Palmer Station |
64° 46' 17"s
064° 03' 32"w |
The next morning the ship arrived at an active United States research
station on Anvers Island called Palmer Station. As was the custom for
arriving ships, we blew our horn at 7:00a to wake up the station's crew
of about 48 people. A few came on board to give a lecture about the
facilities and US Antarctic science and funding in general. Then it was
out in the Zodiacs for our landings.
Two landings here again. First at Palmer Station, the site physician
gave us a walking tour of the outside of the buildings. As the doctor,
he didn't get too much activity, so he was also the site air-collector.
We couldn't go inside the buildings because we may have interrupted
their research.
They do marine biology research there. Towards the end of the tour he
passed us to Jason who explained some of the organisms in their temporary
aquarium. Limpids, fish, starfish, and krill were all living in the
aquarium's 33 degree water. He explained that the researchers there
identified a type of antifreeze protein created by all antarctic fish
that prevents them from freezing. Food corporations have experimented
with the protein, including a well-known ice cream manufacturer who
tried to use it to prevent ice cream from getting all icy when it sits
in the freezer too long. It worked, but the ice cream tasted like
fish. I told Jason that that was hilarious. The aquarium had no filtering
equipment except a pump that circulated water in and out of the sea
directly. When the tourist season subsides all the organisms go back in
the sea and the aquarium is put away for the winter.
After the tour we were invited to have some famous Palmer Station
brownies and tour their gift shop, where I picked up some cool bargain
sweatshirts for $10 each. It was refreshing to take out American money
and give it to Americans again and to spend the day listening to people
with American accents.
The other landing near Plamer station was on a small island filled with
adelie penguins. These guys don't have any of the fancy markings that
the gentoos or chinstraps had. Their eyes looked like they were the
plastic kind that were glued onto their heads. They had different calls
than the other types of penguins, but went about the same important
penguin business. Adelies argued a lot with each other and the youngsters
were the only penguins I saw that chased the skuas around.
This island had a number of flags that marked the boundary of a
long-running experiment. Tourists were not permitted to go beyond the
line of flags. Scientists hoped to observe the differences between adelies
that had contact with humans and those that didn't. All I could tell from
my cursory observations were that there were a lot more adelies on the
non-human side of the flag line. Same activity and noise level.
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