I am Going to Antarctica!

It has been a month and half since I was invited to participate in a research trip to Palmer Station, Antarctica from April to July 2013, and it is finally starting to feel real. My research advisor Dr. Johanne Lewis at GSU was invited to go to Antarctica by polar researchers Dr. Kristin O’Brien from University of Alaska and Dr. Lisa Crockett from Ohio University. When a spot was created,  I was invited to fill it. For the longest time I did not tell people because I was waiting to wake up from my dream or waiting to see if I would get an email telling me that the invitation was meant for someone else.  Now after a month and half I can finally accept it is going to happen, which means I need to start preparing to leave. Part of the preparation includes starting a blog to record all my preparation activities until I deploy to the icy continent, which I will of course constantly update while I am down in Antarctica. The best part is that this research trip is completely funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant through Drs. O’Brien and Crockett. XD

So first things first, how am I going to get there. In the first part of April I am going to fly down to Punta Arenas, Chile where I will be issued extreme cold weather gear from the United States Antarctica Program funded by the NSF.  After a day or so, I will board a research vessel name the Laurence M. Gould, which from now on I will lovingly refer to as the LMG (Pictured Below). The LMG is an icebreaker which will take me through Drake’s Passage (~6 days) until I arrive at Palmer Station. On the LMG I will be helping out the other Researchers catching Antarctica fish for our research at Palmer.

Palmer Station is the smallest of the three American research bases located on Antarctica. Palmer station was built in 1965 and named after American Nathaniel B. Palmer who had the first recorded sighting of Antarctica in 1820.  Palmer station is located at Anvers Island near the Antarctica Peninsula (Pictured Below). Since maps can be boring I was also include an aerial picture of Palmer also pictured below. Palmer station is the smallest American station, so it can only hold ~44 people during the summer months at Palmer and ~20 during the winter months. I will be traveling to Palmer at the beginning of the winter months. At Palmer, I will not have access to my cell phone and some internet sites like Skype because, well, there are no cell phone towers in Antarctica and the internet capabilities we have will be limited to lower bandwidth sites. So my only forms of communication will be this blog, my colleagues, and of course my closest neighbors, these cute little guys…or girls (Adelie Penguins) pictured above.

In the following weeks I will discuss more information about the research I will be a part of, cool facts about Antarctica and Palmer, and of course the paperwork process that needs to be taken care of before I can leave.  Then in a few months time when I am in Antarctica I will post about researching on an icy continent, what I will be doing other than research, and of course my own pictures. But until then I will keep borrowing the pictures obtained from the researchers that have gone before me.

*LMG picture found at http://pal.lternet.edu/blogs/2010/rv-laurence-m-gould/

*Map found at http://www.tampabay.com/specials/2010/reports/antarctic/maps/index.shtml

*Aerial found at http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1512.html

*Penguins found at http://www.woophy.com/photo/753105