Hello to everyone from a nice cold and sunny Davis Station.... Currently -6.6deg cel at 8am, we did actually have -7.2deg cel before, the oldest it's been here since my arrival. Still a bit short of the extremes of winter with an average of around -20 deg cel. I have had some time to explore around the station within in the station limits. We have around 20 elephant seals that have come up onto the beach, it's really cool to see them sleep all day, then on the odd occasion they would move to another position, fight amongst themselves and then sleep again. Most of the seals are around 3m in length.
Elephant seal, not very happy....
I am slowly getting used to our 3 minute showers..... every 3 days! At first I was a bit worried about the idea, but when you get here and realise that things are very different with the atmosphere here then you just go with the flow. The humidity inside the buildings is normally below 20%. Because the air is so dry we are having to moistorise at least once a day to stop our skin from cracking and drying out. I believe the building humidifier will be turned on soon to only slightly improve the humidity to around 20%.
Slowly seeing a few more penguins around the station. There had been reports of a Emperor penguin just outside station limits. The Adelie penguins have been a little more active than the seals!
No Adelie penguins were hurt in the process of getting this photo!
On Wednesday I opened up the balloon shed doors to release a weather balloon and had to dodge the penguins to release it. Here are the first of many penguin photos that everyone has been eagerly awaiting. Due to some works on our facility we were using helium to fill the balloons and was great to get some good photo opportunities. Since then we
have changed back to using hydrogen which has lots of safety precautions around using it.
Me standing next to a 1200g weather balloon filled with helium, so no safety precautions were needed. We use these balloons for the Ozone measurements, reaching up to around 31km above the earth.
Me releasing the Ozone weather balloon filled with helium.
I will be going out next week to complete my field training. 3 days away from station learning how to survive in the extremes. Camping in a bivy bag should be an experience. I have done one night camping in a tent in Antarctica before during an expedition cruise with Gadventures so I can't wait to experience Antarctica again in such a great way. We'll also learn orienteering skills as when the compass points in any given direction we actually have to minus 80deg from that bearing to get the true bearing as the magnetic deviation is a huge difference compared to 14deg back at home. Once I have done this training I will be allowed outside the station limits to walk though the Vestfold hills and boating.
I am loving all the penguins here!
Adelie penguin moulting.
I think I can fly! Was awesome watching this! The adelie penguin landed really good and walked away!
I believe we are down to around 60 expeditioners on station. Some of the Canadian flying crew are due to fly home to Canada tonight via the south pole, Antarctic peninsula and up through South America. A trip that will take about 10 days. They will return at the end of winter to resume flying operations. We have had a visit from the Chinese station Zhongshan and the Indian station Bharati which is located about 120kms to the south west.
We also had a very special visitor, the director of the Australian Antarctic Division Nick Gales who flew down to Davis on the same flight as myself. Visiting the station to oversee the operations, new installations and planing for the future.
Nick (AAD Director), Alison (Winter station leader - Davis) talking with the Chinese visitors from Zhongshan.
We've had some spectacular sunsets. The sun has been setting around 11pm and rising just after 5am. It's only just starting to get dark around 2am. We are loosing 9 minutes of sunlight a day, so won't be long until we wont see the sun for 37 days! from the 3rd June.
Two skuas fighting on the beach.
3 boats cruising towards the icebergs.
Stay tuned for more updates....... ~ Aaron.