Oktoberfest and ice

Brash ice

I woke up today to find that the crystal clear water around the station has become completely cover with brash ice. The ice ranges from small (walnut-sized) to big (cement truck-sized) and comes from bits calving off the glaciers around and getting blown in to shore. It's pretty cool; it forms what seems to be a solid landscape that you could walk across except that it slightly undulates with the ocean swells. It's a bit surreal.

 The seals seem to like it though. I borrowed some binoculars saw that what appeared to be a couple of black blobs on some larger clumps of ice were seals (either fur, crab-eater, or elephant) sunning themselves. I didn't get around to the Hero Inlet side of the Backyard, but apparently there were over 40 of them there, hanging out while there was an easy surface available. They do this on land as well, which we'll probably see later in the season.

 With the binoculars I was also able to see out to Litchfield Island and see the growing number of Adelie penguins gathering there. They've been spotted copulating and there's a station betting pool on when the first egg will be laid, now that the first penguin has been laid.

 The Adelie population here has been declining in recent years. Typically this Litchfield Island is completely colonized at this point in the year, but currently the colony is tiny. This correlates to the recent reduction in the local krill population which correlates to the recent lack of sea ice which krill forage underneath. Global warming at work...

 We had our second GSAR meeting, most of which was spent going over knots. It's weird that we have ultra-light high-tech gear that would have made Shackleton drool, yet it still comes down to a some sort of knot that makes the difference between a life-saving tool and a decoration at the top of the crevasse you just fell into. Knot's, like languages, are easy to remember provided you use them reasonably frequently.

 Why is it that certain useless bits of information remain with one till (and probably beyond) the grave, yet things which could potentially save one's embarrassment and pain slide right out one's ear during the night. Most birthdays would escape me without a calendar and I can never remember what to do during daylight-savings (Spring forward? Spring back? Fall sideways? Who makes this stuff up???). Even important stuff for camping, like which kind of bear you can climb a tree from and which kind to play dead around, didn't stick until I lived in the mountains for a year. "Up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A" will get you far when playing Nintendo, but still leave you at hour late, scorned by loved-ones, and bear-mauled in the real world.

 So we're learning knots. There's actually a whole ton of study and science that's gone into knots which most people in urban situations never need to learn so I've got some catching up to do. Fortunately there's only a tiny fraction of the knot universe that we need to familiarize ourselves with, so it's pretty doable. The bonus of being on the GSAR team is that I've been told I need to take the snowmobile out onto the glacier and get comfortable with driving it. How many ways are there to say "hell yes"?

 

Oktoberfest

Oh yeah, Oktober-fest was today, complete with beer, and polkas, lederhosen (long-underwear under rolled up rubber coveralls). We even have a pumpkin, though we can't carve it because that would constitute playing with your food and you don't get to o many "fresh" "veggies" down here (pumpkins take about a month to get here and iceberg lettuce falls outside the realm of vegetable IMHO).

Full size pix:
Brash ice
Oktoberfest