This week saw us undertake ice drilling and a tour of Magnetic Island, ice drilling is undertaken on a weekly basis with all information being collated and sent back to Kingston TAS.
Bob is the current Meteorological Engineer on the station, Barb and Cecilia are scientists studying the bird life around the station which includes the penguins of course, so the opportunity to accompany Bob and I on the ice drilling and a trip to Magnetic Island was in their favour.
There were 7 sites where drilling was undertaken over the Winter, unfortunately due to some bad weather lately we have lost 3 of the sites due to the ice breaking up. Bob also has a pressure monitoring station set up which needed to be decommissioned due to the melt, I suppose when you are talking about equipment worth in excess of $10k some care and responsibility needs to be administered.
Bob, Cecilia and myself setting up for the first drilling.
A 2m drill is used, the ice was measuring between 1.55m and 1.6m, we still have substantial freeboard which is the distance from the top of the water and the top of the ice. This indicates the density of the ice.
Some of the locals, came over to investigate the activity. Adelie penguins are naturally very inquisitive, so if you kneel down more times than not they will come over to you for a look.
These little fellows decided they were quite happy with us being there, which made it difficult to pack the gear up.
Decommissioning Bob's equipment, we placed heat traces around the pressure gauge to melt the ice and release the instrument, which took about and hour.
Adelie's enjoying the nice day and a float on ice which had broken away.
This is a Hagglund, they are used for transport on the ice and around the station. Originally produced for the army in Europe, these vehicles are no longer produced. AAD has undertaken a program to rebuild the Hag's by repowering them with Cummins engines and Allison automatic transmissions.
Barb and Cecilia walking back to the Hag after collecting some penguin poo.
Poo collection and photo recording of the Adelie's
This little guy needs to get to the water and wash some of the poo off.
1 comment:
Hi Stringer what a fantastic day you had! great shots it seems so un real that a person in the photos is someone you know blowing Sebastian out
, very interesting keep them coming if you have the time, it is just un real I still can't believe that you are there.
Your boy's have added me to there circle on Google + I am still learning how to drive it I gave them a bit of lip, waiting for a reply, hope I didn't hurt there feelings, not.
I will leave it to you String keep it safe. Keith and the two rug rats.
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