14 December, 2000

FYI answer 12/13/00

Dogs have been banned from Antarctica to protect the seal population. It is feared that the seal population might catch distemper. Dogs were used to pull supply sleds by many of the early expeditions in Antarctica. The dogs were feed seal and penguin meat.

We all had a plan today. The huts were going to be coming in off the ice right after the noon hour. We had to unload them when they got in. I was put in charge of a video project. We have been keeping video taped recordings of things we saw happening on the underwater camera back at Big Razorback. There were three tapes with two hours of footage each. The tapes needed to be edited into a type of 'greatest hits' on the seals behaviors and underwater scenes. I was set up in the lab with the recorders and television. I spent about six hours throughout the day getting the tapes down to about 90 minutes of the best information. This will be used to share with others, including people back at Katsu's institute and those associated with Weddell studies in the U.S.

I went on an evening boondoggle to Cape Evans with Dan, Cory, and Gifford. We rode our snowmobiles out to meet up with a group from the Crary Lab, who had the key to be able to get inside the hut. There were about twenty of us. The hut is kept as is was from back in 1913 because of three simple rules: only eight people in at a time, do not sit or set things on any object inside, and do not disturb anything (taking or touching). There were seals skins that looked like they have been preserved, although they smelled otherwise. The clothes and shoes and food have all been left as they were around 1913. That is when the last visitors of that time were believed to have used the hut.

After spending about 20 minutes inside the very historic hut, we snowmobiled back towards MMurdo, but we made a stop at the Erabus Glacier tongue to see the ice caves one more time. It was starting to get cloudy outside, so the colors in the hut were not as bright as I saw them when I was first there. We hung out for another 20 minutes and then headed back to McMurdo.

FYI

McMurdo will be resupplied, for the upcoming ____________ and next year's Austral____________ , the first week of February when the resupply ship comes with eight to 14 __________ pounds of supplies. A tanker will bring seven to eight millon ____________ of fuel. It takes as much as ten days to unload these supplies. Then all of the trash from the previous year is taken back to the ____________ ____________ for disposal.