Time to say goodbye … and return to civilization

40th overwintering team (Wanderson Almeida)

Hello everyone,

Now the time has come … the last blog entry for the 40^th overwintering team at Neumayer Station III. Since 19 January, our overwintering has officially been over. On that day, the icebreaker Polarstern dropped anchor at the ice edge in Atka Bay, raising the total population from just nine to a whopping 34. A great deal has happened since then: every day has been full of work, and there’s been much to discuss in the evenings. To me, my life seems to have accelerated, and I often lack the time and leisure to put my thoughts down on paper. But one thing at a time …

On New Year’s Eve, the nine of us ushered in the new year on the roof of the station, in brilliant sunlight and a comparatively mild minus 10 degrees. The first half of January spoiled us, with plenty of sun and little wind. Aside from the monthly routines, we managed to finish a great deal of work outside, and savoured every minute of the great weather. Since the sea ice was still quite solid, from 7 pm to 11 pm on 9 January Ina and I, led by Anna, set off to measure the ice. It was still broad daylight when we left the station … in contrast to our first measuring trip in May 2020, during the Polar Night. The snow and ice glistened in the sun, and unlike back then, the sea ice was easily traversable, thanks to the snow cover. We made good headway and soon reached the first measuring sites.

At the first site, we went through the standard routine … at five different points, we dug away the snow in a roughly 50 by 50 centimetre square, down to the ice, and then drilled through the sea ice so that we could measure both its thickness and that of the platelet ice layer below, using an ice probe. In addition, we measured the depth of the snow cover at the edge of the holes we dug. In many cases, it was nearly a metre … digging holes in the snow can be gruelling work. The drill itself can be extended indefinitely using metre-long drill-bit sections. That day I got to use the longest drill a trauma surgeon could ever wish for …

Thanks to the routines we’d set up for sea-ice measurements, we quickly took care of the five holes to drill at the first site. A few emperor penguins that happened to be passing by looked on curiously. Then it was time to move on to the next two measuring sites. Since the sea ice in the western part of Atka Bay no longer seemed particularly stable, we decided to call it quits after finishing the third site, and treated ourselves to a short break in the evening sun. From far away, two penguins started heading straight toward us … they took turns running hectically, and then sliding on their bellies. And they were closing rapidly on our position. I was fairly perplexed by how quickly they approached us, which wasn’t at all typical for emperor penguins. Once they were finally close enough to get a good look, we realised they were in fact two very curious Adélie penguins, which stopped roughly five metres away and struck a few poses. I’d never seen Adélie penguins so close up – the little rascals had always been at least 50 metres away. We were all surprised to see how curious they were. And how quickly they came to us. Adélie penguins are wonderful to watch because they always run around as if they were hyperactive and had forgotten to take their Ritalin. And the duo took a very close look at everything … first the three of us, then our Skidoos and Nansen sledges, and lastly, the holes we’d dug in the snow. We were a bit worried that one of the penguins might fall in one, so we quickly filled them back in once the measurements had been taken. After an extensive photo session with our two penguin ‘models’, we got on our Skidoos and carried on. Our two new friends followed us for ca. 500 metres …

Video of the Adélie penguins (Klaus Guba)

On our way back, we stopped by the ‘seal crack’ … a crack in the sea ice where the seals like to laze about and nap. That day, there were roughly 20 Weddell seals lounging around the ‘beach’. I’d never seen so many there before, and the crack seemed to have grown, a sign that the sea ice was starting to become instable. After another quick stop, around 9 pm we headed home, with a short detour to check out some icebergs that had become trapped in the southwest part of the bay. It was a magical night, with a beautiful light in the sky. Just before we reached the ice-shelf edge, we ran into thick ground fog … but thanks to our GPS, we didn’t have any trouble finding the trail to Neumayer Station III, which was marked by flags. On the way, we’d ridden through a wall of fog that left a layer of white frost on our clothing. And we could see the sun shining above the fog … Our sea-ice measuring trip was beautiful, and something I’ll never forget. But on that day, I didn’t know it would be my last foray onto the sea ice … Two days later, on 11 January, the ice was declared off limits. The seal crack had grown further and a southerly threatened to drive the sea ice out of the bay. And drifting out of the bay on an ice floe isn’t exactly a great idea … In any case, that night was a fitting farewell to the sea ice.

For the next few days, we were all busy preparing for the Polarstern’s arrival. Our technicians Mario and Andreas got the container and tank sledges ready for unloading cargo. Parked at our winter camp, they had to first be cleared of snow and ice; after that, the sledges were combined to form caravans, based on the unloading checklist provided by the icebreaker, and then parked half-way to the unloading site. In addition, the 18-kilometre-long trail to the northern shore was ploughed clean using one of the snowcats. At the same time, we got the station ‘ship shape’, readied the rooms for the 25 new arrivals (the new overwintering team (with 10 members), plus 15 technicians and researchers for the summer season) that were expected, and put clean sheets on all the beds.

On 13 January, secured with a safety line, I scouted out the planned docking site for the Polarstern on the ‘northern shore’ and marked a sizeable crack in the ice with flags. On that day, all of the pack ice had disappeared and I could only see a few icebergs on the shimmering water.

That day, Antarctica once again showed us its sunny side … but two days later, on 15 January, a storm front with wind speeds of up to 70 knots rolled in and lingered for the next three days. In that time, the storm undid the majority of our preparations … the sledge caravans were covered by drifting snow, huge drifts crisscrossed the trail, and the northern shore was now surrounded by pack ice instead of open water … In those three days, Antarctica reminded us who was calling the shots. The Polarstern was scheduled to begin unloading on 18 January, but due to the storm, she didn’t reach the ice-shelf edge on the northern shore of Atka Bay until the next day, after having fought her way through the pack ice.

19.01.2021,

the end of our overwintering

On the morning of 19 January, the Polarstern dropped anchor. The sun was shining as though there’d never been any storm at all. As discussed the night before, the first thing we did was to open the large entrance to our garage and use a snowcat to clear the ramp leading out. Once that was done, we rolled out our two Arctic Trucks, which were to be used for transporting personnel from the Polarstern to the station. Then we drove two snowcats out of the garage; our two ‘backup’ snowcats were already parked in the lee of the station. The Arctic Trucks then headed for the northern shore, 18 kilometres away, though some parts of the trail were now largely drifted over. On their way to the same destination, the four snowcats were supposed to pick up the sledge caravans and haul them to the Polarstern for unloading cargo … at least that was the plan. But the drifting snow from the past three days had effectively ‘glued’ them in place … which meant that Mario and Andreas had to use the snowcat to first uncover them and then pull them out of the snow, one by one. This translated into a three-hour delay, but that’s Antarctica for you: the plans you made yesterday may become worthless today, if the weather doesn’t play ball. But at least there were just a few delays to our plan; it wasn’t a total wash …

By 10 am, I was at the northern shore in one of the Arctic Trucks and could see the top of the Polarstern peeking over the ice shelf. As we drew nearer, I could make out people on the ship waving at us, which really wasn’t anything new … we’ve all seen people waving from a ship. But for me, seeing other people after ten-and-a-half months of isolation was simultaneously wonderful and strange. On the one hand, I was glad to see new faces, new people, and was looking forward to the end of our isolation and the prospect of going home … but on the other, there was scepticism, because the station suddenly seemed overcrowded … and then a sense of sadness, because our overwintering was definitely over, and our days in Antarctica were numbered.

And then the time had come … using the ship’s crane, the first passengers were transferred to the ice shelf. During their four-week journey, everyone on board the Polarstern had repeatedly taken coronavirus tests, and had gone into a twelve-day quarantine before leaving Bremerhaven. As a result, we had no worries about greeting the new arrivals with warm hugs … plus there were many faces that we recognised from the last summer season, who’d been there when we arrived just before Christmas 2019.

There was much to do in the next three days … the cargo, which had been transported in several containers, had to be unloaded from the Polarstern, fuel had to be pumped into our tank containers, and the Polarstern had even brought freshly tuned snowcats for the station. Once it was unloaded, the cargo then had to be hauled the 18 kilometres back to the station using the snowcats … and everyone pitched in to overcome this logistical challenge.

In addition, a number of medical devices like the anaesthetic machine, EKG, mobile respirators, syringe pumps and defibrillators were swapped out with the Polarstern, so that routine maintenance could be done on them in Germany, and they could be used in the field again next year. To ensure gentler transport for the delicate devices, the ship’s helicopter was used …

After the heavy container sledges had been hauled to the station, by late afternoon the snow was so churned up that even one of the surefooted Arctic Trucks got stuck and, after a fruitless attempt to dig it out, had to be pulled out with a snowcat …

After three days the unloading was complete, and at 5 pm on 22 January, the Polarstern weighed anchor, bound for the Falklands. Once there, she’ll take on a new crew and new researchers, who will engage in a measuring campaign in the Weddell Sea. On her return trip, the icebreaker is scheduled to pick us up on 20 March. But that’s still far away … first, the 34 current residents of Neumayer Station III bid a fond farewell to the Polarstern on the ice shelf in Atka Bay.

The days and weeks that followed were again busy ones. The new overwinterers were introduced to their duties, while our meteorologists and geophysicists went on several-day-long trips to the outlying observatories ‘Watzmann’ and ‘Olymp’, which are up to 80 kilometres inland and require routine maintenance every summer. In turn, the technicians were busy unloading and distributing the cargo from the containers; several large sastrugi had to be cleared away using the snowcats; and the entire station had to be raised using its hydraulic struts, all of which took eight days to complete. This year’s summer season is a very short one, and we worked every day of the week.

At the same time, I was walking my successor Peter Jonczyk through the varied tasks that awaited him as station leader and station physician. When it comes to the medical equipment, there are some things that, as a trauma surgeon working at a hospital, you’ll have never seen, let alone used. We also ran several recons of the terrain, to help him get to know the station’s surroundings and their hazards.

And while we didn’t always have time for a recon, we still managed to find a few minutes to enjoy the view of the icebergs from the station’s roof and soak up some vitamin D in the sun …

And when there wasn’t even time to go up on the roof, we could still enjoy the impressive view from the station’s windows …

By now, autumn has begun in Antarctica. Granted, there are no falling leaves, and the ‘white’ still looks white … but the temperatures are now dropping well below minus 10. For the most part, the emperor penguin colony has left Atka Bay; only a few moulting juveniles can be seen out on the sea ice. There are also fewer Wilson’s petrels flitting around the station … which made me all the more surprised to recently find a lone Adélie penguin at our summer camp. It was still moulting and had made itself comfortable on the seat of a skidoo that had been lashed to a sledge together with other vehicles in preparation for transport.

A great deal has happened since our arrival at Neumayer III on 22 December 2019. And I know there’s much of it that I’ll sorely miss on 20 March, when we board the Polarstern to begin the voyage home. Spending 15 months in Antarctica was and is a truly unique experience. And before we leave, we’ll do our best to boost our immune systems with Echinacin, vitamins and a flu vaccination … but returning won’t just be a challenge for our immune systems. So much has changed around the globe … changes we only know from telephone calls, news broadcasts and newspapers. Now it’s slowly but surely time to return from our lonely island to the ‘real world’ … though I’m sure the ‘real world’ will seem very unreal to us, at least for the first few months. Maybe I should call it the ‘return to civilisation’ instead …

Dear blog readers, dear friends, dear supporters,

As I finish this blog entry, it’s also time for me to say goodbye. My successor Peter Jonczyk and his team, the 41^st overwintering team, are ready and waiting to take up the baton … we, the 40^th overwintering team, wish them from the bottom of our hearts a successful and harmonious overwintering full of unforgettable moments, and a healthy return in 2022 (hopefully to a world without curfews, hygiene rules, no-contact laws, home office, masks and all the other things that are now so greatly limiting our lives).

I also want to express my heartfelt thanks to everyone who supported us here at the southern tip of the world, and who helped ensure that we could do our work for 15 months under comfortable living conditions, despite our harsh surroundings.

Last but not least I’d like to thank all of our blog readers; after all, what good is a blog with no readers? … and especially thank them for their comments (which were the first sign that somebody actually read the blog … ;) ). And thanks to our families and friends for doing without us for 15 months … we can’t wait to see you all …

Warm wishes to the rest of the world and especially to our readers, families and loved ones back home …

The 40^th overwintering team of Neumayer Station III, 2020