad for the wildlife that feeds off it but good for us divers 🙂

Professor Peck who spent 2 months down here this year diving with us wrote a very interesting paper on phytoplankton see the press release.

This is a picture taken by Claire Doc of a Snow Petrel (apparently there are only around a 1000 breeding pairs) which landed for a rest next to the door of Old Bransfield. They are one of only a handful of birds which breed in Antarctica. From wikipedia I got the following information.

“Possibly the most beautiful bird in the Antarctic, the Snow Petrel is pure white with black underdown and conspicious black eyes. They have a small black bill and bluish gray feet. They are restricted almost exclusively to cold antarctic waters, preferring pack ice, icebergs and ice floes as their main habitat. They feed mainly by surface-dipping while on the wing.

Snow Petrels tend to fly low over the water but very high over land to avoid predators such as South Polar skuas. Their flight is more fluttering than most petrels.

Unlike most of the petrel family, Snow Petrels are nervous at the nest and will desert their eggs if overly disturbed.”

The ship will be here in less than a week only 3 workdays away and there is so much to do in the boatshed before handing over to the wintering boatman. I have been desperatly typing away with some hand over instructions and doing as much maintenance as possible while still getting the boats out for the normal science. This morning I spent a few hours sorting out one of the trailers hence the mucky hands – sorry mum not very ladylike I know but what do you expect!

Yesterday we did a shore dive off the newly installed slipway. It was pretty icy as you can see in the picture the sea water froze over the rocks.

Colette is the line tender in the picture. It was a bit slippy for the divers to get in down the ramp!

Happy St Patricks Day!

Today we had a Dive Emergency Scenario to test the systems in place in case of a Dive Emergency on Base. It was all very educational as these things always are. I was driving the boat and also was the DMT in the compression chamber looking after JJ. We went down to 18m and did a short dive just to check everything. The day ended with a debrief just before dinner.

With Rothera being firmly in Autumn and the sun setting at 8pm and not rising until 7am we are getting beautiful sunrises and sunsets.

This was taken from my bedroom window the other morning.

Again taken from my bedroom window as the sun set.

This is me at the lathe in the wood shop.

The platter I finished last night. Again made out of a piece of the old bar.

This is the view from my office at the boatshed. Needless to say we called off the last dive of the day due to wind and almost nil visibility! Paperwork all day tomorrow me thinks!

Our Base Commander is John Withers. He started with BAS as a diving officer 9 years ago. He has worked at all the bases except for KEP. This is him in the kitchen on Saturday. A group of us gave the chefs the afternoon off and we made dinner. We are now down to 45 on base so it was an easier meal to do than at the height of the season.

The dinner was duck and lamb pate with caramalized onions made by Al Homer the Mech with main course of steak (to order) with potatoe wedges, carrots, mushrooms, cauliflower cheese with a peppercorn brandy sauce made by 4 people. Dessert was chocolate rasberry cake made by Claire Doc.

My contribution was to make the brandy sauce, plate up the starters and dessert and cook the steaks. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon seeing as it was foggy outside and we couldn’t even see the boatshed from the top part of base 🙂

Hope you all had a great weekend.

This picture was taken by Terri the marine assistant at Rothera on a dive I did with her on my birthday at Anchorage wall. The Labidiaster radiosus get stressed pretty easily and when they do their legs drop off. They are a sea star which is found in the south pacific and atlantic oceans.