2018-19 Antarctic station leaders

Video transcript

Davis Station Leader, Simon Goninon

It's been a life goal for me for many years. So I've been quite conscious of just in the background, filling in what I thought might have been gaps to prep myself, to make myself a good candidate for the role.

Just the appeal of the isolation and the remoteness and, and the beauty and just how well respected and cared for the environment is, is really something special. It gives me that rare opportunity to dive into that and be a part of it and contribute to that conservation.

I'm really looking forward to getting everyone on station working together. That whole community sense is really appealing for me. I like to be a part of that kind of space and I think everyone that goes down there just genuinely wants to work well and do their jobs well and get the right outcomes for the science projects that we are there to support.

Casey Station Leader, Chris MacMillian

I'm lucky enough to be the Station Leader this year and so I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to work in the Antarctic for a whole year with a great bunch of people.

I've always liked that operational type focus and purpose and making a difference in those type of jobs. I've never seen the Southern Lights, so I've seen the Northern Lights, I'm looking to enjoy that.

And also just the changing weather patterns that come through so quickly, and Casey I understand is very, very dramatic in the changes that occur, particularly in the winds and, yeah experiencing all that and hopefully getting the forecast right to be able to do our operations as well.

Mawson Station Leader, Kyle Williams

This will be my second stint as a Station Leader with the Antarctic Division. Last season I was very fortunate to go to Macquarie Island and I had a fantastic experience there, both personally and professionally, and I couldn't wait to come back and be involved in the Program.

I think that this is the best leadership and management job on the planet. You get to manage a high-tempo operational program, using a range of sea, land and air assets. You get to facilitate and support the completion of some really high value science projects that have some really important outcomes for both the Australian and international scientific communities.

You get to lead a fantastic group of people from a range of diverse backgrounds. And you don't just get to lead them, you get to work with them and build this really unique community that leads to some really fantastic experiences and memories and friendships that last for a lifetime.

And probably the best part of all that is you get to do all those things whilst working in perhaps arguably, the most beautiful, yet challenging workplace on the planet. So for me there's nothing else that I'd like to do.

Macquarie Island Station Leader, Kat Panjari

I'm really excited to be heading to Macquarie Island for the wildlife. I think working in partnership with Tas Parks and the Rangers, we'll have such wonderful access to penguin colonies and elephant seals. And to be living so closely with that wildlife, is going to be really exciting for the team.

The thing I like the most about being a Station Leader is bringing a diverse team of people together from all sorts of different technical backgrounds and having a shared vision contributing to the science program.

So I'm really excited to be working with the Division's Modernisation Program, to start the planning for the construction phase of the new state-of-the-art research station on Macquarie Island. And it's going to give us increased capacity to do all sorts of interesting research and have less of an environmental impact on the island as well.

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Seeding Southern Clouds

Video transcript

Jared Lewis (Uni of Melbourne) - The AIRBOX is a great way of storing many instruments and all in one co-located area that we can move round wherever we need to make these measurements.

Dr Robyn Schofield (Uni of Melbourne) - We want to know how many there are, we want to know how large they are, we want to know how reflective they are.

Dr Robyn Schofield (Uni of Melbourne) - Over the Southern Ocean, a major source of aerosol, generally about 70% is sea saltThe tops of the waves get sheared off. That’s a major source of aerosol. Then they go on to form clouds. We wouldn’t have any clouds actually, without aerosols forming them.

Dr Robyn Schofield (Uni of Melbourne) - It’s a very clean and pristine environment over the Southern Ocean, and so the clouds that form, form really big droplets. And we get what’s called super saturation, so they’re both ice and water coexisting, so they are unusual.

Jared Lewis (Uni of Melbourne) - Helping us really narrow down the uncertainty in our climate model projections over the Southern Ocean. That's a tremendously important thing.

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Natural born krillers video

Video transcript

The Aurora Australis returned from Antarctica today with some very special passengers...

25 expeditioners, and ten thousand young Antarctic krill.

Krill are collected once a year in the Southern Ocean. 

Once in Hobart, 200 kilos of party ice keep the krill cool at zero degrees.

Their new home is a unique lab at the Australian Antarctic Division.

Here we learn how they feed, grow, and deal with ocean acidification.

These krill are around a year old, and can live for up to ten years.

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Dr Nick Gales: a unique Antarctic journey

Video transcript

Dr Nick Gales, Director, Australian Antarctic Division: 

I was incredibly fortunate that they were looking for a vertebrate ecologist to do some work on elephant seals that required administering anaesthesia, so my veterinary background was really a great strength for my application, I was very lucky.

Knowing now how important Antarctica is and then knowing what the consequences of climate change are to Antarctica and then looping back those influences on us is a key part of understanding what’s coming down in the future.

This whale finally surfaced and this huge wall of whale came up alongside me and I had no idea where on the body I was. It just kept passing me and I didn’t shoot the tag. I stood there completely dumbfounded as this animal just swam past us and looked. Then the driver was saying, “Why didn’t you shoot?” “I didn’t know where!”

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Super-cooled clouds

Video transcript

Australian Antarctic Division Principal Research Scientist

Dr Andrew Klekociuk

It uses a laser beam to measure the height and the properties of clouds. The thing that we're most interested in is whether clouds are liquid or solid, whether they consist of water droplets or ice crystals.

That means that they influence the radiation coming from the sun in a different way to what we see in the Northern Hemisphere

When we calculate what the temperature of the Southern Ocean is in our model, we find it's higher than we actually observe. We think that the liquid clouds in the Southern Hemisphere are implicated in causing that difference.

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