They have a new hut at Cape Bird now, with lots of upgrades. Back in my day though… (cue wavy lines)
Peeing was accomplished by walking on a snowy path carved into the hillside, and peeing into a funnel (male) or near the funnel (female). Some female field assistants learned to pee standing up without taking their pants off (!) (No, I don’t have any direct observational experience with this)
Major business was done in a 45 gallon drum with a luxurious toilet seat balanced on top. Paper was burnt. Once/month a lucky person would get to take the drum down to the sea edge and give it a dump and rinse.
I’m pretty sure that this situation at Cape Bird has been improved now. However, I don’t think the environmental impact of some poo in the water was that great. We were situated right beside a penguin colony where 60,000 decent sized birds spend 4 months crapping all over everything.
McMurdo has a regular plumbing system - all pipes are above ground though. It also has a pretty good sewage plant that deals with everything. When we were there, the recycling program was very good, and has probably gotten even better. Gone are the days when they used to take all the garbage out to the sea ice and wait for it to melt.
No, since the temp never really rose above 5 C, I don’t think anything would have sprouted. The “soil” around the hut was really just crushed rock. Nearby our hut though, was a “preserve” area that had small patches of moss, mites, springtails and nematodes. For Ross Island, this was a veritable tropical oasis of terrestrial life! We had several scientific parties visit for short periods to study these critters.
In McMurdo, they had greenhouses where they did grow some fresh veggies. They’d send us some occasionaly by resupply.
Ha ha! Not really. We did get our own tent at Cape Bird. We arrived separately so did not stay at McMurdo at the same time, but when we left, we spent a few days there - in separate buildings.
Entertainment - at Cape Bird, you make your own fun. We had beer and spirits, which we rationed out carefully. Games. Conversation.
At McMurdo they had movie nights, parties, 3 bars, and lots of interesting people to talk to.
I would love to hear more about the circadian rhythms of penguins. Do their rhythms change as the amount of daylight changes?
Actually, I have a whole bunch of questions about penguin behavior. Do the Adelies have the same mating patterns/rituals as Emperor penguins (like we saw in “March of the Penguins”)? How about egg incubating behaviors? Do the males hold the incubating eggs on their feet? Once they hatch, how to the babies behave? What do the babies’ circadian rhythms look like?
Sorry about the rash of questions, I’m just fascinated by animal behavior, and I kinda dig penguins.
[prurient interest]Did you know the guy who died in a possible homicide by methanol poisoning? Any guess if it was homicide, suicide, or an appallingly bad accident?[/prurient interest]
For forty years I’ve wanted to go to Antarctica. Inadvertently forgot to get that degree in biology, climatology, radio astronomy or anything else that might have taken me there.
The 24 hour daylight makes the whole circadian rhythm thing interesting - they have no external cues for their internal clock. The main question is: How do they time their arrival back to the nest to coincide exactly with the eggs hatching when they have no way of “counting” the days? The answer seems to be a very accurate internal clock that does not rely on external day/night cycles.
Adelies mate on rocky areas, not ice, and they mate in the summer not winter. Otherwise they are similar to Emperors. The eggs are not always held on the feet, since the nest is a rocky “cup”. The babies are basically little fuzzy eating machines. They have no circadian rhythms at this point, since they have no need of them.
Spring 1988 (November) and then again in 1990/91 field season. Those who go down once often get the “bug” and try to go back.
When I was first there I definitely suffered from "“big eye” for the first few days. With 24 hour sun and all the excitement, you get the feeling “I don’t need to sleep at all! I’m pumped!” After 2 days of this, you generally collapse in exhaustion.
People are screened pretty carefully, so I’d say it’s minimal. Probably the larger the base, the more likely to have problems. I would not have left any cameras etc lying around McMurdo, although they’d probably have been fine. At Scott base, you could have left $500 in cash sitting in the mess hall, and there would have never been a problem.