A team of scientists, engineers and tradespeople head to Antarctica to assess the extent of human impacts at Australian stations.

A Cleaner Antarctica

This summer we’ve had six scientists, engineers and skilled tradespeople working across two science projects under the “A Cleaner Antarctica” banner that focus on remediation of fuel spills and assessing the extent of human impacts at Australian stations. 

Arriving in mid-November and staying to end of February, the team has experienced the full spectrum of Antarctic conditions – early season snow, a strong melt, freezing mornings and blue sky afternoons, blizz days (top wind speed on station this year was 90 knots) and everything in between (even a bit of rain!).  Throughout, the A Cleaner Antarctica science team completed a broad scope of work this season ranging from:

  1. Successfully reusing remediated (“cleaned-up”) soil on station, returning this soil to the Antarctic environment, where it belongs.
  2. Decommissioning and systematically sampling one of our specially constructed containment cells for soil remediation to study how these perform under Antarctic conditions, which is critical to understanding how these types of liner systems can be used for future remediation efforts.  
  3. Installing 95 vapour samples below >6 m of snow to monitor the extent of a fuel spill that occurred in 2018.
  4. 7 days of IRB based underwater ROV and sediment sampling around the Wilkes station area to assess potential impact in the near shore marine environment.
  5. Trialling new field instruments to monitor nutrients and contaminants in water, including the station wastewater.
  6. Over 350 km (20 hours) of drone flying to support site assessment and understand the terrestrial human “footprint” around station.    
  7. Supported a range of other science and environmental management projects through deriving drone imagery at the Mitchell, Robinson Ridge, and Odbert Island, assessing terrestrial biodiversity and bryophyte (moss and lichen) health, and environmental monitoring.
  8. The team skied and ran over 300 kms, held their own in station table tennis and darts competitions, rogaines, and Australia Day swims! And Jordan’s amazing water colour earned a whopping $2500 for charity (Little Wings).

With the success of the program this summer, an extra thanks to all on station who were outstanding in supporting the A Cleaner Antarctica team this year – from the coxswains in IRBs, sampling support, comms and ICT.  From Tim, Bec, Jordan, Mel, Johan, Gavin and Glenn – thank you.  Your support was truly invaluable.

The end goal – all the above are part of Australia’s long-term leadership in environmental stewardship under the Antarctic Treaty, where Australia works to understand human impacts, develop methods to reduce those impacts, and then apply them to remediate, restore and protect the Antarctic environment in a sustainable way, all the while sharing widely with other national Antarctic programs dealing with similar situations.

#ACleanerAntarctica

Three people are pictured in the red IRB in the foreground, two people taking samples and one driver at the tiller. The Wilkes shoreline in the background
A person in the foreground kneels over the soil bank inspecting the liner, a backhoe bucket in the aisle, with lower Casey pictured in the background
The sun protruding from a cloud, over a landscape view of old Wilkes station, taken from the water

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