Women Working in Antarctica

New Website and iTunes Podcast!

We are very excited to announce our new Women Working in Antarctica website, and our new video podcast available for free at iTunes!  

The new website includes information on the women featured in our short video portraits and the vital work they are doing in Antarctica, including resource links to learn more.  

The new Women Working in Antarctica video podcast is available for free at iTunes, and features iPod and iPhone compatible QuickTime videos.  

New podcast episodes will be released regularly. Viewers can subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, and will receive new episodes as they are released.

We hope you enjoy the new website and video podcast of Women Working in Antarctica!

- Mary Lynn Price

Antarctica Diver & Benthic Ecologist On Project Goals

Dr. Stacy Kim is an extraordinary Antarctica diver and Benthic Ecologist working with Project SCINI, the Submersible Capable of under Ice Navigation and Imaging.  SCINI (pronounced like "skinny") is an ROV specifically built to operate through the frozen ocean surface in polar regions.  In this brief video excerpt from Stacy's upcoming Women Working in Antarctica video portrait, she talks about the SCINI project and the goals of her team working in Antarctica:

For more information on Stacy, her team and Project SCINI, check out their great website!  Stacy's video portrait here on Women Working in Antarctica will be posted in January, so please check back after the new year for that!

- Mary Lynn Price

Girls in Ocean Science Student Question #4

During my deployment in Antarctica, I have received a number of wonderful short video questions for researchers from students involved in the Ocean Institute's Girls in Ocean Science program.  Here's another great video question from a Girls in Ocean Science planning committee member:

Check back soon as I post a short video with an Antarctica researcher's discussion of the goals of her team's project!

- Mary Lynn Price

Snowmobile mechanic and instructor in Antarctica

Here in Antarctica, one of the quickest ways to get around on the ground is by snowmobile. Snowmobiles are used by the science groups and support personnel to get to and from the field camps and various field research locations. This also means that the snowmobiles used need to be maintained and repaired, and the people who use the snowmobiles need to be properly trained to ride safely.  

That's where shawntel comes in!  She is a skilled snowmobile mechanic and instructor working here at McMurdo Station. Here's a video portrait of shawntel and the work she does in Antarctica... 

- Mary Lynn Price

Antarctica Researcher's Inspirations

In answer to the Girls in Ocean Science student organizer's question in the previous post, Antarctica penguin researcher Cassondra Williams of Scripps Institution of Oceanography talks about some of the people who inspired her to change careers and become an Antarctica Emperor Penguin researcher. Cassondra was a practicing attorney, who returned to graduate school to study biology.  Now she travels to Antarctica to study Emperor Penguins!  Here's a brief video with her answer:

You can read more about the work Cassondra and Emperor Penguin researcher Jessica Meir are doing here in Antarctica on their Penguin Ranch blog.  Stay tuned to Women Working In Antarctica for their video portrait!

- Mary Lynn Price

A New Question from Girls In Ocean Science Student Organizer

Here's another video question from a student member of the organizing committee for the Girls in Ocean Science Teen Conference coming up this February 7, 2009 at the Ocean Institute in Dana Point, California.

I will be putting this question to one of the many amazing women here in Antarctica, and posting a video with the response. Check back soon for an answer!

- Mary Lynn Price

Conserving Shackleton's Historic Hut in Antarctica

One of the most incredible experiences I've had on this expedition to Antarctica has been to film Antarctic Heritage Trust (New Zealand) conservators, Anna, Jana and Lizzie, working inside the historic Shackleton hut at Cape Royds, Antarctica.   

Built 100 years ago in 1908 as part of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition, the hut is filled with the effects and furnishings from that "heroic era" expedition.  Because of the hard work and diligence of the Trust, the hut and its historic contents have been restored for future generations of visitors and scholars to enjoy, learn from and be inspired by.  Here's a video of Trust conservators Jana, Anna and Lizzie talking about their work on location at the Shackleton hut:

The conservators are keeping a wonderful blog through the Natural History Museum in London, U.K. as they continue their Trust work at a remote Antarctica field camp at Cape Evans.  

Thank you to Katie Leum for her production assistance on location at Cape Royds, Antarctica.

On the Antarctic Heritage Trust's own website there are very cool virtual tours of the four historic bases under their care.

Here's a description of the Antarctic Heritage Trust (New Zealand) from their website:  "The Antarctic Heritage Trust (New Zealand), formed in 1987, is a charitable trust based in Christchurch, New Zealand registered under the Charities Act 2005 (registration CC24071).  It is  recognised internationally as the organisation caring for the expedition bases left by the first explorers in the Ross Sea region of the Antarctic Continent.  

The Trust cares for, on behalf of the international community, the  four bases associated with the following expeditions:

British Southern Cross Expedition 1898-1900. The expedition led by Carsten Borchgrevink.

National Antarctic (Discovery) Expedition 1901-1904.  The first expedition led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott.

British Antarctic (Nimrod) Expedition 1907-1909.  The expedition led by Sir Ernest Shackleton.

National Antarctic (Terra Nova) Expedition 1910-1913.  The second  expedition led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott.

All the sites are protected under the Antarctic Treaty System.  In 2007 all four sites (with a particular emphasis on Captain Scott's base at Cape Evans) were listed on the  World Monuments Fund List of 100 Most Endangered Sites in the World."

- Mary Lynn Price

GPS Field Engineer on the Ice!

Marianne Okal has one of the most interesting jobs in Antarctica.  That's because she is a GPS Field Engineer with UNAVCO who gets to work with all kinds of researchers here in Antarctica. UNAVCO is a non-profit organization that supports and promotes Earth science by advancing high-precision techniques for the measurement and understanding of the Earth's crustal deformation. UNAVCO is also involved in supporting public and community education. Here's a short video portrait of Marianne and her work here in Antarctica: 

A special thank you to Joe Pettit, UNAVCO GPS Field Engineer, and Marianne Okal for use of their wonderful photos in the video! 

UNAVCO has a great website with a very useful Education and Outreach section, featuring resources and interactive tools for students, educators, researchers and the public.  I especially enjoyed playing with the Jules Verne Voyager Map Tools!  

- Mary Lynn Price

View from Beneath the Ross Sea Ice

Yesterday I took my video camera with me for the first time on a dive beneath the Ross Sea ice in Antarctica.  Getting under the sea ice in Antarctica can be a rather involved process that often includes drilling a hole big enough for a diver to get through with all the requisite cold water diving equipment.  As soon as I descended beneath the ice I saw a Weddell Seal breathing in a nearby hole.  The visibility was likely around 600 feet, and looking back up at the bottom of the sea ice from underwater was nothing short of spectacular!

Here's a short vid of getting under the ice, and a glimpse of what it's like to look around beneath the Ross Sea ice in Antarctica...

A huge thank you to U.S. Antarctic Program Dive Services supervisors Rob Robbins and Steve Rupp for making the diving here happen!

Now for some truly incredible images of Antarctica marine life and diving under the Antarctica sea ice check out Norbert Wu's website and the great online resource on "Diving Under Antarctic Ice" including the Antarctica marine life field guide developed and maintained by Peter Brueggeman.

- Mary Lynn Price

Teaching Science From Antarctica!

One of the many amazing women I've had the honor of meeting here in Antarctica is Shakira Brown-Petit. Shakira is a middle school science teacher from the Harlem Children's Zone Promise Academy. She is now working at a remote Antarctic field camp called Offshore New Harbor as an educator with Dr. Stephen Pekar's Offshore New Harbor Expedition. Shakira will be doing webcasts and video conferences with students back in the U.S. as part of this scientific and educational expedition.

The Offshore New Harbor team will conduct seismic and gravity surveys as part of the effort to study the region's distant past. The goal of the Offshore New Harbor (ONH) Project is to study sediments deposited in Antarctica during the Greenhouse World. The team will be living on the sea ice in tents for approximately 35 to 40 days. It is from this extremely remote location that Shakira Brown-Petit will be doing webcasts and video conferencing to teach students about what the team is learning from their work as part of the ARISE program (ANDRILL Research Immersion for Science Educators). 

More information on Antarctica's past transition from "Greenhouse World" to "Icehouse World" can be found here.

The Offshore New Harbor project is a program of ANDRILL (ANtarctic geological DRILLing). As described on their website, ANDRILL is "a multinational collaboration comprised of more than 200 scientists, students, and educators from five nations (Germany, Italy, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States) to recover stratigraphic records from the Antarctic margin using Cape Roberts Project (CRP) technology. The chief objective is to drill back in time to recover a history of paleoenvironmental changes that will guide our understanding of how fast, how large, and how frequent were glacial and interglacial changes in the Antarctica region."

This is an incredibly fascinating and important project, and very much worth learning more about!

- Mary Lynn Price

New Questions from Girls in Ocean Science Student

Students organizing the upcoming Girls in Ocean Science Program at the Ocean Institute in Dana Point, California have sent more of their questions on video for me to post in this blog.  Here is the next video in their series of questions for Antarctica researchers:

I will be addressing these questions to a researcher here in Antarctica, and posting a video of the researcher's response in the next couple of days.  So check back soon for an Antarctica researcher's video response!

- Mary Lynn Price

Antarctica Weddell Seal Researcher

A few days ago I traveled by snowmobile to visit with Jen Mannas at the Weddell Seal colony at Big Razorback Island in Antarctica.  Jen took me on a tour of their field camp there at Big Razorback, where the research team she is part of studies the seals that make up the Big Razorback Weddell Seal colony,  There were a number of new pups, including one that Jen said looked to be a only few hours old.  Jen talked about the research project she is involved in that is one of the longest running research projects involving long-lived mammals. Here's a short vid from that visit:

Jen is based at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana.  She has been working in Antarctica as a Weddell Seal researcher during the seal pupping season for a number of years, and this year is the field crew leader at the Big Razorback field camp.  I look very much forward to returning to the camp when the pups are a little older and their mothers begin teaching them to swim!

- Mary Lynn Price