Antarctic video gallery
In the Director’s Chair
Video transcript
This job for me is an extraordinarily exciting adventure. It seems to be a bit of a culmination to a long career in activities that all lead to the Antarctic Division. I was an army officer. I graduated and went into amphibious logistics. I went there specifically because I wanted to go to the Antarctic.
I spent a year operating in and out of the southern oceans and the Antarctic continent — a remarkable, character-forming experience. Then I spent nearly 16 years running small and large airports in Australia, and then went into the botanic gardens area.
There is going to have to be a significant element of change in the Division going forward, and the change is driven by this remarkable window of opportunity that we’ve got now. A significant investment by the government in the Division, in providing additional capabilities, a new icebreaker, the overland traverse capability, the rebuild of Macquarie Island, the aviation capability. They are amazing investments. The change will come for us in managing both those new capabilities and delivering our existing operations.
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Blue whales, krill and poo power
Video transcript
Dr Elanor Bell, Voyage Deputy Chief Scientist:
Blue whales generally eat about three tonnes of krill a day and therefore they go down to Antarctica in the summer months when the ice is cleared out where they can find these huge swarms of krill, and eat them.
It’s completely about how krill and whales interact. So we’re going to be looking at the krill swarms themselves, and in a world first we’re going to be looking at the the characteristics of those swarms, how big they are, how deep they are.
Then we're going to look at the blue whales and how they’re behaving around that krill, which of those swarms they’re targeting.
And so we’re hoping to actually record this in a world first, because it’s something scientists have talked about and theorised about for a long time, and if we can show it in the real world, it will be fantastic.
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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 salt. The 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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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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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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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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