Steen V. Mogensen
                      email: mogensen@bellsouth.net

Updated October 12th, 2006

Questions and Answers:

If you have a question about the Project, the Animals, our Daily life here or anything else relating to Antarctica, then send me an email and I will do my best to get you an answer. If it seems like a questions others might be interested in too, I will place the question and answer here on this page.
 

A: Yes absolutely. Many of the seals come back to the same colonies every year. The pups that were born last year will not be back though. They have gone out in the pack ice where they will spend the next 5-6 years. Not much is known about this phase of their lives, but after 5-6 years they will return to the colonies where the females will give birth to their own first pup.
Every year a few animals, which have not previously been seen in the study area, will show up too. These animals get tagged and registered in the database and will from now on be part of the study.
 

A: Though the weather can change from nice to nasty within minutes, most of the time we will have seen it coming and are already heading back to camp before it gets bad. At camp we have everything we need and can just sit tight until it clears, even if it takes a few days.
Everybody who will be working on the ice must go through a survival training. This is what is known as "Happy Camper School" and you can find some information and pictures about it on the [Antarctica 2005] pages.
All vehicles that travel away from McMurdo base, including the helicopters and our snow machines, carry survival packs with gear for as many people as are on the vehicle. In the packs there is a tent, sleeping bag, stow, matches, fuel, food etc and even a book of some sort to keep you entertained while you wait it out. Basically everything you need to survive for 2-3 days. Storms rarely last much longer than that during the summer season.
 

A: Very very fast! ;-)

Well on a more serious note ... we have an outhouse at camp. The seat in there is cut from a piece of blue foam and it is actually reasonably comfortable to sit on. The biggest problem is getting in and out of the 6x6 foot outhouse when the wind is really blowing. The door has a strap that keeps it from slamming into the structure but it is not strong enough. To fix that we tie a 5000lb Cargo Strap around the entire outhouse, but that makes it difficult to get in or out.

Mark fighting the winds to get the outhouse back on location.       (Picture from last season)

There have been times when people have gotten stuck out there and have simply had to wait for the weather to clear before they could get back to the kitchen or sleep hut again.
Last year, during a storm, the outhouse broke loose and drifted away over the ice. We later had to go and retrieve it over by Inaccessible island and pull it back. We talked about putting a map and a GPS receiver out there, so you at least would know where you were if it should happen again with somebody onboard!
 

A: B15 had a severe influence on the ice conditions in the sound. Because of B15 the sea ice did not break up as it usually does during the Antarctic summer. This again meant that the distance from the open water to the colonies was substantially longer than usual, in some areas up to 100 miles. According to Dr. Bob Garrett, it is believed that the ice conditions are directly linked to the seals behavioral pattern and it is therefore expected that more animals will show up in the colonies this year. As Dr Garrott put it: "The dramatic change we expect to see is basically a return to normal conditions!". "In a normal year, as many as 450 to 500 pups are being born in the study area around Ross Island". Last season we saw only about half that number of pups.

The Weddell seal can stay under water for 60 minutes or more and can travel substantial distances in that time, especially when doing exploratory dives where they swim near the surface. However, they need to find cracks or other openings in the ice to get air and if the chances of finding such openings are limited, the seals most likely will not attempt to get to the colonies.

Dr. Garrott also remarks that "While the ice seems to have broken up all the way in to the north side of Tent island and Inaccessible island last summer, the ice conditions at Turks Head and Hutton Cliffs is possibly even worse than  previous years".

B15 also had significant impact on the Emperor and Adelie penguin colonies around Ross Island.