After two weeks of getting my ass kicked in the kitchen almost everyday because we have been understaffed, more flights with more help came in, including a gang of Polies (folks heading out to work at the South Pole) and now life is calm again. And in light of my hard work, I got the opportunity to head out to the sea ice and be a divetender for a day. What does this mean? I shall tell you. We loaded equipment into the Piston Bully and headed down from the dive shop to the ice. Then we picked up the “tomato” (also referred to as the “pumpkin” and “orange”… I said a pick a fruit and stick with it, damn-it) which is a hut like tomato on skis. This was basically the snack shack. It contained food and emergency supplies. Mainly food. Then off we went way out on the sea ice. I was sitting on top of huge camera used for underwater photography. We were out with photographers who were filming for the BBC a new series called Life. One of the photographers filmed for Planet Earth. How cool is that????? So, we shlep gear into the dive hut, which sits over a giant hole that was cut into the ice so divers can access the ocean. We help the divers with their gear and lower equipment down to the ocean floor. Then we all waited as the cameras sat doing their time lapse photography thing. So, I got to spend the day with the Planet Earth photographers. Not a bad day on the bottom of the planet.
I was surrounded by seals ready to birth. You can hear the seals under water. They make those whale like sounds. I did not know this. I have a video clip of a seal popping his head through a hole and looking about.
I also experienced silence. Out on the sea ice, when there was no wind, there was no sound. No trees rustling, so small animals scurrying, no water trickling… nothing. Absolute silence.
This is Antarctica.
Now the update. Today, which is another day, I went to the science building to track down my new found diving friends. And they showed my the results of our time lapse photography. It was amazing!!! You can see tons of starfish scurrying about (and they don’t really scurry) over a period of 4 hours. And giant sea worms. Like eight feet long. Unbelievable. And I was there.
