Rothera

We are now back at Rothera for our three week(ish) stay. Things have been soo busy, I’ve hardly had any extra time to write! The science collecting on the JCR was successful, but very intense. We now have lots of samples to sort, identify, and extract DNA from.

The night before we got off the ship at Rothera we got to go ashore to an old British base from the 1950’s on Horseshoe Island. We climbed down the rope ladder off the side of the ship in our waterproof boat suits, into a small humber boat and headed ashore. The small hut was quite cozy and left almost just like it was when it was abandoned. Food items and dishes were still perched on the shelves, beds still made up, and personal items place about. Overall, a great surprise evening-trip ashore.

The next day we landed at Rothera and had several training and briefing sessions for “how-to’s” for things and places around base. There is much to do on base, i.e. skiing/ ice-climbing, camping, social events in the main building, oh and of course science. Housing about 85 people, Rothera is like a small community. Life is easy and fun at Rothera. Everyone helps everyone and there are very little “stresses” of the real world to worry about… not to mention the view out the window is endlessly stunning! The weather has still been very “Antarctic”… lots of snow and wind and every now and then a nice sunny day. It is light 24 hours a day right now, which makes it very easy to lose track of your perspective on time of day, but also easy to stay awake. In the next few weeks I hope to check skiing, ice climbing down in the crevasse, camping, and a bit of science off the list!

Here are some more recent photos:
Photo1: basket star (photo taken by Pete Bucktrout)
Photo2: featre star (photo taken by Pete Bucktrout)
Photo3: octopus (photo taken by Pete Bucktrout)
Photo4: Horseshoe Island base
Photo5: Inside the hut
Photo6: Iron on rocks at Horseshoe Island
Photo7: Last sunset on JCR
Photo8: Group shot on JCR