Polar Passport

Talking to Schools in PNG

I am tour guiding in the far north again, and have a spare day before the ship sails. Summer seems to have ended here (though the Sun won't set for another ten days yet), and it has been bucketing snow all morning.

Recently I was in Papua New Guinea again, making more measurements of how the tectonic plates are moving.

I stayed about 4 or 5 days in each location I visited, and while the instruments were running I usually visited the local school, to explain the work. In PNG everybody knows about earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis from personal experience, and I think it's important to explain how these things are related, and why geologists think their country is so exciting and interesting.

As well as talking about my work, the teachers and students had lots of other science questions for me! World Environment Day had just happened, so we talked a lot about climate change, sea-level, pollution and sustainability. As PNG develops, it's important that the people and future leaders are well informed on these topics.

Here are some images of the trip:

The pupils of Amboin Primary School and their teacher, beside my GPS antenna. Amboin is a small village in the Sepik River region, very hot and humid.

Talking to about 300 pupils at the United Primary School in Mt Hagen. Mt Hagen is PNG's third largest city in the Highlands region, about 1700 m above sea-level, and has a very comfortable climate for me.

St Xavier's High School is on Kairuru Islands, near the town of Wewak on the north coast of PNG.

Explaining plate tectonics at St Xavier's High School. The rocks in the school grounds are 'pillow lavas', which formed at volcanoes on the bottom of the sea. This is how much of the Earth's crust is formed, but not many people have the chance to see it so easily as these students!

Bam is a small island off the north coast of PNG. It is the top of a volcano, sticking out from the sea. The island is about 3 km wide, and has one village. Here are some students of the primary school, with the island's leader, Greg Kibai.

A Study Tour to Antarctica

I've been guiding voyages in the Arctic and Antarctic for a few years now, and the passengers are (almost) always great people. They love the outdoors, are curious and willing to learn anything they can about whatever new environment they find themselves in, and often have a particular passion to feed: history, birdwatching, or sailing, for example. But this next trip will be a new experience for me.

I'm sailing this afternoon on the 'Professor Molchanov', completely chartered by a study tour from Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand, where I first studied geology and made my first trip to Antarctica. The university has been doing research in Antarctica for 50 years, mostly coordinated by the Antarctic Research Centre.

In 2007 there was a reunion of old expeditioners, and now a couple of us are acting as guides to share our experience with a group of interested people from the wider university community. The ARC has a strong history of research into the history of climate change in Antarctica, most recently leading drilling studies to study the history of the ice sheet, such as the ANDRILL programme.

The 46 participants are well prepared, having had a series of lectures on antarctic history, science, and law before leaving Wellington. Now we're sailing off to see the real thing, and they're hungry for information to enrich their own experiences! As with the last trip, I expect to be too busy working to write blog reports, but a journalist on board, Stephanie Gray, will be maintaining her own Slice of Ice.

Who knows exactly what we'll see? You can never be sure, making a trip into a total wilderness. But I'm sure it will be both interesting and fun!

ciao from Ushuaia,

Dan

Back to the South

The field work in New Guinea went well, and after a holiday in Tasmania I am now doing what I like best: sailing to Antarctica.

I'm not involved in the International Polar Year activities with the Australian Antarctic Division in the 2007-08 summer. Our solar-powered remote GPS stations, which I installed and maintained last summer, woke from their hibernation in the spring when the sun returned, and have been sending back data by satellite.

While they are doing their work in Australian Antarctic Territory, I have taken a few weeks leave from my job and flown to Argentina. From Ushuaia, the world's southermost city I will sail with the beautiful Barque Europa, a sail training vessel which makes voyages of three weeks to the Antarctic Peninsula.

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There are 16 crew, and 40 trainees who learn to sail an old-fashioned square-rigged ship while seeing some of Antarctica's most spectacular scenery. I am working as one of the three guides on board, who arrange the programme, ensure the safety of the passengers, and keep them informed about the wildlife, science and history in the places we visit.

Ushuaia is a beautiful city at the southern end of the island of Tierra del Fuego. A safe harbour on the Beagle Channel (named for Charles Darwin's ship, which spent a long time in this area in the 1830's) is surrounded by dense forest and steep mountains, snowy even in the middle of summer. About 30 000 tourists will visit Antarctica this summer, and most of them will be on board ships leaving from Ushuaia.

This evening there is no wind, but after we leave tomorrow we will sail for four days across the Drake Passage, south of Cape Horn, where the wind and waves can be among the wildest in all the world's oceans.

We will spend two weeks sailing on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula. This land extends further north than the rest of the continent, and attracts a rich array of wildlife - many species of penguins, seals, whales and seabirds come here in the summer to breed or feed. Over recent decades it has also warmed faster than almost anywhere on the planet, which is already having noticeable effects on the glaciers, plants and animals.

Email from the ship is possible by short-wave radio or satellite, but I think I will be too busy working to update this blog in the next three weeks. If you want to know what we are doing, you can read the regular “log book” reports on the ship's own website. When I return I will update this site with my own impressions, and answer any questions that have been posted.

Happy New International Polar Year,

Dan

The Sepik River

After working for a week close to the coast around Wewak, we moved further inland.

With my colleague Sylvester, from the University of Technology in Lae, we set up a station in Maprik, an agricultural town in the foothills of the coastal ranges, on the edge of the Sepik plain. Important crops here are vanilla and cocoa, but the markets are not very good: a few years ago when the crops in Madagascar were failing, vanilla was bought here for 850 Kina per kilogram, and the town grew rich (one PNG Kina is currently about 40 Australian cents). Now it’s down below 5 Kina, and many plantations are being neglected.

I wanted to get to Ambunti, on the Sepik River, which has no road access. I had planned to get a small plane, operated by the Mission Aviation Fellowship, who support hundreds of small villages in PNG that have a grass airstrip and no other access apart from several days walk on a jungle track. But MAF were having their annual pilots’ meeting last week, so I left Sylvester in Maprik, and took a PMV truck down the dusty road to Pagwi, on the bank of the Sepik River. There I found a motor canoe going the 50 km upstream to Ambunti, and joined a few other people going the same way.

The motor canoe is a dugout canoe, made from a single tree trunk, like traditional river canoes here. But unlike those, which are double-ended, it has a transom at the stern where an outboard motor if mounted. It’s about 10 m long, about 1 m wide at the stern and tapering forwards, and the hull A 30 hp motor took 12 passengers and cargo upstream at 20 km/h, so the journey took about 2.5 hours, and I arrived at dusk in Ambunti.

The Sepik is the largest river in PNG. After it leaves the mountains, it winds slowly more than 1100 km to the sea. It’s what earth scientists call a ‘meandering river’. It is so ‘flat’ that gravity doesn’t pull it straight downhill. Instead it winds from side to side in large bends, which grow wider and wider until they are cut off, leaving the old channel as a ‘ox-bow’ lake on the plain beside the river. There are more than 1000 of these lakes alongside the river’s path.

There is very little development along the whole of the Sepik Rver. There is no mining or forestry activity and there are no major towns, so the river and the catchment are still in their natural condition.

After setting up my GPS equipment in Ambunti, I had time for a look around. At the top of the nearest hill, I visited a new telecommunications tower. It would be almost impossible to lay telephone cables through the jungle and swamp, so radio towers are the best solution. In a town with no road access and only a grass airstrip, fuel is expensive, so this transmitter is solar powered. My GPS gear uses one portable 35 watt panel to charge that batteries, so I was very impressed by 144 panels, each producing 75 watts!

At the end of my stay in Ambunti, MAF were flying again, and a single-engine Cessna 206 took me back to Wewak in 45 minutes, compared to the outward journey of about 5 hours in trucks and 2.5 hours in a canoe.

lukim yu,

dan

Another classroom chat

Dan did a live classroom chat session with a class from Presbyterian Ladies College in Sydney last month... here's how it went:

Rowena> Hi dan, we're just logging on

Dan> 'morning! Sorry I missed you earlier.

Gabrielle> Hello

Vivian> hi dan

Rowena> That's okay.

Gabrielle> Hello Dan

Luisa> Hello Dan

Gabrielle> Hello Dan

Dan> Hello. How will we do this? Are you all going to talk at once?

Abby> Hi Dan :)

Gabrielle> no i am going to ask the 1st question and we will all take turns

Gabrielle> So Dan.. What made you decide to travell on all these expeditions

Dan> Good, you're well organised! I hope my typing can keep up.

Abby> :)

Dan> Well, I always wanted to go to Antarctica, since I wasa child.

Dan> And after the first time I found I liked it, so I worked to go again.

Vivian> have you ever been in any dangerous or life threatening situations?

Caitlin> hey

Caitlin> dan

Dan> And after a few more times, I found I was good at it, so people are happy for me to keep going! Lucky!

Dan> I've never been in an accident in Antarctica - we are very careful not do do dangerous things.

Vivian> :)

Dan> But sometimes I have been in situations where an accident would have been very bad indeed... that is scary enough.

Abby> are there any plants in antarctica? if so, how do they photsynthesise?

Abby> in the dark months

Dan> And just daily life can include storms and mountains and other 'dangerous' things - you need to have the skills and confidence to work there.

Dan> There are plants.

Dan> Most are lichens, which are not 'true' plants - they are actually a symbiosis between a fungus and an alga.

Caitlin> what are the most interesting aspects of your job?

Dan> And there are some mosses, which are also not 'true' plants - they don't make flowers and seeds.

Dan> Only in the warmest part of Antarctica there are two plants with flowers... very small ones!

Vivian> so they wither and die in the dark months?

Dan> I like it all, but I am really a scientist at heart - I get excited about learning how the world works, whether it is my work or somebody else's.

Caitlin> cool

Caitlin> thnx

Dan> Well, they stop growing, anyway.

Gabrielle> What science is your favourite

Dan> Some algae grow only in the summer, and die in the winter.

Dan> Things grow very slowly - there are lichens that are thousands of years old!

Luisa> what exactly do you do when you 'work' in antarctica?

Stacey> don't plants need soil to grow? is there soil in antarctica for them to grow?

Dan> Most of the 'work' is not science - it's getting organised, travelling etc.

Dan> When I 'work' it can be several things.

Dan> The last trip, I was installing instruments, which run all by themselves for years down there.

Dan> Sometimes it's collecting rocks, or just walking around looking at rocks and writing down my observations. That's geology!

Tara> What kind of instruments?

Dan> The mosses and flowering plants need soil. The lichens are tougher - the fungus can break down solid rock, and produce nutrients that feed the alga - that's symbiosis - amazing, isn't it!

Abby> yes it sure is amazing!

Vivian> wow ;)

Caitlin> yeah wow

Dan> The instruments are GPS receivers. Like the one you use in you car or for bushwalking, but much more accurate.

Caitlin> !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dan> We are measuring the movement of the land, which tells us how the glaciers have been changing over thousands of years.

Abby> thats exciting!

Dan> It only moves a few millimetres per year, so the GPS has to be very good.

Gabrielle> that is amazing

Stacey> really amazing!

Jordana> hello Dan! we were wondering what the coldest temperature you have been in was and what you did to keep yourself warm?

Gabrielle> how much have you mesured so far

Dan> Like the plants, our GPS go to sleep in the winter, because they are powered by solar panels. And they wake up in the spring, and send us their data by satellite.

Vivian> cool!

Caitlin> awesome

Abby> they are like bears!

Dan> I think the coldest I've been in was about -30 C. And it was windy, so it felt even colder!

Abby> did you get any frostbite?

Jordana> wow! nothing like Australia!

Dan> You wear lots of clothes, and eat lots of high-energy food.

Tara> What food do you eat and how do you make it?

Dan> I've never got real frostbite. When I had to work in thin gloves in bad weather (to use my fingers) they did get frozen, and took about 30 minutes to warm up again when I got back into the tent. But no permanent damage, luckily.

Abby> ok. awesome.

Dan> Food is pretty simple when you're camping - dried, mostly. A few tins, but they can freeze solid!

Luisa> how do you shower?

Tara> Don't you ever run out of food?

Abby> i have an amazing fact for you Dan. Did you know that today a year ago was the windiest day in Antarctica? 156km/h!

Dan> If you're camping, you might sometimes wash outside, if it's not too cold, with a bucket of warm water. But Often you just wait until you get back to a base, where there is a real shower. That feels so good!

Dan> We carry a lot of extra food - enoug hfor a whole month! Not nice food - survival rations!

Caitlin> which do you prefer more? greenland or antartctic

Elizabeth> Do you have to be careful when you take deep breaths and sneeze that your saliva and breath don't freeze?

Dan> Ah, difficult to say! Greenland was very exciting this year, because I've never been there before.

Caitlin> ok

Sherry> what is your worest experience in Antartctica?

Caitlin> what did you do there

Dan> But Antarctica is more special - because there is almost no life, and no 'civilisation', the land feel so empty, and so big - for me, that clears my head, lets me understand things better; it's very special.

Gabrielle> Thats really Amazing

Abby> thats beautiful.

Vivian> with a capital A

Caitlin> wow i can't wait 2 go there someday

Tara> Don't you ever get homesick?

Dan> In Greenland, I was collecting mud from the bottom of small lakes - we pushed tubes into the mud, and collected several metres. We are using that to study changes in sea-level over thousands of years.

Jordana> what are the sea levels in Antartica? are they increasing as fast as everybody is fearing?

Dan> Homesick? Yes, I miss a lot of 'normal' things. But it's worth it to me! I suppose everyone decides which is more important to them - home, or adventure - and chooses a balance.

Stacey> how did you get to the bottom of lakes filled with mud? could you see anything?

Elizabeth> Do you have to be careful when you take deep breaths and sneeze that your saliva and breath don't freeze?

Dan> Sea-level is rising - people measure it with tide-gauges all over the world, and from satellites. It's not a 'problem' in antarctica, because nobody lives there! It will be a problem in a lot of other places.

Tara> How do you stay healthy just living off tin food?

Dan> We collect the mud cores from a little boat - I'll just find a picture.

Abby> thats really cool.

Gabrielle> thanks that would be great

 

Vivian> Coolalicious

Dan> sorry - too big!

Elizabeth> wow. amazing

Jordana> thats ok!

Abby> amazing!

Dan> A lot of geology is just hard work - wet, muddy, cold... But if you are interested in the science, you don't mind.

Dan> And sometimes, the weather is perfect, and you're just so happy to be out in the wilderness!

Abby> how interesting.

Luisa> how close have you been to a penguin?

Tara> How do you make igloos?

Elizabeth> Do you have to be careful when you take deep breaths and sneeze that your saliva and breath don't freeze?

Abby> nice question lizzie.

Dan> I've made a couple of igloos, just for fun. The snow in Antarctica is very dry, and easy to cut into blocks that you can stack up. But getting the shape right takes some practice.

Jordana> how come igloos don't melt when you light a fire inside them?

Dan> Breath freezing isn't really a problem - it can't freeze inside you! But you can grow an icicle from the end of your nose, or in your beard, or grow big lumps of ice on your eyelashes. It can be uncomfortable.

Elizabeth> ew. and ow.

Elizabeth> wow. i always thought that it was true. thanks for clearing that for me

Luisa> how close have you gotten to a penguin??

Jordana> how come igloos don't melt when you light a fire inside them?

Dan> You are only allowed to approach a penguin to 5 m. But penguins are allowed to approach you! I have had them biting my fingers, nibbling my jacket... it's wonderful. They are so funny.

Abby> goodquestion.

Gabrielle> is it becasue the ice is dry

Luisa> cute and cool

Dan> I haven't lit a fire in an igloo. I have used a camping stove, but still, the temperature inside stays below zero, so the snow doesn't melt.

Vivian> Have any animals ever attacked you before?

Caitlin> what's your favourite animal? why?

Jordana> thank you

Abby> wow!

Dan> Yes, the leopard seal is a big predator, and not afraid of anything except Killer Whales. I had one bite the boat I was in, and puncture the rubber!

Abby> how scary.

Gabrielle> that must have been really scary

Luisa> scary

Jordana> wow! how did you survive!?

Caitlin> very scary

Dan> Well, I didn't think the boat would sink, but I had to go straight back to a nearby ship!

Luisa> were you by yourself in the boat?

Vivian> how many times have you travelled to Antarctica or to the Arctic, whether for work or travel?

Vivian> holiday?

Dan> No, I was working for a small tourist ship, so I had six passengers with me! Pretty exciting for them!

Luisa> wow. memorable.

Abby> so.. you take tourists to Antarctica?

Dan> I've done nine summers in Antarctica as a scientist, and three 'seasons' of tour guiding.

Vivian> ouch, wouldn't been scared

Gabrielle> how many more scientists go on expeditions with you

Elizabeth> do you ever use sled dogs as transportation around antarctica?

Dan> Yes, there are all sorts of tourist trip. My favourite is the sailing ship you can just see in my chat icon picture. I'll sail with them again in January.

Stacey> if so, what are the sled dogs names??

Dan> Australia stopped using dogs in 1992.

Abby> wow. does it cost alot for tourists to go to Antarctica?

Luisa> what qualifications or studies do you have to take to be able to go to antarctica as a scientist?

Elizabeth> why did you stop using dogs?

Jordana> why did you stop using sled dogs/

Abby> why did they stop using dogs?

Dan> They said it was for environmental reasons, but I don't think they had much impact, and everyone loved having them there...

Dan> Yes, I suppose tourist trips are quite expensive... about $400 per day. Not as expensive as a really fancy resort, but still an expensive holiday.

Luisa> what qualifications or studies do you have to take to be able to go to antarctica as a scientist?

Dan> There are all sorts of people working in Antarctica! Geology and biology are always popular.

Caitlin> what's your favourite animal? why?

Dan> Physics, glaciology and engineering, are a bit more advanced - most people have to do a university degree before starting studying those things.

Luisa> wow thankyou

Dan> Because it takes a lot of time to travel to antarctica, and the work can be unconfortable, often there are students working there, not professors. A lot of young people.

Dan> Favourite animal? I'm a geologist! Ask me about my favourite rock!

Dan> Just joking. Probably albatross.

Luisa> whats your favourite rock?

Abby> Dan, thank you so much for talking to our class about your trips to Antarctica, we have loved hearing about your encounters and experiences you have had. Thank you once again.

Elizabeth> thanks dan

Luisa> bye xx

Dan> They're so big, and graceful, and also very solitary.

Caitlin> thanks dan

Vivian> thanks!

Rowena> Dan - the lunch bell has just gone

Caitlin> see you

Dan> Fun talking to you! Time to rest my fingers!

Vivian> bye bye

Abby> thank you bye!

Rowena> Thanks so much for your time, the girls have really enjoyed this

Dan> Good. Time for my lunch too.
Rowena> OK Bye

Dan> bye

PNG - Land of the Unexpected

This is an official tourism slogan here, and it's perfect! The locals love it, and pull it out cheerfully and sarcastically at every opportunity.

We had a good drive today out to the west of Wewak, to a village called But. The road is rougher than I had expected, with several stream crossings and one big washout where the locals were busy with road works. We got there after a couple of hours - it's a lovely spot, with a beautiful beach and a Japanese WWII memorial. Our survey marker is on the lawn between the church and the police office, a safe location with good sky exposure for the GPS satellites.

Normally the village is tiny and quiet, but this week the beachfront is a mass of tents and shelters, with several hundred people in the village for the Momase Catholic Youth Forum. They've built a temporary stage, and a shelter about 30 x 30 m to give the audience shade... which is right on top of the mark, of course. There's really no practical way we could have checked this beforehand - the village has no phone, not even a short-wave radio.

The forum will be there until Sunday, so we've abandoned trying to measure it for the moment.

Tomorrow we'll go back to the east to recover the equipment from Angoram and Tring; it should be routine, but this is the land of the unexpected!

lukim yu,

Dan

A Day in a PMV

It's been a busy few days.

On Friday we installed one GPS receiver at Wewak airport, and arranged batteries and transport for the other sites.

The equipment here is quite similar to what we were installing in Antarctica: a GPS receiver and antenna, powered by batteries and a solar panel. But here the antenna is on a tripod, not bolted to the ground like in Antarctica, because it only has to stand a few days, and because we are measuring the horizontal movement of the earth, and not the vertical (it's hard to measure the height of a tripod accurately enough to measure vertical positions). And we don't need to transfer the data
by satellite here - we just download it from the receiver every day or two.

On Saturday we made a trip along the inland road east from Wewak about 120 km, to the town of Angoram, on the Sepik River. We installed two more sets of equipment on the way, in Angoram and the village of Tring, both on survey markers that have been measured several times in previous years. We leave the equipment in a small tent to shelter it from the Sun and rain, and ask the local people to take care of it until we come back again.

The sites are left to make measurements for four days, but today we went back to check them. When we don't have all the gear to carry (each site weighs about 80 kg in total), we don't need to have our own vehicle. I prefer to travel by PMV, or 'Private Motor Vehicle', which are the private transport services operating all over Papua New Guinea. They vary from small vans in the towns, to trucks in the countryside, and 4WD vehicles for the mountain areas with rough roads and river crossings. It's a good way to travel and talk with the local people, and see where they are going and what they're doing.

Today our PMV had bad luck, with several flat tyres to be changed and fixed along the way, but we checked both sites, which were operating normally. Due to the travel delays, we got back to Wewak after dark, but the apologetic driver dropped us at our door. And it was nice coming back through the hills at dusk - the road deserted compared to daytime, the smokey smell of cooking and the glow of small fires in the jungle across across the valley, at huts invisible in the darkness.

Better luck next time,

Dan

A Polar Scientist in the Tropics

Welcome back to the blog; sorry I've neglected it for a while.

The work in the arctic (Svalbard and Greenland) was great, but I didn't have the time to write about it, or the possibility to send email easily, so the blog suffered. Perhaps I'll be able to write a bit about what I did in those places,and post a couple of nice photos, but the coming months are pretty busy with more work and travel, so I hope there'll be enough exciting new stuff.

I'm in Papua New Guinea! As well as the Antarctic project I was working on last summer, the group I work with at the Australian National University does some research here. Like the Antarctic project, this one is 'GPS geodesy' - using precise GPS receivers to measure the movement of the Earth's crust. In Antarctica, we are trying to measure the movement caused by changes in the thickness of the ice there.

Here in PNG, we are measuring the movement of the tectonic plates. Where the Australian Plate is colliding with the Pacific Plate, there are a lot of fault lines and earthquakes, and the land is pushed up into high mountain ranges.

I arrived in Port Moresby on Monday, and stayed a couple of days to collect the equipment I'd shipped here from Australia, and make other arrangements. Today, I flew to Wewak, on the north coast of the island.

PNG's airlines have had experienced a lot of delays recently, so I arrived 2.5 hours early for my 10:00 flight this morning, having anenormous stack of excess luggage and remembering the long excess-baggage payment queue from when I was here last year.

After a lot of waiting without check-in for my flight being opened, it was announced that it was delayed four hours. At least I was able to check in and queue without fear of missing the flight. It turned out to be five hours delay, but I am now in Wewak. Flying over the Highlands, the land was mostly covered with cloud, but sometimes there was a glimpse through to rugged misty jungle-clad mountains. The plane did a wide turn before landing, and I saw the town of Wewak on a long coast, fringed with coconut palms.

Checking in early was a good idea. Though I felt a little guilty when it turned out on arrival in Wewak that a dozen other passengers' bags had been offloaded before we left, while all my 7 bags, 140 kg, arrived with me.

I'm staying close to the airport, where I'll start my work tomorrow. A healthy and contented-looking tree kangaroo is browsing in an enclosure outside my room, along with a couple of raucous parrots, and the frogs have started up in the evening rain, not quite loud enough to drown the sound of the surf at the beach just 50 m away. Very different to Antarctica and Greenland!

Lukim yu bihain ("see you later" in PNG pidgin)

Dan

Svalbard

June 21 was the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere - midwinter, the shortest day of the year. At Antarctic stations, people celebrated the middle of their polar night: halfway to the welcome return of the Sun. In Canberra, it was a cold sunny winter day, and I was busy preparing to travel. Two days later, I was standing in the midnight sun in the high arctic: the islands of Svalbard far to the north of Norway. Here, the Sun won't set below the horizon until September.

I've come to the arctic for two reasons: in August, I'll be doing some geology field work in southern Greenland, a joint project between Swedish and Australian scientists. But before that, I've taken some time away from university work. What does a polar scientist do with his holidays? You won't find me lying on a tropical beach! I'll spend five weeks leading small tourist groups around these arctic islands, working on an old sailing ship, the Noorderlicht.

Like writing this blog, taking tourists into the arctic is a way of sharing my enthusiasm for science and nature. And at the same time, I enjoy travelling in the wilderness on an old-fashioned sailing ship.

Svalbard is a fascinating archipelago; a group of islands about 300 km long, only 1000 km from the North Pole. Half of the land area is covered by glaciers, and in winter the islands are completely surrounded by frozen ocean. In summer, vast numbers of birds come to breed here, joining the polar bears, reindeer and arctic foxes which stay all winter. The plants and animals are wonderfully adapted for life in a cold climate.

There is also an interesting human history: after the islands were discovered in 1596, they were the site of the first commercial whaling. Between 1620 and 1800, almost all the whales in the north Atlantic were killed, for the oil in their their blubber. After the whales, people hunted the Arctic Fox and Polar Bears for their beautiful fur. And in the 20th century, there were attempts to mine gold, iron, marble, coal, and other minerals, almost all of which failed. It was also visited by many arctic explorers, including several attempts to reach the north pole.

Today, there is still some coal mining, but most people come to Svalbard to see wilderness and nature, relatively untouched by civilisation. We have just finished one ten-day sailing voyage, and leave tomorrow for another. In the next posting, I'll describe some of the things we see and do along the way.

From the far north,

Dan

Come and meet Dan!

Questacon is holding a "Polar Day" this coming public holiday Monday, 11 June, and Dan is coming along!

Dan will be doing two 30 minute presentations in the Japan Theatre, at 10am and 1pm. He'll be showing lots of slides from his Antarctic trips while talking both about his scientific work and about living in Antarctica.

We will also have talks by Dr Andrew Dowdy, another researcher who has worked in Antarctica. Andrew will be speaking at 11am and 2pm. Both Dan and Andrew will be available after their talks to answer your questions.

Additionally, we will have some hands-on science activities for children in Theatre 2 from 9am to 4pm, and an Antarctic pyramid tent and survival gear in the foyer. There will also be a presentation of Shackleton's voyage in Theatre 3 at 11.30am and 12.30pm.

Questacon's Polar Day is free after admission to Questacon.