Expeditioners at Macquarie Island get summer programs underway.

Macca’s summer projects get started

Our visit from the French Antarctic research vessel L'Astrolabe on the weekend before last brought 12 summer season personnel to commence a variety of summer programs and projects. These expeditioners will either be staying for the whole summer until April, or some will go home on a tourist ship visit just before Christmas. 

From the Australian Antarctic Division’s Terrestrial and Near-shore Ecosystems Human Impacts section, Lisa, Robbie, Pat and Ben (from University of Melbourne) are running an ongoing project examining methods of remediating petroleum contaminants in the soil, in areas of historic fuel and oil contamination of soil around the station and isthmus area of the island. In a related project, Ingrid (from Macquarie University) is studying the impact of such contamination on the soil ecology and invertebrate fauna.

From Tasmania’s Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment, Kate and Jarrod are running another ongoing project studying the ecology, status and conservation of Macca’s albatross and giant petrel populations, as threatened seabirds. This project has monitored our magnificent birds for a number of years and yielded great information about their breeding, feeding and migratory habits and lifestyles in general. This is directly applicable to conservation efforts, in particular their survival in an environment made very threatening by longline fishing practices. Kate and Jarrod are currently doing field training and safety training at the southern end of the island with our field training officer Ian and TASPAWS ranger in charge Chris.  

From the Bureau of Meteorology, Evan, Krzysztof, and Paul are installing a new hydrogen generating electrolyser system for filling weather balloons. TASPAWS have sent down Andrea as summer wildlife ranger. Andrea will be undertaking a range of duties including looking after the ten shiploads of tourists arriving for a two day visit to the island between November and January. Carpenter Joe will be augmenting our station tradie group to finish a number of minor, new summer works and maintenance projects around station.

These newcomers were made very welcome by the 14 winterers staying until next April, who were eagerly anticipating some new faces. Further information about these projects will be forthcoming in future station news updates.

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