How do you tip the guy who’s just refueled your helicopter?
In Antarctica, no cash needed. A slightly blackened banana left over from breakfast will be gratefully accepted. On a recent tour of Antarctica’s Dry Valleys, that impromptu gift from a visiting official of the National Science Foundation served as a reminder of the logistical challenges facing researchers in this icy continent. The Marble Point fuel station here is only 45 miles from McMurdo Station, the main U.S. base in Antarctica. But even that can be too far for regular deliveries of fresh fruit.
Antarctica is cold, remote, and vast—about one and a half times the size of the continental United States. Reliably supplying thousands of researchers and staff members at three main U.S. bases and dozens of remote locations is “a very tough challenge,” says Norman R. Augustine, a former chairman and chief executive of Lockheed Martin, who now leads a review of the U.S. Antarctic Program. “But they do it every day.”
Bananas at Marble Point are a relatively small problem. A day later, the head of the National Science Foundation’s operations in Antarctica, George L. Blaisdell, appears unexpectedly before a scheduled scientific lecture at McMurdo to give researchers a heads-up about what could be a much bigger issue: The ship chosen for the annual trip to resupply the station for the long Antarctic winter has broken down about a half-dozen times en route from California.
Mr. Blaisdell does his best to assure everyone that repairs have been made and that the ship will be just a little late, causing only slight delays for the workers expecting to depart McMurdo before the winter cold stops all travel.
American scientists and support staff members in Antarctica number about 2,000 in the peak summer season, and they know to prepare for contingencies. People coming through the U.S. Antarctic Program undergo a battery of health exams to ensure they won’t need a costly and risky medical evacuation. They go through mandatory survival training, learning how to pitch a tent and start a fire from the emergency kits they are repeatedly warned to take every single time they step off the base.
The whole operation is set up to guard against the weather, which even in summer can turn deadly with little warning. And that’s only one of the unique challenges of living and working in Antarctica.
Tricky Landings
After a five-hour flight from New Zealand, which passengers spend swaddled in “extreme cold weather” survival gear in case of an emergency, military transport planes deliver program participants to an airport built on top of the Pacific Ocean—the ice beneath the runway is some 600 feet thick, easily capable of holding the 200-ton planes. But because the surface can get slushy, pilots prefer to land late at night. Though the sun is up year-round in the summer, temperatures around McMurdo still drop from nearly freezing during the day to below zero Fahrenheit in the evenings, making night landings a bit smoother.
Preserving the environment is another major concern on a continent set aside for science and conservation. The errant ship being anxiously monitored by Mr. Blaisdell brings in cargo and also takes out waste, including trash, carefully separated recyclables, and sewage. (Even urinating outdoors, formerly permitted at the yellow “pee flags” in the Dry Valleys around Marble Point, is no longer allowed under the “total recovery” approach.)
Some less-than-ideal practices linger, however. Diesel generators remain the main source of power at McMurdo, and sewage from the South Pole station is still buried under the ice. But over all, the program’s practices get good reviews. Greenpeace, which protested poor environmental practices in the Antarctic region in the late 1980s, is now worried instead about the fate of the surrounding oceans. The science bases run by the United States and other countries “are much more environmentally sound now than they were” at the time of the protests, says Richard Page, an oceans campaigner for Greenpeace International. “There is a real effort to reduce the environmental footprint of the Antarctic science operations by the relevant countries.”
Mr. Augustine’s review panel, in assessing needs at McMurdo, is even paying attention to morale concerns like the lack of a bowling alley—the old one was “condemned and removed,” the panel notes. “The smaller the group, the quicker you feel pent-up—even with a population of 1,000 people,” says Nathan D. Stock, a doctoral student in astronomy at the University of Arizona who spent the past summer working as a van driver at McMurdo.
Still, scientists need not look far to be reminded that doing research in Antarctica now is a whole lot easier than it used to be. Near McMurdo are wooden huts that housed teams led by Robert F. Scott and Ernest H. Shackleton as they prepared for early-20th-century expeditions to the South Pole. (Scott and three companions died on the way back.) All three huts are still standing, their unopened boxes of food and piles of seal blubber testifying to the complexity of the explorers’ preparations.
“This has been a tremendous experience and a lifelong ambition of mine to come down here,” says Brian Duffy, program manager at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory. “Sure, things can be a little bit tough,” he explained while enduring a routine weather-related flight postponement. But “we have warm clothes, we have three hot meals a day. People should try reading Ernest Shackleton’s story.”
