Our six Seas Your Future Scientists in Residence in Costa Rica have sailed the Pacific Coast off Puerto Rico for a few days now.
You might imagine their work to be a breeze, more of a holiday really, sailing tropical seas in great weather… and surely, the sun shines and watching dolphins riding the bow waves amidst bioluminescent plankton at midnight is magical and an experience nobody will ever forget.
Read MoreThe Antarctic Quest 21 expedition I’m supporting as scientific advisor has been beset by most arduous weather conditions – storms alternating with snow blizzards and zero visibility…
Nevertheless, the team are in good spirit and ingenious in repairing the damage to their tents and kit – rising to each challenge with the resilience and team spirit any team anywhere aspires to.
If you have an hour to spare, watch the zoom record of their Shackleton commemoration, tales from the ice and thanks to sponsors and patrons…
The awareness of the carbon footprint of IT and online activity is increasing as a result of media reports, for example thought-provoking articles by the Royal Society, BBC Future and Carbonbrief.org However, ready-to-use carbon footprint calculators, including the widely used Carbonfootprint.com calculator, do not yet include IT, online, social media and video conferencing activities – even though most of us have engaged in much more of this since face-to-face contact has been curtailed by during the covid-19 pandemic of 2020.
Read MoreOh no (I hear you say) please, not another new story of contamination and its dreadful consequences!
And yet…
Read MoreIt snows on the Antarctic Peninsula. (Still :))
Read MoreAs eight explorers turn their backs to the departing ship, they know that for the next six weeks, the team are totally self-reliant.
Read MoreWhat’s on your mind reading those words?
Read MoreIf you have been travelling abroad at all in the past 12 months, you may be able to imagine the ‘fun’ of getting 8 people from UK, Sweden and the USA to Buenos Aires and from there to Ushuaia – especially in the early weeks of rapidly changing rules in the wake of the emerging Omicron variant of Covid-19.
Read MoreI have the feeling that the Antarctic Quest 21 team just sneaked out of the country before more stringent ‘omicron’-related restrictions made it even more difficult to get this expedition on its way.
Read More…we need to know in more detail how solid Earth responds to the massive ice loss we are facing on Antarctica as a result of climate change:
Read MoreThe expedition team are departing London Heathrow for Buenos Aires on Friday, 10th December 2021 and will board Polar Latitude‘s SeaVenture in Ushuaia a couple of days later. Then it’s across Drakes Passage and onto the Antarctic Peninsula at Portal Point.
Read MoreSimon Newton of Forces.Net covered the launch event of the Antarctic Quest 21 expedition on the Wellington with a short film.
Watch it here:
https://www.forces.net/video?video=50104
Challenging Habitat 