It's the Final Countdown

Why Hello again!

Before I launch into this post, I have a few business things to address:
Firstly, I finally managed to open the blog so that anyone can leave a comment without having to sign up to anything - so please feel free to leave me a quick word if you are inspired to!
Also, as this is my last posting from civilization, I figured I would give you the address at which to reach me with snail mail (but legend has it, the Falkland Islands are a bit of a black hole for mail so nothing too important - please!). But keep in mind the best way to get a hold of me will be via email, or to give me your number for me to call you. That being said, the mailing address is:
Rothera Research Station
British Antarctic Survey

Stanley
Falkland Islands
FIQQ 1ZZ
South Atlantic

Now, back to the fun stuff! 

After the excitement of my week in Girton and the Winter Teams Training there, some of my colleagues had the chance to go and enjoy the next few months at home. Several of us, however have been meandering the United Kingdom attending various training modules in different cities. I was hoping to share a bit about those different courses with you so you can see how they might be helpful for the next 15 months. 

My itinerary started with Training in Personal Survival techniques, whereby we were learning how best to survive at sea should our ship run into trouble (mind you, I am not scheduled to travel by sea as is, but will be flying all the way down to Rothera). 

For this we sat in a classroom for half a day, discussing maritime laws and procedures (and trying on various exposure suits), then spent the afternoon jumping into a pool from various heights, deploying life-rafts and generally floating about in fetal position with our life jackets on. 

It was a great exercise in teamwork and planning, as we had to go through a drill as if we were to abandon ship. 

           Following this training, and after a short stay in London visiting old friends I made my way over to Alton for a regulator servicing course. 

As divers, our equipment really is our primary life-line, so having the skills to repair it on site (or at least back in the warmth of my office) is paramount to running smooth operations throughout winter. 

 For that reason I have undertaken repairs and servicing training for most components of our diving equipment, starting with the first stages.

The first stage regulators we are using at Rothera are manufactured by Poseidon, so I was trained in their offices in rural England. What this really means is you get to pull apart a bunch of equipment into it's tiniest components, discuss all the pieces that are likely to need fixing, and then reassemble the whole thing. Learning to follow the manual's instructions while also having someone there to ask was very helpful since the next time I am likely to have to disassemble these pieces I will probably be by myself on the other side of the world. 

I also trained with Interspiro in regards to the second stages we will be using, in this case the Divator Mk2 full-face masks ( Commonly known to the commercial diving world as AGA's). These have been modified by BAS to include our bailout system, but that I will explain to you in another blog post. 

Along very similar lines, I learned to pull apart and reconstruct our fire-fighting breathing apparatus, as one of my jobs on station is likely to involve making sure that those are inspected and tested every month. Along with one of my colleagues who IS part of the station fire team, we learned to service this important piece of emergency kit, and also learnt how to explain it's use to our colleagues should they need to use it in anger. 

Technical part of diving aside, one of the better parts of the training period was actually getting a chance to use all the diving gear we will have in Antarctica and get in the water with my new dive buddies! 

And I present to you the winning dive team of Rothera 2016 winter! 

Myself, Ben and Saz testing our our brand new suits!
( Photo from Ben Robinson)

During this week we went over the gear we would be using as some of it takes a bit of getting used to, tested out our new custom drysuits to check for leaks and fit, and most importantly got to dive together as a team and learn about each-other's experience. I'm really very excited to work with these guys, and cannot wait to see the wonder and excitement on their faces after their first Antarctic dive. :) 

Looking trust-worthy, right? 

      In order to fully be responsible for these kids though I had to re-do both my Hyperbaric Chamber Operator and my Diver Medic Technician courses, spending a few weeks in the charming city of Plymouth and a bit too much time pestering the wonderful staff at the DDRC (Diving Diseases Research Center) nearby. Despite having already done these courses in Tasmania two years ago, this time I went in with many very situation-specific questions and was happy to have very competent and helpful answers. In Rothera in winter we really will be operating with minimal staff, so it is paramount to make sure that we can safely cover all responsibilities should something tragic occur. 

During the Chamber Operator training I spent much time discussing the technical implications and procedures for treating an injured diver in a hyperbaric chamber such as we have on station. These treatments are likely to take between 4.5 to 7 hours depending on the situation, and require a fair amount of (at least mental) preparation. 

NOT getting bubbles into cannulated arms.

      In lay-man's terms for those of you who might not know, hyperbaric chambers operate on the principle of an air-tight chamber (anywhere from the size of a bed to that of a small room) in which patients and potentially their tenders are placed. The pressure in the chamber is increased by adding air, essentially dropping the depth of the chamber to what is desired and keeping it at that pressure until a slow ascent (depressurization) is begun. The treatments for divers include the use of 100% Oxygen (more effective at depth) which will help them get rid of any gases they may have accumulated in their systems,  and the physical compression of any unwanted gas bubbles so they can dissolve back into the blood-stream. 

Some of the tools and skills required:
Airways, Neurological examinations, Urinary catheterisation

The dive medic training is mostly so that I may provide immediate medical assistance to my divers and other colleagues should something happen either at the dive site, on station, or in the chamber. We do have a wonderful doctor on station, but it is always helpful to have a few extra sets of hands, and the world of diving medicine and injury is a bit of an uncommon one so the timely recognition of signs and symptoms is critical.

Suturing practices I hope to never use

For those of you who know me well, you know I would absolutely love the opportunity to hone in on my medic training, so the time spent practicing these skills was absolutely not lost. The inclusion of emergency scenarios with a fe other medic students helped to make the whole thing come together quite nicely. 

Sorry for the long-winded explanation of the diving, but as you can imagine that will be occupying the majority of my time once on station so I thought a bit of background information might be helpful. 

Some of the other skills I had to acquire included the use of a "lorry loader" crane, fitted to the back of a large tracked vehicle (now don't get too technical on me with this one please!). We will be using this primarily to lift the dive boat in and out of the water from the jetty, so being comfortable operating it is pretty essential. 

I think little Kate would be proud

I also learned ( to my great joy and pride), to use and service chainsaws. 

Yes. 

Chainsaws.

Big ones!

And no, there are no trees in Antarctic for us to be using them on, but we are instead using them to cut through the sea ice so that we may dive. The three day course up near Derby with two colleagues was spent taking apart chainsaws and reassembling them, sharpening our chains and cutting into and down trees. We progressively got to use bigger and bigger chainsaws, but this 3.5ft bar still comes a foot short of the one we will be using at Rothera! 

I definitely did find myself seriously pondering a change of careers as the felling of trees was definitely a lot of fun (though granted, not the most relevant to my diving).

Predictive clothing choices
on baby Kate?

So here I am, only THREE days away from departure, with my brain filled with knowledge I didn't even knew I required, enjoying the last few moments of civilization with friends and family. 

My flight departs on Saturday for what will undoubtedly be the experience of a lifetime, and I frankly cannot wait. Torn between excitement and a bit of trepidation, my bag is mostly packed and most of my goodbyes have been said. For now I'm off to enjoy the unseasonably warm November weather.

muddy runs

I will be writing soon to let you know how the trip down went and what my first impressions of Rothera are, but until then I will let you ponder just how long this travel day is going to be:

I'm back!!!

Hello all! 

My sincerest apologies for never actually getting back to this after my latest update in February. As some of you might be aware, I have since not only returned to civilisation and fresh fruit, but circumnavigated the Australian continent alone, living in a beat-up station wagon.

I have been present at three absolutely fantastic weddings

Laine and Zach got hitched!!!! 

Got to attend a stunning Indian wedding for Shreya and Prushottam. Not to mention this obnoxiously beautiful bridal party and wedding :P I love you Ema and James! 

I also got some quality time catching up with friends in Hawaii,  Seattle, France and a few English cities

High-school reunion 

Family reunion! 

Hawaii holidays!  

Spent my birthday with these crazy kids 

I could most happily write a few novels on the incredible road-trip throughout Australia for three months, but this blog is focused on my time in Antarctica. And since I presume that is why you are so kindly lending me your eyes, I will stick to that narrative (but give you a few bonus photos nonetheless).

Rainforests 

Red earth roads

Coastlines 

Skies and sunsets galore

Bushfires

Incredible cultural history 

Wicked rock formations 

Mines

And forests 

Oh, and the most fascinating wildlife! 

But really, the reason I am back here is because I also accepted a job returning to the frozen land for some more diving!!!!
On that note, I am incredibly flattered and proud to tell you I have started my role as the Field Diving Officer for the British Antarctic Survey station of Rothera.  This is an 18-month contract,  of which I spend about 15 continuous months in Antarctica, working to maintain safe diving practices to collect data from underwater year-round.
As you can imagine,  this work involves a lot of training and responsibility.  As such I am in the middle of a two-month period of pre-departure training,  travelling throughout the United Kingdom to various cities to learn different skills that will help me over the course of the next year and a half.

This all started with a chance to meet everyone newly employed by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS)  for a week at Girton College in Cambridge,  hearing about what to expect on a British base and mostly meeting these expeditionners with whom I will be spending such a long time living.
Here we exchanged stories of previous lives, anticipation and fears for the one on which we were embarking,  and got many answers to questions we had not even thought to ask yet. We spent three days doing advanced first aid, and learned in the process that we really could trust each-other.

Following the initial week, the winter expeditionners were siphoned off and taken to camp in the countryside,  learning to use ropes, stoves and teamwork to solve many problems.

I am clearly in good hands being rescued

High ropes course 

Blizzard navigation training 

This was our first time truly meeting the team with whom we would be isolated for winter (7 months!!! With only them!!!).  In my case, it was meeting the 20 others with whom I will be cooking,  diving, cleaning, eating, and most importantly enjoying Rothera station.  And what a great team!

I just wanted to at least begin to get you up to speed on my life, and the fact that the outstanding adventure that first motivated me to write to you has actually manage to perpetuate itself into a much longer and  even less believable story. As this new adventure has officially begun (the season of summer has officially begun at Rothera a few days ago) I will be updating you before I depart for Antarctica - a date planned for November 21 2015 - to let you know a bit more about the training I have been doing.



For now, thank you for being so patient with my blogging lapses.

I am just incredibly grateful and feeling like the luckiest woman on earth to have the chance to have lived these adventures and shared in these lives and cannot wait to see what comes next!  

A day in the field

I've been writing a lot about what fun activities and adventures have been available during my free time down here, but not so much about what fills my day-to-day life at work. So here's a bit of an overview of what a typical diving work day would be.

Our morning start times on FOCE depend mostly on whether we are diving off of our “trusty” work boat the Pagadroma, or driving out to our sea-ice site at O'Brian's Bay (I'll just refer to this as OB1 to make things easier) where the ant-FOCE experiement has been set up for nearly 3 months now.

Sunrise clouds

When we work off the Pagadroma we need to be up and running a bit earlier so as to be back at the wharf before the tradies knock off. This early start comes with the wonderful opportunity to catch some stunning sunrises from the boat, even if it eats about an hour off of my sleep-time.

One of the other mind-blowing things we've gotten to see from the boat is the ocean freezing over. The water will slowly start to freeze from the top down on particularly calm cold nights, forming a layer of “grease ice” on the surface, which I have seen get up to approx 5mm thick.  

This ice is easily displaced by the boat cutting through it, sliding layers over each-other on it's way. Here I was thinking I had seen the ocean in most of it's states, yet the idea that it can freeze over is quite striking. Seems a bit silly this should come as a surprise seeing as we have been working on and below sea ice for the last 4 months,but it something different to actually observe it forming.

When our work is land and sea-ice based, we have a more or less exciting commute by Hägglund (hereby “Hag”) to OB1 along charted and GPS routes, travelling across large ice-flows and along glacial moraine lines.

When I say more or less exciting this is because the conditions of the track are so incredibly weather dependent that it has taken us everywhere from 30minutes to over 2 hours to cover the same trip. Some days the ice has melted away to form very consequential melt-streams (frankly I'd call them rivers...) into which the Hag will drop of the quad bikes will get bogged.

melt "stream"

Some of the terrain we'd be regularly driving through on a warm day

There are also days when the visibility has been greatly reduced due to snow and wind, and though we avoid travelling to site on these days, it is not always possible. On a good day though, the snow is hard and the sun shining and we only get stopped in our commute to take photos of the breathtaking scenery or have the occasional snowball fight. 

Once at the dive site, there is a more of less extensive set-up process, mostly depending on whether we forgot to bring the music radio with us and whether it has snowed since we last got out to our dive hole.

drilling dive holes

original formation of dive hole

 

The hole was originally cut into the ice using a 90cm augur on a precarious little machine, but has now grown to the size of a small swimming pool due to our repeated travel through it and all the bubbles we have been blowing. 

current dive hole dimensions- just chillin'

                We set up all our gear and clear the fresh ice and snow off of our hole (if we can find it!), finish setting up any remaining scientific equipment and get our divers dressed in. What does one wear in -1.8°C water you might ask? 

dive gear at the wharf on a particularly snowy day

While we all wear slightly different amounts under our drysuits, most will wear some variation of the following: Merino wool thermal under garments (in my case two pairs of leggings!), some fleece pants and top, a “wooly bear” onesie (really fuzzy onesie), about 2 or 3 pairs of thick wool socks(or my boot-liners :) ), and the drysuit. The drysuits we wear are fitted with dry gloves as well, so we pile on a few layers of fleece under-gloves before popping those on. 

diver checks done before every single dive

Once our drysuit is zipped up and our beanie comfortably in place, we can start getting the dive gear onto our divers. With ankle-weights in place and occasionally an additional weight-belt, we can start the heavy lifting. This involves one (ideally two) people hoisting the BCD-harness system onto the diver's back and proceeding to do up the multitude of clips and connections to hold it in place, and connect the drysuit to it's air-source.

We fit the dry gloves to our diver, put fins on his feet while he stands there trying to keep his balance, make sure he has a knife and a dive computer, and lastly place the weights into the BCD. We've estimated the diver is wearing approx 35kg of weight on his body by the time we are ready for final checks! The last step in this process is a strict militaristic check of all of the diver's equipment, starting with the bailout tank on his back, checking everything from drysuit zippers to how happy the diver is (by the time this question comes around at the end of the checks the answer usually involves and impatient grumble to please be let into the water).

Finally entering the water (Christmas eve, hence the hats :) ) 

Once cleared by the dive supervisor, both divers enter the water, rejoicing in the immediate alleviation of all the weight they have been carrying and with any additional science gear in hand, perform a few last minute checks on each-other and take off to their respective tasks. 

Standard view for tenders: umbilicals and ice. 

At this point the surface crew (one tender for each diver, the dive supervisor, and often an additional person to do the running around helping part) either get to relax and stare at some hoses going into a hole in the ice, or start a frantic ballet of hoisting ropes carrying samples from the divers and expensive gear to and from the bottom of the shotline (a rope we have permanently attached at the hole's edge for a variety of useful purposes).

diver leaving surface as seen through the hole

 

Under the ice and out of sight of the supervisor, the divers are able to talk to each-other and to the surface crew through the use of full-face masks and communication cables. This is intended to make things a lot easier in terms of communicating instructions and keeping safety a priority, even though at times it seems to just make things a little more confusing.

The divers are performing a variety of tasks, sometimes taking sediment cores (pushing a PVC pipe into the sediment and capping it so as to bring up a specific amount of it for various tests), sometimes simply checking the condition of our experimental set-up, and sometime setting up and taking down miniature versions of the experiment for the PhD student amongst us, or taking photos along specific transect lines. 

Under the ice, the world moves at a different pace. We joke about how the pressure difference somehow condenses time underwater (it just seems to fly by), and also condense brains. It's well known that all the divers, no matter how much they've discussed and checked plans before submerging, seem to have some vague amnesia of actual instructions. But that might be partially due to the setting in which they are which is frankly amazing (

Diver on safety stop seen from the Pagadroma
- Casey Station in the background

though at some sites quite dark, dull and outright boring).  

Ice ceiling up close ( with dive hole in the distance)

Looking up at the ice from below, it looks like a grey stormy sky-full of clouds. Varying shades of darkness representing the uneven nature of the ice, revealing the thinner parts or the heavily snow-covered patches. The ice we have been diving through at OB1 is approx 2m thick, but lets in a surprising amount of light when clear of snow. At a few sites, the ice was thin enough to allow the shadow of the Hag to be visible to the divers below, but more than sturdy enough to hold it's weight.

With all their tasks completed , or occasionally infuriatingly aborted, the diver slowly make their way back to the shotline at the supervisor's request, and leaving bottom start making their way up to a 3m safety stop. Here they hover for the next 5minutes, clearing their bodies of as much nitrogen build-up as possible, and watching the blue world around them (or their bubbles racing to the surface through the hole). Once on surface, they have to be assisted out of the water, since they very suddenly now have to carry all their weight again, and the tenders proceed to remove all their gear.   

Curious Weddell

Uninterested Weddell

Some days in the field we have been graced by the curious visit of a Weddell seal (or two), poking it's head up through the dive hole to snuffle about and peer at us before taking off under the ice. On occasions, they have simply stayed right next to the dive site the entire day, napping and ignoring our noisy presence.  

More often though we have been visited by the very curious Adélie penguins, arriving in hoards of up to 40penguins, taking what seems like a guided tour of our surface installations. They've gotten bolder and bolder, approaching us with caution at first and now even venturing up to touch some of our gear. 

penguin parades

After a day-full of this kind of experience, the Hag trip back to station provides a great time to reflect on just how incredibly lucky we are to be part of this, and wonder what wonderful meal is waiting for us in the mess when we get home.  

Ice-cliffs as seen from the boat

I feel truly awed at the fact that not only to I have the privilege of being down in this surreal part of the world, but I also get to be one of the very few people who get to see what magic the world under the ice contains. And so I apologize for the length of this particular post, but even here have not been able to convey as much of this wonder as I wish I could.  

And so, I leave you with one of my favorite photos yet. 

And some bonus seallyness for your day :)