On 1st December of 1959 the Antarctic Treaty was signed, establishing Antarctica as a region dedicated to peaceful purposes, scientific cooperation, and environmental protection, prohibiting military activity, territorial claims, and resource exploitation. Nowadays, this day is celebrated world wide as the “Antarctica Day”. On 1st December 2024 we, APECS Germany, celebrated this day by hosting a live-call to a deep-field camp at Lake Untersee in East Antarctica. With the tent flapping from the strong winds in the background, Alessandro Cuzzeri, a PhD student at University of Innsbruck, answered many interesting questions about his work in Antarctica. Below you will find a selection of his answers.
Q: What is most challenging for you personally during field work in Antarctica?
A: Field work here so far has been both extremely rewarding and extremely brutal. I can only speak for myself, but, since the field days are always shared (no one is ever alone on the ice), I found out that everyone is struggling with two main things: the cold (who knew?) and the wind. And it’s not just about our hands, everything else is also prone to freezing, be it the salt solution I use to sample air, the water on top of cryoconite holes (which I’m also interested in), the release mechanism of the Niskin bottle used by my fellow PhD student Daniel to sample the lake water, the water inside glass vials (which then explode if filled to the brim) and so on. And if you have battery-powered instruments, never expect them to last as long as they normally would. For these reasons, while out there we are each-other’s best buddies, the thermos of hot water we always bring along should also be given some credit!
Q: How is the food?
A: We mainly rely on freeze-dried food, the very same that people who like camping in the mountains bring to their short-term adventures. The variety is quite good, as I haven’t gotten sick of it (yet?), but we got plenty of comfort-food with us, such as chocolate, or more specific stuff we brought from home (being Italian, polenta was my choice). One massive improvement they figured out was packing tortillas, some cheese and ham: this has stably become part of our lunches, and they can be desserts too when filled with chocolate cream. Truly a jack of all trades!
Q: How do you get electricity and sanitary facilities?
A: For electricity, we have generators running every now and then, just to fill up some big batteries and charge the instruments when needed. While they are almost white noise at this point, the instant relief you feel when they are turned off reminds you of the value of silence in this place. As for sanitary, we rely on the incredible technology of “pee bottles” (no need to explain further I’m guessing) and a portable toilet in a dedicated tent when the situation is more “serious”. All said and done, we have it easy, but I have massive respect for the ladies that undertake this kind of adventure!
[Here are some resources and discussions of the challenges women face during remote fieldwork and how we can tackle them: Fieldwork and toilets: pooping with a view , Breaking the silence around blood: managing menstruation during remote Antarctic fieldwork , Coming in from the cold: Addressing the challenges experienced by women conducting remote polar fieldwork]
Q: What is the weather like?
A: In one word: unpredictable. Forecasts are hardly trustable, which doesn’t help. This is technically a cold desert, meaning that precipitation is very scarce, and the little snow that we get is mainly blown over by the wind from the nearby mountain range. The lowest temperature we experienced so far is around -16°C (wind can make it way worse though) and wind gusts are always trying to strike when you least expect them, with maxima around 90 km/h for this season. So far, this year has been quite uneventful luckily, but there were instances in the past where tents had to be taken down or were destroyed altogether by >110kmh wind gusts. The record in this sense was some years back, when they experienced 180ish km/h winds that destroyed the whole camp. It takes days to put it up in the first place..
Q: How much snow is there around, does the lake melt in summer?
A: There is some snow lying around, which comes from the many nearby glaciers, but not that much. The lake never melts, and it’s always covered by a thick layer of ice (few meters). It’s the case today and it was in the past, which is why it’s so valuable to do research in this place on paleo-climate and such.
Q: What do you do in your free time, do you have free time?
A: Generally, days start at 8 with breakfast, and end at 6 in the afternoon, with lunch break in between. Some are longer, some are shorter, depending on the outside conditions. When we get good ones, we better milk them for all their worth. The evenings generally consist of sharing what happened during the day all together in the kitchen tent, chatting or watching movies. For such reasons, there’s definitely some free time to be used.
Q: How did you travel there and how hard was it to set up your base?
A: The expedition consists of 7 members: each of us travelled independently to Cape Town, South Africa, to meet up on a predefined day (October 13th this year). From there, we move together, after a few days of re-packing and briefing, from the airport with a private cargo plane that takes us to Novolazarevskaya Air Base, where we also station for a few days to re-organize the cargo, to finally move out towards the camp with the skidoos (6h traverse ca.). The big stuff follows up after a few hours in a sea container put on skis and towed by a snow cat. This year, setting up camp took 4 or 5 full days of work.
Q: What is a surprising thing you learned there (scientific or generally)?
A: In general, it’s fascinating to see how such a camp is built and managed. While I’ve always been fond of building stuff and seeing how it works, there was hardly a chance in the past to experience something like this. From the logistics involved, to how different tents are built, or how to change a spark plug of a broken skidoo, it’s a lot of careful preparation and planning, but being able to improvise and adapt to unforeseen problems is just as important here, where you might have several tools, but maybe not the one that you need.
Q: How interdisciplinary is your team, do you think it should be more or less interdisciplinary?
A: the more, the merrier! Living in close proximity with other people that do different things in different disciplines is probably one of the most conducive environments to learning. Currently, in our ranks, we have two divers, a writer, two PhDs and a master’s graduate. Of the two divers, one is the expedition leader and senior scientist, the other one a postdoc with extensive experience in extreme environments. The disciplines include limnology, microbiology, ecology, water chemistry, geospatial data analysis, zoology and the likes.
Q: What is an interesting fact that you learned about another scientific field outside of your own?
A: While my background is quite broad (bachelor and master’s in environmental sciences), a topic that I haven’t dealt with very much and I’m not trained in extensively is geospatial data analysis. The techniques employed to map the world and bring it to our eyes in an understandable fashion are quite novel to me. Specifically, our fellow expedition teammate Cole is on a mission to map the whole lake basin and the surrounding features of the shores (and paleo shores) with a millimetric precision scanning procedure that involves aerial shots taken by drone too. With such technologies, he can even keep track accurately of the position of the so-called wandering boulders that are floating on the lake ice surface: on what mission are those instead?
Q: How did you and the team prepare for the fieldwork (especially
mentally for the remoteness)?
A: On the purely physical side, being in good health with no particular conditions is paramount, as you’re at least 6 hours away from the closest medical help (excluding first aid obviously). A visit to the dentists before departure is also a must. While the working days can be quite demanding on the physique, having a good head on your shoulders helps massively getting through them without thinking of going home on day two. In this sense, I’m very thankful to my exposure to the alpine environment since childhood, which taught me quite a few things about enduring hardships with a level head. We are currently a month and a week in, but I personally haven’t felt the effect of remoteness just yet (as a matter of fact, it feels like we have been here for a week or so). There’s always a way to contact the “outside world” through messages, and since last year we even have high speed wifi connection in camp, which allows us to make videocalls with family and friends at home, or dissemination and outreach events. In this sense, I feel that diplomatic skills are the real deal here, as you should never let other people’s small things get too far up your nose, or even worse overthink every small behavior or word being said. Everyone can have a bad day, and here there’s not much possibility of running away to vent: take it easy!