Lots of people have been asking me about my contact with the outside world when I am on base. So here goes…

Internet – The entire base has a bandwidth of a 1/5 of your broadband you have available to you when you are sitting at home or work reading this post. That bandwidth is for all communication for 120 people with the outside world. A large percent of that is needed to keep the base running and for scientific data transfer. So that leaves a very very small amount for everyone’s personal interactions. So I can’t access websites – no surfing the web, no Skype or posting on facebook etc. I have set up a system where by I can email my blog updates and they will appear on my website so this is the best place to get my news.

Email – I can send and recieve email through my BAS email (my personal email will be forwarded after the spam is removed to my BAS account) maximum file size of 1MB an email. The subject line of the message should only show the words “Personal” i.e. Subject: Personal. When an e-mail is sent to myself, an automatic receipt will be generated by the BAS messaging system advising that your message is queued for transmission and this receipt should be received by you the next time you check your mail. Whilst the various satellite connections provide the potential for a 24/7 service, it should be noted that weather conditions can and do affect its operation. This may mean that the service is interrupted or unavailable at times.

Why the small bandwidth! – well rightly so BAS doesn’t feel it is a good use of the British tax payers resources to provide us on base with enough satellite time for us to surf the internet and the money should go towards the science research. The American bases have full bandwidth and we could as well but it would cost another 1 million pounds a year. On that point BAS spends 45m pounds per year to support all the staff, two ships, airplanes and bases and is the most prolific country in terms of writing science papers from data collected in Antarctica. The US spends the whole BAS budget per year just to maintain the roads at one of their stations – McMurdo!

Letters/Parcels – I can send and receives letters and parcels if you want more information about that go to BAS site. I am based at Rothera and will be there from November through March.

Phone – You can’t phone me! Basically that is what it comes down to. I can however, phone out from base using satellite phone.

Tonight there was a program on BBC1 called Life. If you click here you will get to the online version of it. The beginning is really amazing about bottlenose dolphin hunting techniques. To get to the stuff about Antarctica without watching the whole hour long program there are three sections you can fast forward to
10:30 on the clock it has about 5 minutes
40:30 to 46:00
48:00 to end

Enjoy… Oh one more amazing fact. Leopard seals can open their mouths 180 degrees and have teeth bigger than lions…

To answer a few more questions..

So despite the cartoons and cards making you think otherwise penguins and polar bears are not found on the same continents!

The equivalent of the polar bear in Antarctica is the leopard seal they are the top of the food chain. They have virtually no fear, except for those of orcas, or killer whales. The equivalent in the Arctic of penguins is the puffin.

The word Antarctica comes from the Greek. It means “south of the bear”. They are referring to the word Arcos, which is a constellation that can only be seen in the northern hemisphere.

More than 2000 years ago, Greek writers described a large mass of land in the south of the world. Even though they had never seen it, they believed it must exist so that it could ‘balance’ the land they knew about in the northern half of the world. They named this imagined land ‘Anti-Arkitos’, meaning the ‘opposite of the Arctic’.

There are no native people of Antarctica the only inhabitants are those living on research stations around 5000 in the summer and 1000 in the winter. The Rothera base summer compliment is 120 and winter 21. The closest base to us is the Argentines at San Martin base about 40 miles to the south however, there isn’t any popping over for dinner.

A few people have asked me what time zone Antarctica is in. Strictly speaking it is GMT without daylight savings time. However, in reality every base operates a different time and those are linked to the supply line for the base some work on DST of those respective countries.

For example at Rothera we have the same time as the Falklands, the US south pole base is on NZ day light savings time and Palmer the US station on the peninsula is on Chilean Time. Indeed on the south pole you can walk through all the global time zones in a few seconds!

A few friends have mentioned waste removal from Antartica and how we make sure we don’t cause environmental damage through leaving waste all around the place. At conference they talked about the ongoing project for support staff going into the field to collect old waste from past projects. All waste created on base at Rothera is removed on the ships back to the UK for disposal – 80% of all waste on base is recycled.

A sewage treatment plant handles all the human waste and grey water produced on site with only cleaned water being discharged to sea conforming to European Union Bathing Water Standards. Solids from the plant are disposed of through a high efficiency two stage incinerator with residual ash contained and removed from Antarctica by ship.

Last week while I was in Scotland I was diving with David Barnes who is one of the most prolific scientists at British Antarctic Survey. I did a search on the BAS waste and found an interesting Press Release about a study he did back in 2002 which describes how plastics in the ocean combined with global climate change threatens biodiversity in Antartica. The paper was published in Nature.

The Oban Dive Chamber is at SAMS so as we have a chamber at Rothera we need to be trained in operating the chamber should we have a dive emergency involving a case of decompression illness. Currently SAMS treats around 18 patients per year between 28 and 62% of decompression illness cases in Scotland.

The course yesterday involved a morning of lectures including:
Basics of recompression operations
Identifying decompression sickness symptoms and subsequent treatment
Basics of therapeutic recompression tables
Oxygen handling, cleanliness and breathing at high pressures (oxygen toxcity)
Basic external chamber operation
Basic internal ‘nursing’ job of the patient
Rules and regulations relating to recompression theory

Yesterday afternoon we were treated as patients in the chamber and were taken down to 18m where we breathed heliox which makes you have a very funny high pitched voice like after inhaling helium from a ballon. So we all had some fun on that before changing to pure oxygen.

This morning we each get to do one of the jobs involved in chamber operation. Being the patient, internal ‘nurse’, supervisor and supervisors assistant. The ‘dive’ is to 14m for 45 minutes. If the chamber is being used for an emergency situation there would also be a docter on hand and it is better to have two assistant chamber operators if possible especially if the compressions are for more than a few hours e.g. the Royal Navy 64 tables are a min length of 4.75 hours and max of 6 hours 50 minutes.

This afternoon we have the local diving Dr who works at this chamber coming in for some more lectures.

The first dive today was on the Breda again but this time we went down to the stern first and worked our way to the bow. The visibility was not as good only about 2 meters. However, the scenery was beautiful with the sun trying to push through the clouds. I took some video which I will try to post in a week or so.

Another dive this afternoon back at the site we went to yesterday afternoon again in search of brachiolpods. Above is a picture of a dogfish – we saw the eggs on a dive yesterday. We also saw sea squirts and fan worms.

SAMS where we are diving from is situated on the same point of land as Dunstaffnage Castle. I will go have a look at it tomorrow lunch time. This evening we are out to dinner at Waterfront Restuarant in Oban which has great reviews.