Back to Antarctica

I have been at Palmer Station for about 2 months now. I will be here until June working as a Boating Coordinator, managing a small fleet of Zodiac boats used by scientists. Lacy is holding down the home-front and we plan to meet in Chile in June, right after she graduates with her Masters in Landscape Architecture. There are 33 of us on station and the weather hovers around 35F daily. Things are smooth and good at the moment, though chaos is perpetually just around the corner. Boats popping, motors exploding, scientists getting stranded on the water and blowing away from station. All of these things continue to happen around me and I am usually just putting out fires...so to speak. The wildlife here is plentiful and entertaining. Three humpback whales swam directly under my boat last week. One of their tails nicked the boat. I was frightened, but the lady I was with seemed cool, so I just went along. I work long days and half days on Sundays. It is tiresome and makes me miss my coffee-shops and wife. But the perks of this job are fantastic. Lots of time speeding around among the islands. I get to go to many "protected areas" and out to various boats under the banner of science . It is quite a bit different than Pole. The scientists use the boats every day. Some of the groups I work with are SCUBA divers (looking for cancer cures, and believe it or not they have found one for melanoma), birders (penguins, giant petrels, albatrosses, etc.), krill (little shrimp-like things) collectors, and microbiologists. The krill and microbiologists are finding some interesting and scary things. The declining krill population is thought to be connected with the lack of bacteria in the water, due to too much glacial silt from the rapidly melting glaciers. Antarctica is melting, the silt blocks the sunlight, causing less bacteria in the water, limiting krill population, which limits whales and penguins. Many of the Antarctic species of penguin populations are shrinking rapidly, which is terrible because they are so damn cute. Also, there is a this "tourism" dynamic here that keeps the station in constant flux. Mostly small yachts, 3-8 people, but sometimes we get huge cruise ships of 100+ people. Sometimes helicopters from Chile. Last week we had a family on station who has been living on their sailboat for 5 years. Mom, dad, and 10 year old daughter. Wild. The girl wore a purple fairy princess costume with wings the entire time she was on station. I ate dinner on their boat one night and they were on and on about pirates and storms.