I can’t believe another couple of weeks have passed since I last wrote you an update but I wanted to write a long promised entry about life here so that you’re not left with the impression that all we do is hang out with the penguins and go off on jollies on posh expedition ships!  So I’m going to try to enlighten you by answering the questions we’re most frequently asked by our visitors here and also some of the questions I was asked before I left home.

 

Where am I? 

I’m currently living and working at Port Lockroy, a British historical site in Antarctica. We’re on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula, below the South Shetlands Islands and tucked in between Anvers and Wiencke Island. For those more ‘nautically-minded’, we can be found at 64°49’S, 63°29’W!

What is the historical significance of Port Lockroy and why are we here?

Port Lockroy was discovered by Jean-Baptiste Charcot in 1904 and has over the years been used as an anchorage by the whalers, a safe harbour for Antarctic explorers and later became a British Scientific Station. Bransfield House, was constructed on Goudier Island in February 1944 as part of the British WWII secret military operation, code-named ‘Operation Tabarin’, and to make some initial territorial claims to part of the continent. To strengthen these claims, a small British Post Office was established on 23 March 1944. Following the war, the base was handed over to the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS) which later became British Antarctic Survey or BAS as it’s more commonly known today. The most significant research undertaken at the base was the study of the outer atmosphere or ‘Ionosphere’.  This is the region of the upper atmosphere above 100km.  However, there were also studies of how lichens, ferns, marine mammals and birds survive the harsh conditions of the Antarctic.  During the time when the base was operational there would be between four and nine men living and working here for a period of two and a half years.  The base closed in January 1962 when British research moved on to other locations on the peninsula and the base fell into disrepair.  Parts of the roof had collapsed, visitors had collected ‘momentoes’ and the base was in a very sorry state indeed.  By the 1990’s many nations had old bases which were no longer used and the signatories of the Antarctic Treaty agreed that in order to keep Antarctica pristine, these old bases must either be dismantled with all traces removed, or else, if it was proven that they were of significant importance, they could be restored and maintained.  This was to be Port Lockroy’s fate and it became historical site No.61.  In 1996, BAS sent a team to restore the base to it’s former glory. Since this time, the base has been open to visitors as a living museum during the Austral summer, so they can get a feel for what an old base used to look like and how the early scientists lived. The UK Antarctic Heritage Trust (the registered charity which we work for today) took over responsibility for the conservation and maintenance of Port Lockroy in 2006. Today the on-going maintenance of the base is self-funded from the proceeds of a small gift shop we run here and the sale of British Antarctic Territory stamps sold from the sub-Post Office which was also re-opened in 1996. The Trust sends a small team south every year in order to welcome guests to the living museum, run the shop and Post Office and continue the on-going maintenance and restoration programme to conserve Port Lockroy as a historical site.

Judith, Laura, Rick and Nikki on board the Bark Europa

I’m here with our base Leader, Rick (who worked for BAS with sledge dogs in Antarctica for many years and who also participated in the restoration of Bransfied House in 1996); Nikki (who previously worked as the Polar Travel Product Manager for a small adventure travel company);  and Laura (all round clever cookie and experienced world traveller!). 

 

How long are we here for?

There are four of us here this year (Rick, Laura, Nikki and me) and we are living and working at the base for four months from early November until early March.

What is the base like?

View of Port Lockroy from Damoy Point

Goudier Island is a tiny island which takes about 20 minutes to walk around … at low tide! 

The island is purely rock and the base was constructed with timber and is supported by small pillars to create a level base!  The base was extended with additional rooms constructed over the period that it was operational. As you walk up the ramp to the front door (carefully side-stepping any penguins!), you arrive in a small porch where our guests are greeted with the first museum artefacts, old Fortnum and Mason skis, snowshoes and old fire extinguishers. Old waterproof and heavy wool jackets are hung up on pegs as you enter the hall where the small Royal Mail post box also resides. If you turn right, you will find yourself in the gift shop and post office (the ‘New Generator Room’). If you continue on along the hall you enter the old base and museum area.  This includes the old bathroom, the ‘Old Generator Room’ and workshop, a darkroom, a pantry, the old kitchen, lounge, radio room, the science room (home of the ‘Beastie’ or Ionosonde machine which was used for Ionospheric research) and of course the ‘bunk room’ where we eat, sleep, cook and relax today.  Each of these rooms and the cupboards and shelves therein are packed with artefacts that were found at the base during it’s restoration or which have been donated since by friends and family of those who worked here. We live alone on the island except for a rookery of c. 1300 gentoo penguins (plus 700 newly hatched chicks!) which chose the island as their home since the base was abandoned in 1962. The island itself is quite mucky and to quote Rick, ‘there’s no such thing as ‘mud’ at Port Lockroy’.  Think about it !

What kind of power/heating do we have?

In keeping with the history of the base, life is still very simple at Port Lockroy. We have a small Honda petrol generator and solar panels to charge laptop/camera and other batteries as well as four lights (two in the bunk room and two in the museum).  We use propane gas to power a small Hunter stove in the bunk room, and a small oven and two-burner cooker.  We use the stove for an hour or so at lunch-time or in the evenings to warm up, but in December and January it’s relatively mild and we don’t need it quite so often.  The rest of the base is not heated and with people coming and going all the time, we only turn the stove on if there’s sufficient time between visits to allow the room to heat up!  That said, when it’s cold and blowing a gale outside we are extremely grateful for it!

What kind of communications equipment do we have?

Communications are simple here but we’re not entirely shut off from the outside world.  We use HF and VHF radios to communicate with the ships and nearby expedition teams (and yes, I really do know how to use them) and we have a base laptop and Iridium satellite phone. We use this to send emails to the ships and family back home and also make calls home once every 2/3 weeks. We have no internet access here but we get snippets of news from visiting passengers and occasionally a summary newsheet from one of the ships.

Where do we sleep?

Much to the amusement of our guests we all cook, eat and sleep in the old bunk room.  It’s arranged so that there are four beds around the edges of the walls. We sleep on a cosy sheepskin throw (highly recommended and thank you Edinburgh Woollen Mill!) and tuck ourselves up at night inside two down sleeping bags (one inside the other) and a sleeping bag liner – a feat I never thought I would manage without getting completely tangled up, but seem to have mastered with ease .  At the beginning of the season it was a bit chilly despite all the padding so we used Sigg drinking bottles as hot water bottles. Water is precious here so we can’t afford to waste it in rubber hot water bottles. The trick is therefore to pour boiling water into the aluminium bottles and wrap them in a warm sock to absorb some of the heat.  In the morning we can still use the water for drinking, brushing teeth, etc – genius .

So where does our water supply come from?

We have eight 25L jerry cans which are filled with water by visiting ships.  We can’t unfortunately melt snow on this island because of all the penguins (!) and we can’t collect ice from the surrounding glaciers as we don’t have a boat!  Early in the season there was more sea ice around which occasionally washed up on the shore, however, it was rarely there when we needed it!  Rick has also taught us that it needs to be the right type of ice.  Ideally two years old and totally smooth and clear, like glass, with no fractures in it which allows salty, ‘penguiny’ water to seep in – nice!  Between us we typically get through 40L of water per day for drinking, cooking, washing up, etc.

How often do we get supplies?

Our supplies came down at the beginning of the season on a Hurtigruten ship called the Fram. They were doing an Arctic to Antarctic cruise and picked up our food, gift shop merchandise and maintenance supplies in Cork at the end of September and dropped them off here two months later.

How cold is it?

It’s currently a ‘balmy’ 11 degrees C in the bunk room, although I beg to differ as I’m wearing four layers and I’m still a bit cold!  On consultation with the girls, we think an average outdoor temperature is about five degrees.

How often do ships visit?

We have an average of two ships per day but we have had up to five!  There are IAATO (International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators) site guidelines for Port Lockroy stating that we can have up to 350 passengers visit per day with no more than 60 people on the island at any one time and of those, only 35 inside the historic hut.

What kind of ships come in?

Expedition ships range in size from private charters of 12 people to 350 passenger ships.  The average ship carries approximately 100 people. We also have visits from yachts who sail across the Drake with between 4-12 people.

What’s a typical day like?

We’ll get up about 7.30.  Rick and sometimes one of us girls will go on board the first ship to give a pre-landing briefing while everyone else gets everything sorted here. Passengers will arrive between 8-9am and a typical visit will last 2-3 hours while multiple groups explore the museum, visit the gift shop, write their post cards and have a look around the penguin colonies.  After everyone has gone we will quickly cash up, re-stock the shop and frank any mail we have not been able to see to during the visit (with 70,000 pieces of mail to be franked throughout the season, the secret is to stay on top of it!).  We’ll grab some lunch and by the time we finish the next ship is usually sailing into the bay. We’ll go on board and give another briefing and repeat the cycle again.  After the visit we’ll either be throwing clean clothes and toiletries into a dry bag to jump in a zodiac if we’re fortunate enough to be invited on board for dinner and a shower, or else it will be Port Lockroy, ‘Beer-o-clock’ .  During the day, whoever has five minutes will prepare lunch, do washing up etc, however in the evenings we have a rota. One of us will cook, one will wash-up, one will write the daily base diary to record what we’ve been up to and one person will have an evening off.  Given that life’s simple and everything takes a little longer than usual here, it’s normally about 9pm by then and we fall into bed at 10!  That’s our average routine, however there are many other activities that fill the day such as sorting out recycling to be packed up and sent out on ships, keeping on top of emails from UK AHT back home and ships scheduling/changing visits, franking mail and processing philatelic mail requests, continual identification and recording of artefacts, cash flow accounting in three currencies, not to mention the wildlife monitoring programme, i.e. counting penguins!

Do we do any research?

We no longer undertake scientific research here, however when the base was re-opened BAS started a penguin monitoring programme. Today Port Lockroy is one of, if not the most frequently visited tourist site in Antarctica and as such it’s an ideal place to monitor the potential impact of tourism on Antarctic wildlife. To do this we divide the island in two. On one side of the island is the hut and the area where guests can wander freely subject to the usual 5 metre rule*.  On the other side of the island a cord is drawn across and no-one enters that ‘control’ area, except to undertake the study. Throughout the course of our four months here we count the number of nests, then the number of eggs per nest, then the number of chicks that hatch, then the number of chicks that have survived by the end of the season.  As ‘Penguin Monitor’, this is Laura’s responsibility, however I am an extremely enthusiastic assistant . There are nine colonies on the island (four in the control area) and we compare the breeding success of the gentoos in each of those colonies with the numbers from the previous years.  So far the study has consistently found that the penguins on this side of the island, where the hut resides and passengers can wander relatively freely, have a higher breeding success. This could be due to a variety of factors, however we believe one of the key reasons to be that the penguins’ main predators, Skuas, prefer to prey on the gentoos in the quieter areas where there are less people around.

*IAATO visitor rules state that visitors to the Antarctic should wherever possible maintain a 5 metre distance from wildlife and should not make any sounds/movements which cause the bird/animal to alter it’s normal pattern of behaviour.

Speedy cook, Laura

As explained above, we take cooking in turns and what we eat depends on what’s about!  The ships are very good to us and often ask if there’s anything they can give us. Favourite requests are potatoes, onions, eggs and cheese!  We sometimes get cuts of meat too, so we really just get creative with whatever we have.  Rick cooks a mean curry, Nikki is our bread lady, Laura’s skill is cooking good food at speed (!)  and I am the roast potato queen.

What kind of wildlife is there?

Apart from the gentoos, we have the occasional visit by Adelie and Chinstrap penguins. We have many Weddell seals who snooze on Bill’s Island which we can walk to at low tide and there are two resident Leopard Seals who gobble up the gentoos on their

Snowy Sheathbills seen through the window

way home from fishing and chew holes in the occasional zodiac .  We’ve also seen Humpback Whales in the bay, but they don’t usually come so close to the island itself.

Do we have a boat?

No boat,  no time!

What do we do in our free time?

Life is great at Lockroy and we feel very privileged to be here, but free time is at a premium!  It took me two weeks to start this since my last blog entry and since starting this on 22 January, it’s taken me until 31 Jan to get to this point!  We do however read a few pages of a book before bed time and go for short walks just to see how our favourite penguin chicks are getting on!  We also brought a few DVDs each and every once in while we’ll have a ‘Port Lockroy cinema night’.  This is invariably on an evening when Laura has been doing the cooking and we’re all cleared up by about 7.30 .

What kind of things can people buy in the shop?

Gift Shop UK AHT, Port Lockroy

The shop is fab!  Guests are frequently amazed at all the goodies we have here, 95% of which are exclusive to the Trust.  The base is self-funded and as mentioned before, the continual maintenance and conservation of British historic huts such as Port Lockroy and others which the Trust will manage are funded by the proceeds of the shop. As such the Trust has spent a lot of time and effort over the course of the past 5 years developing the variety and quality of the merchandise to ensure it’s appealing to our guests.  Today, visitors can buy British Antarctic Territory stamps and First Day Covers, fleeces, all shapes, sizes and colours of teeshirts for all ages, a variety of hats and caps, neck buffs, Antarctic  tartan scarves, silk squares and neck ties (all sold out already!), BAT commemorative coins, books, puzzles, cross stitch kits, novelties such as pens, keyrings, cuddly gentoos, tea-towels, postcards, … you name it, we have it .. well almost!

How does the postal service work?

That brings me to my final and probably most frequently asked question, ‘what do we do with all the post?’.

After the mail is franked, banded and placed in Royal Mail bags, we send these to Stanley Post Office in the Falkland Islands on passing expedition ships.  Stanley Post Office places the bags on military flights (on average one per week) to Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, England, where the mail enters the UK postal system. We typically quote 2-6 weeks for delivery of post from Port Lockroy to it’s final destination. Inbound post follows the reverse route and we have received mail from the UK within two weeks of the postal date.  An excellent service indeed!

I hope that has shed a little more light on what we do here.  Now that that’s all cleared up I will likely return to telling you all about our latest escapades .

If you’re interested in reading more about the UK AHT and Port Lockroy, you may like to check out the following:

www.ukaht.org
The Story of Port Lockroy by Robert Burton
Southern Horizons by Robert Burton