Saturday, December 17, 2011

Southward Bound

Anyone would think we were expecting it to be a tad cold....


In six hours I will be on a plane en route to the great white continent that has dominated every waking hour of my life for the past six weeks. It only started to feel real when I was at the mall this morning and the wrapping paper girls asked Pip and I if we had any plans for Christmas. When our reply was a casual 'we're going to Antarctica this afternoon' I just felt the larvae of excitement hatch and start crawling up the back of my shoulder blades like a plague. I haven't been able to rid my face of a grin ever since.

Things were not looking quite so rosy on Friday morning when we went to get kitted out by Antarctic NZ. The fleece layers and ECWs (Extreme Cold Weather Gear) and mukluks were all awesome and it felt like we were kids again, playing dress ups at the Hillary exhibition at the museum. The thermals kind of threw me off though. 'Small' is the smallest size for ploypros, merinos and gloves and unfortunately my body and the set dimensions of the clothing provided could not reach a consensus. In short, the gear was way too big. If we had been kitted out on Thursday I would have been a bit calmer, but after an initial panic it was mum to the rescue, couriering down my sister's merino underwear on overnight delivery. Once that arrived I could relax enough to dress up and have a bit of fun waving to busses on the street outside and posing with the neighbours' bbq!

I do have a pair of AMAZING gloves though, gloves so magical that I feel hot springs in my chest just looking at them. Rainbow wool, they are fingerless gloves with a convertible mitten top and cosy fleece lining. Now you see the pinky, now you don't! They will go well with my pink patterned knitted hat. That hat is in for a treat. It already thinks it's been everywhere, having seen a German winter, the inside of a freezer bar, a polish summer and countless hikes in the Waitakeres, but Antarctica will be something else.

Our layering goes something like this: thermals, fleece pants, microfleece top, fleece top, overtrousers, insulating jacket, windproof jacket, ECW coat, sorel boots, mittens, hat, neck gaiter. That's about it. It's all very exciting and all very orange, but perhaps also a slight overkill when you consider that the forecast for Tuesday is something like +1 degrees. Then again, it's Antarctica. Posing is all part of it. We will look like real expeditioners as we use our Shewees and stand to pee in the igloo toilet round the back of the tents, faces enshrouded in fake fur hoods to dissipate the wind. It's official, Pip and Christel and I are now 'dudes', not that you could really tell the difference when we are all bundled up in our cold weather kit.

Anyway, the important thing is that we WILL be bundled up in our cold weather kits, flying on a C17 over the sea ice to Pegasus runway, catching a lift in a Hagglund back to Scott Base, going to survival school and drooling over skidoos. We are actually going! I'm sure I'll have countless tales to tell when we get back on the 30th, but until then, this is Hanne to the world, 'over and out'...

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Canine Commemorations

3pm November 14 1911: Amundsen reaches the South Pole...

7pm November 13 2011: Hanne looks just as pleased as he did!


14 November 2011 was a very special day for Norway in terms of Antarctic history. Why? 3pm on 14/11/11 marked the 100 year anniversary of Roald Amundsen and his team reaching the first pole and being the very first people to set foot on that patch of world. Since then white spaces on the map have been slowly eroded and filled in. Try as she might to resist being mapped, waxing and waning with the seasons and the sea ice, Antarctica has been sketched, recorded, gridded, photographed, satellited, gpsd and had just about every other existing technical verb applied to its vast surface.

My flatmate Christel was very proud yesterday, waltzing around the city waving her Norwegian flag and whipping out her framed portrait of Amundsen and his men at every opportunity. The centenary happened to coincide with a reception at Canterbury Museum where the director of our programme, Dr Bryan Storey, was presenting a crampon to the museum collection. I don't think I've ever seen so many people so excited over a piece of footwear! We spent the evening touching the artifact, nibbling on delicacies and mixing and mingling with the who's who of Antartcticans here in Christchurch.

At this reception I got talking to Baden Norris, curator of the Lyttleton museum, long time Antarctic veteran and master storyteller. It's the last of his credentials that intrigued me the most and I can see myself following up with him again at a later date to be the loom for a few more yarns. He assured me towards the end that 'some of it, at least, was true'. I actually learnt quite a bit about dogs as well. We were chatting in front of the display with two stuffed huskies and a mannequin in Antarctic clothing and the mannequin is supposedly modeled on Baden himself. This came as something of a surprise to him, but he had raised one of the dogs from a pup and had worked with both. I imagine it must be rather odd to see animals you worked with taxidermied and put behind glass, but he just told me he thought he deserved a royalty for them. Indeed, they have very nice pelts so he did a good job raising the pup! He also enlightened me on the differences between Huskies and Malamuts, with true Huskies only coming from Greenland. The dogs he dealt with were bred there and in Christchurch, but they were the last of the pure breeds in this area of the world.

The dogs were a hot topic for me on Wednesday largely because of the events of the following evening. As a premature celebration of Amundsen's centenary the Antarctic Society arranged for the K9 dog sled team to come and do a demonstration. The dog food brand's slogan is 'feed your dog's inner wolf', so the team of racing 'Huskies' and Malamuts was a novel way to back up that message. Mark Roberts explained how he fed and trained the dogs and how he gave directions to them while we all gave the dogs a cuddle and received enthusiastic attention. Then we got a live demonstration, not on snow of course, but with a wheeled chariot attached to the lines instead. First of all three little kids hopped into the basket and went for a zoom round the carpark and then they asked if anyone else wanted a go. The 'YES!' was out of my mouth before I even had time to think about the appropriate response. Like an overripe apple, it tumbled to the ground and landed right at Mark's feet and he said 'ok then, hop in'. I actually thought my face might rip in two, my grin was that big. It was the weirdest feeling, halfway between being in a high speed passenger train and on a racing sidecar. Probably more like the sidecar, actually, but incredibly smooth. Coming down to Christchurch I never would've dreamed of trying out dog power, but it just goes to show that you never know what is around the corner. I won't be forgetting the 100th anniversary of Amundsen's milestone anytime soon, that's for sure!

Friday, December 2, 2011

Seafood Serengeti

Seafood in the Serengeti of Antarctica


We have a very interesting past few days with a series of lectures focussing on fishing in the Southern Ocean and the biological and political factors that are involved in such an activity. One term that will come up a lot is 'Antarctic Toothfish', marketed in the USA as 'Chilean Seabass'. Very little is known about this fish, which is a top predator in the Ross Sea region. The best estimates of scientists as to its longevity, spawning, reproductive age and growth rate have been fed into a fisheries model to estimate the biomass and set total allowable catch limits for CCAMLR member states who wish to harvest it. The fishing industry touts the Toothfish Fishery as the best managed fishery in the world and while it is true that allowable catches are more or less obeyed and they do have scientists hard at work trying to discover more about the creatures, at the moment they lack the information to know if their predictive models are anywhere near accurate and if the catch limits are appropriate.

New Zealand was the first to start fishing for Toothfish in 1996 and since then the floodgates have opened, with up to 21 vessels traveling to the fishing grounds in a season. We still send four boats down every season, which lasts from 1 December until the quota is full. It's a lucrative business, pumping around $30 million into our economy each year. We are also seen as leaders in fisheries management internationally and were the first country to introduce a Quota Management System. We generally use quite conservative estimates when setting quotas too, predicting how much could be harvested sustainably and then halving it to allow for a margin of error. The problem is that with the Toothfish we are still in the dark about many aspects of its life. The implications of overfishing a top predator like this are not known, and while the officials try to negotiate industry and environmental concerns when setting the quota each year, they tend to feel they have succeeded only once they have 'pissed everyone off'.

After all this debate on fish and fishing, it was interesting to hear from Dr Julia Jabour on Whaling. Most people seem to have no problem with fishing but absolutely draw the line at killing whales which is an interesting situation, particularly when the legislation in place in control both is very similar. Up until 1985 the International Whaling Commission did set quotas for minke whales, but the quota was temporarily set to zero until they had 'better science'. That moratorium has been in place ever since, despite increasing numbers of stock. The main argument against whaling? They are intelligent mammals. In fact the slide in this part of the presentation looked like it could have been lifted form a brochure on vegetarianism. 'The whales have done nothing wrong', 'whales have feelings too', 'whales are warm blooded', 'whales can communicate with each other'. All true. The strange thing is that most people who ardently argue that these attributes belong to whales see no contradiction in going to the supermarket and picking up a juicy processed steak or pork chop. The same argument could be applied: the pig is an intelligent mammal that did not do anything wrong and has feelings and can communicate. To be consistent surely you have to apply the same rules to both and either accept whaling or not eat any meat. Either that or accept that people are hypocritical and swayed by emotions, particularly when 'cute fuzzy' - or in this case 'massive and awe-inspiring' - animals are involved.

The problem is that whales count as cute, while fish do not. When it comes to fishing and whaling in the Southern Ocean contradictions abound. No one seems to be overly concerned that we are harvesting fish that we know very little about, including where they spawn or how long they live. Without this sort of data, the models that usually have a margin of error or +/- 20% are not particularly useful. People would not accept the harvesting of 30-50% of the biomass of whales. It is time they realised that ecosystems are connected, fish are important regardless of their aesthetic shortcomings and it is important to proceed with caution in order to keep things in a relatively balanced state.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Artists in Antarctica

'....One day I'm going to do that too'.


Today we had the painter Margaret Elliot come to talk to us about our personal experience projects. They are all about responding creatively to our time on the ice and can take the form of a painting, a story, poems, visual diary, collage, sculpture... the list is endless. It's refreshing to know that this course is not all about science or all about pure academics and I am quite excited about the sort of writing I might come up with during and after the trip.

We have already had a couple of artists who have been on the Artists in Antarctica scheme come and speak to us. I first heard about the scheme in 2005 at the Bell Gully writing festival at Victoria University, Wellington. A highly impressionable sixth former, I can still remember sitting in that lecture theatre looking at the images and thinking 'one day I'm going to do that too'. That particular scheme was a joint project with Creative New Zealand and these days you can no longer apply, the participants are shoulder tapped. That change in structure in 2008 gave me even more reason to apply for PCAS.

One of the other women on the course is a visual artist and she decided to take this route for slightly different reasons. For me it was a way to open myself up to a whole new world. She wanted to do that too but was worried about being beholden if she took part in such a scheme, having to say nice things and produce somewhat formulaic work that was all planned in a brief before the trip. She felt that it would be limiting to go as an invited artist because to say anything untoward would be to bite the hand that feeds, whereas you have much more freedom as an academic.

The idea of being in a bind also came up in Vicki Wilkinson-Baker's talk on Antarctica in the Media. She has been to the ice twice but also talked of feeling 'beholden' because she needed to be 'babysat' by well trained staff all the time for safety and could only do what Antarctica NZ wanted her to do and had planned out. They were very helpful with preparing stories such as the discovery of NZ butter in one of the early explorers' huts because of course those are the stories that help get funding for restoring the huts. The fact that the find was actually a year old and being kept secret until media could take part in the 'uncovering' didn't worry her too much because it was for a good cause, but the fact that it was practically impossible to ask probing questions about things that the officials did not want to discuss is still a niggle. It is very hard to investigate things down there because no one wants to make trouble or upset other bases and it's not like you can camp out in your own media van, being completely independent. Vicki did raise the prospect of one day having devoted 'Antarctic Correspondents' though, which would certainly be an exciting day!

For now, I'm just trying to suss out whether my famous crayola washable markers that accompany me everywhere are likely to survive in the deep southern freezer. I'll be sure to report back the results.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Politics and Power

New Zealand: 'an intellectual and logistics gateway to Antarctica'


Politics and Power: These two words are the Romeo and Juliet of diplomatic language, and the Antarctic is not immune to the lovers' tiffs that come with the pair. Yesterday we had Anne-Marie Brady come and give a lecture on 'New Zealand's Strategic Interests in Antarctica' and judging from my three pages of notes, I found it quite an engaging talk. It opened my eyes to other ways of seeing things and provided an excellent counterpoint to the science-based lectures on flora and fauna of the previous week. No carnivorous ducks here, but whenever power is involved you can guarantee that someone is thirsty for blood.

The first thing to remember is that there are differing ways of perceiving Antarctica. Coming from New Zealand it has always been relatively close and a place we have learnt about in school. Many explorers, both of the heroic age and of late, launched their missions from Christchurch and it is still the gateway city to Antarctica for NZ and the USA and many of us feel like the continent is 'part of our national heritage'. We look at a map of 'the pie' and point to the Ross Dependency as being 'ours'. According to the Antarctic Treaty we are allowed to assert this claim of sovereignty, but other countries are just as welcome to ignore it, leading to an interesting situation where places like NZ and Australia say 'ours' but places like the USA and South Korea say 'everybodys'.

New Zealand's territorial claim over the Ross Sea region is interesting too in that the Ross Dependency was only formally added to the Realm of New Zealand as recently as 1983. New Zealand had been in charge of administration of the region since the UK claimed it in 1923, but 1983 marks a definitive moment in our polar history: we asked if England wanted it back, they sat down over a cup of tea and said 'no thanks', so we adopted it officially as our own. It is particularly interesting that this happened many years after the Antarctic Treaty came into force in 1961, effectively putting all territorial claims 'on ice' and ensuring no new claims could be made. The addition of an area larger than all of New Zealand to our realm went largely unnoticed.

What was noticed was when the icebreaker that was to create a sea passage into McMurdo was recalled to the Northern Hemisphere and the suggested replacement was a nuclear powered ship. New Zealand has a well known nuclear free policy and do not allow nuclear powered vessels into our waters. Luckily for our politicians there was an easy out: this legislation does not apply to the Ross Dependency, only mainland New Zealand. In the end another non nuclear ship was used, but this was the sort of story that illustrates how complicated it can be to balance lawful behaviour, international diplomacy and resupply issues in the far South.

In many ways the money set aside in the NZ budget for Antarctic Research is done so more for political than scientific reasons because the more research we do down there and the stronger our presence, the better it looks on our 'Antarctic CV' and the more assertive we can be about our claim should the Antarctic Treaty collapse. Taking responsibility for Search and Rescue efforts in the Ross Sea is another notch on our way to getting a Duke of Ed medal, as was our offer of beds at Scott Base for Malaysian scientists. As in any other area of life, there is a lot going on out the back that is not necessarily said directly, but nevertheless strongly influences policies and approaches.

New Zealand actually has a relatively large influence internationally when it comes to Antarctic matters, largely because of the many research papers published by this country. Being so close to the continent, we have a vested interest in terms of security, but science, economics, politics and environmental concerns all play important roles for us too. New Zealand hopes to be 'an intellectual and logistics gateway to Antarctica', and if we play our cards right and get the right diplomats speaking to the right diplomats it is a very achievable goal.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

At Cass

"The mountains tend to their mantles of snow, going incognito against the pensive sky"


When classes involve taking a 2 day trip up into a Rita Angus painting to look at rocks and climb mountains, you know life is good. It was supposed to be an exercise in sussing each other out, seeing who snores, deciding who we would like to tent with on the ice (yes, we are camping!), but it also provided a great opportunity to do some observation of a foreign landscape. OK, so it was quintessential New Zealand, but the High Country is somewhere I had never been, so there was a lot of noticing to do and the roof of the lodge provided the perfect transcription platform:

The greens are different up here. Not as toxicly bright, but older and wiser, like wrinkled skin that remembers more than its wearer would like it to. The stones are smaller, massed in packs so they flow like iron filings to a magnet, drawn toward the valley floor where they splay out like toes testing their footprint in damp sand. Grain by grain they are ' making land'.

The greens are tired, but it is all a matter of comparison. Just as the most spritely pensioner at bingo is 'the young one', set against the lino cut mountains these hues are life, undisputedly. The green is the child in the valley, the quiet one who has 'been on this planet before', you can tell by the eyes. Here the mountains guard, protective, like parents with children on the cusp of adolescence. They hover, pretending to be otherwise occupied, tending to their mantles of snow that allow them to go incognito against the pensive sky.

We come here to this valley and palette and bring our own stories, want to know where, why, how? Does the grass know what it feels like to be greener? Do the pebbles ever yearn for their perch way up close to the sky? Made of incredibly squashed and incredibly dead algae carcasses, the castle rock sandstones are in fact a massive sea floor graveyard. Do they remember the sound of the waves?

Why is it that the very first urge I had was to personify the landscape? No shaking of hands, no presenting a particular side of oneself to another. This was a one sided introduction. Much as the words signify elements in the surroundings, they are mirrors and an introduction to the writer, the personifier. The one who wonders about wrinkled skin will develop crowsfeet, will paddle in many oceans, may even play bingo one day if she makes it that far. She will meet 'old souls', wear a cloak of her own.

And the grass? It will keep growing, oblivious to its pigment and the deficiencies perceived through other-eyes.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Stunning in white

“Antarctica looks stunning in white and she knows it”


Antarctica has been depicted as a seductress many times, playing on the trope of the pole as a sleeping beauty. Amundsen knew the continent as a ‘she’, writing ‘Beauty is still sleeping, but the kiss is coming, the kiss that will wake her’ (The South Pole, 1912). Bill Manhire expanded on it, talking of a ‘seductress’ and making sweet love. This idea seems to reinforce the notion that Antarctica is a masculine space, a space for men to act out their fantasies of conquering, of winning, of having the power to awaken with a kiss and, implicitly, from then on control. What is conquered is tamed, is obedient, is no longer a threat.

We have asked questions such as ‘what does it mean to be a tourist going to the ice? What does it mean to be a scientist? What does it mean to be a student, an ambassador? What about ‘what does it mean to be a woman’? For a female to head to the most barren, inhospitable continent on earth is contrary to the image of the apple, the age old tale of fertility and original sin. You can’t freeze apples, they oxidize. They don’t thaw out the same.

And how will we thaw out? Sore thumbs in a microbial landscape, digging holes in the snow under Dali’s sky. Magnifying, reflecting, analyzing.
What will we find?

Striations mark the progress of her sister lands and if we were less careful we might say she mourns the loss. Instead this land stays dry, a frozen, sliding mask that betrays little of the stony faces far below.

Antarctica holds many secrets within her belly that are yet to be discovered. Lake Vostock, a womb, laid out on the operating table awaiting the caesarean that will tear open the moist dark warmth, expose the microbes not yet ready to see the light. The kiss has been administered and she stirs, her sighs a surge of katabatic winds. She stretches, cracks her fingers to release tabular bergs into the sea. Her glacial fingers snatch at her abdomen, silent in their screams. And still they drill.

They conquer.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Polar Police


'We don't have Polar Police because it is all consent based... rights and responsibilities go together'
- Dr Julia Jabour's 'Introduction to International Law'



It's the end of week one already and things have gone by in an absolute blur. Naming every new and exciting thing I have learnt or has happened would be like counting snowflakes in a blizzard, but here are a few of the crystals I have managed to keep.

Thanks to the Antarctic Treaty, Antarctica is a continent devoted to Science and Peace. Science is the one that tends to get the most press because it is 'the currency of diplomacy', right at the heart of the cooperation between treaty signatories. It's quite remarkable that although the treaty was adopted in 1959 and came into force in 1961, both Russia and the USA were original signatories and continued to turn up to meetings throughout the cold war. This links to the peace aspect of the agreement. Although the USA used to have a nuclear power plant at McMurdo, the testing of nuclear weapons, nuclear explosions and the disposal of nuclear waste are all forbidden. We don't have 'polar police' because the treaty system is all consent based and 'rights and responsibilities go together'. Still, I can't get the image if a penguin in a blue cap flashing a badge and demanding entry into a base out of my head...

Other than that, Nationals of each country are subject to the jurisdiction of their homeland, meaning that different laws apply to different people.The rest of the base can happily stand to take a leak at any time of day, but the poor Swiss need to keep an eye on their watches and ensure their buttocks and the toilet seat make contact as soon as it strikes 2200 hours. Or else. It's never really ok to go around murdering people left right and centre a la horror classics, but it does raise an interesting question: what if you have more than one passport? Which set of laws apply?

Prince Albert of Monaco didn't seem too worried about falling foul of the law when he visited Scott Base. He was too busy enjoying the prawns that were served. If the menu were designed to stimulate conversation, it would have provided a nice segway to krill, the most successful and abundant creatures ever to inhabit the bottom rung of the Antarctic food chain. Their high fluorine content makes them somewhat unsuitable for human consumption, as the Russians found out after some culinary experimentation, but they do have super powers. Really. Krill are super neat because they can SHRINK. If there is not enough food they can feed off their own protein and get smaller, only to grow again when they have enough to eat. The 'cup of tea' principle espoused in Alice in Wonderland is alive and well under the ice shelves of the Southern Ocean after all.

There are some other pretty neat critters down South as well, not least the carnivorous duck. That's right, the yellow billed pintail duck of South Georgia has something of a taste for flesh and it doesn't just stop at shrimps either. These bloodthirsty birds have been known to feast on seal carcasses, a fact their benign appearance seems to bely. At least they will not have any problems with vitamin C, raw seal meat is known to be an excellent way to ward off scurvy, so perhaps they are onto something after all...

To finish off the week, a beer is probably in order. After hearing all about the fly infestation at Scott Base, I was keen to steer well clear of Guinness though... No one could figure out where the flies were coming from until a gruesome discovery was made in the storeroom. No, not a rouge member of the penguin police gone on a rampage! Instead, a few cans of Guinness had burst and soaked through their cardboard wrapper. The maggots were having a field day, as apparently the sweet and mushy habitat of rotting alcoholic cardboard is the best kind of Kindergarten. Who would have thought it?



Friday, November 18, 2011


'I am just going outside and may be some time'
-Captain "Titus" Oates, March 1912


'I may be some time' is possibly one of the most cliched lines to have come out of the frozen continent. Luckily for me, I know exactly how long I will be. This summer I am a student at Canterbury University's 14 week 'Postgraduate Certificate in Antarctic Studies' programme. This blog will be my scrapbook, cataloguing frozen snippets from each week and building up to our very own trip to the ice.

So far away and so different to any place I have ever experienced, the ‘Wide White Page’ of Antarctica has long captured my imagination. My initial interest in the continent was sparked after listening to several NZ artists and authors who had been to Antarctica on Creative NZ Scholarships. Writers such as Bill Manhire and Bernadette Hall spoke of the inspiring discoveries they had made whilst down there and their subsequent works (Manhire’s ‘The Wide White Page’ and Hall’s ‘The Ponies’) convinced me that one day I wanted to do the same.

My specific interest is in Antarctica as a literary landscape and I hope to look at the ways the continent was depicted in fictional works around the Heroic Age of Exploration (1895 - 1917). I intend to focus on the importance of imagined space, examining the views expressed not by travelers to the continent but by those far away in Europe who had never set eyes on the ice. By examining these imagined landscapes in various texts I hope to see what values and cultural ideas the authors associated with Antarctica, be they positive ideas about adventure and conquering challenges or more pessimistic portrayals where the landscape is a metaphor for inner emptiness in the face of the industrial revolution and modernization.

You are welcome to follow me on this journey as I learn about the history of the continent, the present political situation, current scientific projects on the ice and embark on my own research project. I look forward to the weeks ahead and beginning to share my own words on the ‘Wide White Page’.