Jacek (jacaDcaps) Piszczek @ The Polish Antarctic Station, Henryk Arctowski, 2nd stay
2012/05/11 - A few years back, during the 30th Polish Antarctic Expedition, we only had
e-mail access at Arctowski and had to visit Ferraz to surf the Internet or call with Skype, etc.
We did however have enough crazy ideas to film passing through two ice caves in the biggest
moraine next to the Ecology glacier. These caves - sadly - have collapsed since then, so it's
impossible to re-shoot this with a HD camera. This was truly an experience - middle of the winter,
the cold, darkness, a really heavy truck battery we had to carry up there in order to have
some light inside the caves. We probably went through both of them at least 3 times in order
to shoot those scenes, which took about 3-4 hours.
2012/05/08 - Another batch of random weather photos.
If you were wondering whether we had a day off on the 1st and 3rd of May which are
national holidays in Poland - we did. Since we assumed people in Poland would be
having fun with one of these, we just had to do a barbecue here as well.
2012/05/04 - Just a few birds left on a beach. Still no seals around. Gentoo penguins
stopped showing up on the beach too... Makes it a bit boring when going outside.
2012/04/30 - Some random photos of the sky. I'm responsible for weather monitoring, so there's
always a point and shoot camera in the pocket of my work coat. Despite relatively good weather lately,
there's almost no animals around. It feels pretty weird to be the only mammal on the beach :)
We had some problems with the main water pipe connecting our lake and the pumping station with
the Agregaty (power generators) building. It turned out that the heating cable around the pipe broke
in several places and we had to wait for the temperature to rise above 0C to be able to dig the pipe
out and fix it. Luckily, the water is back again. Another issue could arise if gets very very cold
and the lake begins freezing at the bottom - there's obviously a thick layer of ice on top already.
Luckily we have a system that lets the water come back to the lake from the Agregaty building, so
the warmer water is constantly being mixed with icy one in the lake.
2012/04/22 - After a week of bad weather it's finally calm again. Sadly, the bay is filled
with packed ice again, so we cannot use our zodiacs. In most places there isn't enough snow for ski-doos so
it's pretty hard to move things between buildings. We were all hoping to see a Chilean helicopter yesterday
since some people heard it in Ezcurra, but sadly they had other plans. It's pretty disappointing that despite
the large amount of packed ice there are still no crabeater seals around. Really looking forward to seeing one
again...
2012/04/16 - Gentoo penguins gather near our main building every day now - sometimes there's literally
hundreds of them nearby.
2012/04/12 - A special treat for all the followers of this blog - a 360° panorama taken from the lighthouse.
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A fur seal was trying to reach the open water through the thin ice that just started forming near the shore. It was too thin to
support her most of the time so it looked pretty hilarious - just had to film that. Sorry it's a bit shaky. Whenever I decide not
to take a tripod with me, something worth filming happens...
2012/04/11 - A few photos from a calm winter day - yesterday. Today the Station and surrounding area looks completely different.
30m/s northern wind brought rain and higher temperatures. It's +5C now, most of the snow has melted and the packed ice is slowly moving
towards the exit from the Admirality Bay. Who knows? Maybe we'll be able to use our zodiacs again soon?
2012/04/9 - Photos from the past two weeks. Ever since Polar Pionner left we've had more and more snowfall and lower and lower temperatures.
A few days of storms brought a lot of packed ice from the Weddel Sea, practically isolating us from the world - at least by the sea. The Wintering
has truly started now. Hopefully we're going to see some Chilean helicopters from time to time.
2012/04/03 - Sorry for not keeping in touch for a while - we were all a bit tired after dealing with Polar Pioneer
and I didn't feel like updating the blog.
All in all, we managed to deal with all the cargo we had to transfer to the ship quite smoothly - 4 full PTS loads, 3 people
working on the PTS itself, 2 securing them on a zodiac and 2 loading the PTS up on land using a crane. About 7 hours of
hard work in rain and mud - luckily for us, it was quite warm - around +3C.
And so we're on our own now - the Brazilian are still in the area for a few more days and we had a very nice lunch at Maximiano
a few days ago, but most likely we won't see many new faces until October. We did however had a chance to see krill - photos below.
Check out the wikipedia article about krill! They're pretty interesting.
2012/03/26 - PTS loaded and ready, we're in waiting mode. Polar Pioneer is bound to come
here in about a day. Looks like we'll have bad weather here again...
So far, the wind is picking up - above 40 knots already. These are no conditions for a PTS. Polar Pioneer
is now anchored at the Argentinian base from which it's going to pick up the cargo from the German
Dalman Laboratory. This kind of reminds me of November when we were unloading everything at Arctowski
during really bad weather. Let's hope it calms down tomorrow.
2012/03/21 - A few views from the Station area in the last days. No penguins,
a little bit of snow...
2012/03/15 - Another random photo dump. We're slowly preparing for the arrival of
our supply ship Polar Pioneer. It is going to take the belongings of the previous
wintering crew, some garbage and all remaining people of the summer crew back to Poland.
ETA: end of March. That means that the actual wintering is going to start pretty soon now!
Copacabana is empty now. That's so sad. Apart from the Brazilians showing up from time to time,
still investigating the incidents at Ferraz, we're mostly alone here now :(
2012/03/06 - Several people have asked me whether we get any nighttime here. Well - we do. Technically
we're not that far south yet to have a polar day/night when the sun never sets or never rises for half a year. There's a short
period when there's technically night, but it's not really dark. Once the sun sets you can still some light coming from
the West and once that's gone, there's light coming from the East.
So, we do get nights at Arctowski now. As a matter of fact, it gets pretty dark by 9pm.
2012/03/05 - Made a last trip to Copacabana this season before it gets closed for the winter.
We will still be able to warm ourselves up there, but the hut will be empty in a few days. It was really
great to be able to see the whole crew again and a chance to make some more photos.
2012/03/04 - We had really cool clouds on the first day of March. And a rainbow!
You can get the wallpaper sized photo by clicking here.
2012/03/04 - A bunch of photos shot in the past weeks.
2012/03/4 - In the Antarctic it is not only important to wear warm clothes. Fashion is also important ;)
Here's a photo from an Antarctic fashion photo shoot. Gumboots are the most popular item every season.
2012/03/2 - Our lives have returned to normal already. We had a visit of a Chilean patrol ship Lautaro a few
days ago. Almirante Maximiano and Gulmar Atlantis are in the bay right now, investigating what happened at Ferraz.
2012/02/26-28 - We are all devastated by yesterdays events. On the Saturday night there was an explosion
and a fire at the Brazilian Ferraz station - our great friends and wintering neighbors. The whole main building
burnt down, two of the crew died fighting the fire. What a great loss to the whole Antarctic community!
Our two zodiacs crew were the first to arrive at the scene, quickly followed by Argentinians and Chileans.
UPDATE: added one more photo. Click here
to see the photos made by the crew of HMS Protector which arrived at the scene around 15 hours after the fire
broke out. The view is really depressing.
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