Antarctic video gallery
Midwinter swim 2019
Video transcript
Amy Chetcuti — Davis Station Expedition Mechanic
Doing the swim was exhilarating. You think you are in there for ages, but it was like three seconds, so survival instincts definitely kick in.
Simon Goninon — Davis Station Leader
Water temperature is around minus 2 degrees, maybe just shy of that. Air temperature today is actually pretty good, around minus 22/23, and not a lot of wind, maybe four or five knots. So it’s actually a pretty good day.
The day on station is just really important for people, whether its people who have been coming down here for multiple seasons, or whether its people, like myself who are down here for the first time. It’s just a really nice way to recognise this turning point for winter, for everyone to gather together, and mark it as a really special occasion.
What it’s actually like to actually take this plunge is a bit hard to describe. Your breath gets taken away, it’s just a completely foreign feeling. You’re in sub zero water, the whole fight or flight response kicks in and you really just want to get the hell out of the water. And to be honest it’s once you’re out that’s the worst thing, because you’re dropping 20 degrees getting out of the water and into the air temp.
Luke D’Anastasi — Davis Station Expedition Mechanic
This is my first time down here and swimming in Antarctica was pretty hectic, pretty cold, I felt like my body was on fire and my head was screaming get to the ladder and get out as quick as you possibly could.
Kieran Lusio — Davis Station Boiler Maker
It’s pretty intense, pretty invigorating. But the water is not too bad, it’s just the getting out bit that’s super cold. I really enjoyed it.
[end transcript]
Southern Ocean — ice and awe
Video transcript
Dr Dirk Welsford (Program Leader, Antarctic Conservation and Management, Australian Antarctic Division)
The Southern Ocean is awesome for lots of different reasons. I mean it’s awesome to look at. Some of the biggest waves in the world come from the Southern Ocean. Waves over 10 metres high. It joins all of the world’s oceans. So, it joins the Pacific, the Indian and the Atlantic Oceans. It’s down there at the bottom of the world.
But it’s full of amazing things as well. That’s where the largest animals in the world live. So, the Antarctic blue whale lives in the Southern Ocean. It’s where a lot of the penguins and seals and things that we think about as being Antarctic, often live near or in the Southern Ocean. The other amazing thing is that one of the world’s most abundant organisms, the Antarctic krill lives in the Southern Ocean and it’s a key part of how that whole system works. It’s food for nearly everything that lives down there. It’s superabundant so there’s lots of things that can grow, happy and fat, eating krill.
And one of the amazing things about the Southern Ocean is that food web is very efficient. It’s quite short. So, you can go from sunlight to microbes, the krill eat the microbes and then you’ve got whales eating those krill. So, very efficient transfer of energy. And you can basically go from sunlight to the world’s largest organism in a very short space.
The whole process of freezing and thawing every year so the sea ice that grows and then melts every year, drives the world’s circulation as well. So, as that ice forms, it sheds the salt out of the saltwater; that salt sinks and that whole process then drives the entire circulation of the world’s oceans.
The Southern Ocean is critical to the world’s climate. So, all of our weather in Australia comes from the Southern Ocean. If you look at the weather map each day, when they do the forecast, you can actually see that these frontal systems are coming across the Southern part of Australia. They all are generated by Antarctica and then are transported across the Southern Ocean to us.
[end transcript]
Hydroxyl Hunters
Video transcript
This is Law Dome in East Antarctica.
For three months in early 2019, scientists set up a drill site to collect old air bubbles from deep ice.
Dr Peter Neff (Glaciologist, University of Washington)
It’s just about the most specific question we can ask about that little bit of atmosphere trapped in the ice, and it’s at the most specific site glaciologically. We can’t do it anywhere else.
The question they want to answer is: how has the chemistry of the atmosphere changed from pre-industrial times to today?
Dr Vas Petrenko (Ice Core Lab, University of Rochester)
We’re trying to understand specifically the change in the ability of the atmosphere to scrub a number of pollutants, gases like carbon monoxide, but also greenhouse gases like methane, as well as gases that are capable of destroying ozone in the stratosphere.
The natural ‘air purifier’ is a highly reactive molecule known as hydroxyl.
Dr Peter Neff (Glaciologist, University of Washington)
If we’re emitting a whole lot of methane these days by burning fossil fuels, we want to know how long those methane molecules are going to stay in the atmosphere and that is controlled by how they’re oxidised, how they’re rusted out of the atmosphere, and hydroxyl (OH) is the main oxidiser in the atmosphere, that’s what we’re chasing after here.
By melting the ice to extract the old air, the team want to reveal a mystery.
Dr Vas Petrenko (Ice Core Lab, University of Rochester)
We simply don’t know how the hydroxyl radical concentrations have changed further back in time, as well as ultimately how we have altered the concentration of hydroxyl radicals through our emissions.
Knowing the past will help to accurately predict the levels of all greenhouse gases into the future.
The security of our planet’s climate depends upon this knowledge.
[end transcript]
The Twilight Zone
Video transcript
The winter sun in Antarctica barely rises above the horizon.
Simon Goninon, Leader, Davis research station
Living in twilight is something definitely to get used to. It’s a bit weird, you’re walking to work, it’s 8 o’clock in the morning or thereabouts, it’s pitch black, it might as well be midnight.
This is the last sunrise and sunset at Davis research station for more than a month.
The sun is up for only 44 minutes and won’t return for five weeks.
The lack of natural light makes it hard to maintain normal sleep patterns.
Dr Jeff Ayton, Chief Medical Officer, Australian Antarctic Division
It’s the light acting on the back of the retina in your eye that gives you that time stamp to say that this is morning time and you should be awake and that sets you up for the rest of the day.
As Antarctica goes dark, winter expeditioners look forward to the return of the light.
[end transcript]
Deep Frozen Democracy
Video transcript
During winter, our Antarctic stations are ice-bound and isolated.
So, how do our expeditioners get to vote on election day?
Each station has two volunteer Returning Officers appointed by the Australian Electoral Commission.
Sam Sanders, Assistant Returning Officer, Casey station:
I’m Sam, 28 years old…actually no, that’s a lie. I’m 27 (laughs). Sam Sanders, 27 years old, from Melbourne, and I’m the Bureau of Meteorology technician down here at Casey station.
Craig Butsch, Returning Officer, Casey station:
G’day, my name’s Craig Butsch, I’m 46 years old, from Darwin, originally from Melbourne, and I’m down here at Casey station with the Bureau of Meteorology as the senior meteorological observer.
The Casey polling booth has a view over the sea ice.
Sam Sanders:
So we’ll be voting later on today. We’ve set up the booth down at the wharf, and we’re ready to roll.
This year a total of 49 expeditioners are registered to vote as ‘Antarctic electors’.
The AEC emails ballot papers for each voter to the Returning Officers, who print them out.
Craig Butsch:
So people down here at Casey will be voting with a paper ballot. They’ll be placing it in the secured ballot box, and the next day myself and my assistant Sam will be counting the votes and then phoning them through to the AEC in Hobart.
Sam Sanders:
Yeah look, I think it’s really nice to be involved in what’s going on back in Australia, and voting is a nice way of doing that, and it’s good to be involved.
Craig Butsch:
It’s a little bit cold today, so we won’t be having a sausage sizzle but we will be having brunch. We’ll get our sausages, but it’ll be an inside-brunch-sausage instead of an outside-democracy-sausage-sizzle-sausage. (laughs)
[end transcript]