Hello
All,
Yesterday, I completed what is informally known as "garbage school".
Learning how to handle waste management here in Antarctica is a big deal.
The whole US Antarctic Program recycles 70% of all waste - way better
than the US average of 22+%. There's many, many different contains to
"throw trash" away...not the one or two or three in most places
back in the States. They even have a "Trash Dictionary" in case
you aren't sure where an item goes.
I wanted to fill you all in on a really big project that is taking place here in Antarctica - the Cape Roberts Project. As you might have guessed, the name Cape Roberts does refer to a geographic location - not that far from where I'm station, at McMurdo Station. This is a multi-national project involving the US, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and other countries - one of the many times that in the Antarctica you see great efforts done across nations.
This project's objective is to drill sea floor sediments to learn more about the period on earth between 30 and more than 100 million years ago. The drilling platform is on the Sea ice, that is of course over ocean, and on the floor, the coring begins to 1500 meters deep (and that is below the 150 to 500 meters of ocean and sea ice)! The reasons for doing this drilling are:
- to discover if there were ice sheets on Antarctica causing fluctuations in worldwide sea levels before the glaciations of the last 40 million years.
- to date the rifting of the Antarctic continent in order to help understand the formation of the Transantarctic Mountaions and the Ross Sea.
They started the project this year - but stopped early, as the sea ice got too thin, and the extra storminess that has been plaguing the area this season started to have the ice break up.
Its an impressive project, with lots of scientists working on it, and they even to had to consider environmental impact, very carefully, as well.
Finally - this morning I was startled by a fire alarm at 5:30 am! Fire is a big concern here on the ice, but fortunately this case it was a false alarm. I'll e-mail more about that, and the study of seals in future notes.
Well, talk to you all later!
Matthew