the antarctic sun, november 16, 2003 · 2 • the antarctic sun november 16, 2003 check it out...

Welder Bob Jirschele works on an old tank at Palmer Station with Arthur Harbor and the glacier in thebackground.

November 16, 2003

Published during the austral summer at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, for the United States Antarctic Program

www.polar.org/antsun

Terminating T3

Page 7

“All I know is if you pull up on thestick, the houses get smaller. If youpush down, the houses get bigger.”

Out to sea with Skip Owen

2

Quote of the Week

- A helicopter pilot explaining how to fly

Photo by Kristan Hutchison/The Antarctic Sun

INSIDE

Building a better base for scienceBy Kris Kuenning and Kristan HutchisonSun staff

Almost 50 years after the heroic begin-nings of U.S. Antarctic research, a lot haschanged. From a few intrepid explorers,there are now more than 3,400 people com-ing to the Ice each year.

Keeping up with science is a matter ofconstant evolution for the stations that sup-port Antarctic research.

Compared to the harsh existence of theearly explorers, most people working inAntarctica today live in relative luxury atone of the three U.S. stations. Thisimproved standard of living is the result of

continuous upgrades and construction,which are now done with an eye towardminimizing the overall footprint on thecontinent.

The largest current construction projectfor the U.S. Antarctic Program is the ele-vated building at Amundsen-Scott SouthPole Station. After the first station suc-cumbed to snowdrift, a dome was erectedin 1975. By 1989, snowdrift and settlingwere enough of a concern that plans beganfor yet another building. The existing facil-ity was also becoming overcrowded andreaching the end of its design life, with

By Brien BarnettSun staff

Strings of highly sensitive light detec-tors buried 2 km deep in the ice at theSouth Pole may have yielded the first skymap of neutrinos.

Neutrinos are ghostlike subatomicparticles with nearly no mass that mayhold the key to unlocking more of theuniverse’s secrets.

Scientists analyzing data collected in2000 from the AMANDA II subsurfacetelescope at Amundsen-Scott South PoleStation unveiled the map at a meeting ofthe International Astronomical Union inJuly. They said they had made the firstsky map of high-energy neutrinos, whichare emitted by such things as neutronstars and colliding black holes. The mapwas created from the reconstructed pathsof neutrinos detected by the telescope. Itis one of the first steps in learning moreabout distant regions of the universe.

“Neutrinos are the best vehicle we’vegot for looking very, very far out intospace, which is the same thing as lookingvery far back in time,” Bob Morse, pro-fessor of physics at the University ofWisconsin, Madison, said. Morse over-sees the AMANDA project.

AMANDA, an acronym for AntarcticMuon and Neutrino Detector Array, is acomplex telescope that actually “looks”through the Earth into the northern hemi-

See Building on page 9

South Pole telescopeproves value of concept

Mappingthe sky withneutrinos

See Amanda on page 11

2 • The Antarctic Sun November 16, 2003

Check it out online

Ross Island Chronicles By Chico

The Antarctic Sun is funded by the NationalScience Foundation as part of the United StatesAntarctic Program (OPP-000373). Itsprimary audience is U.S. Antarctic Program par-

ticipants, their families, and theirfriends. NSF reviews andapproves material before publication, but opinions and con-clusions expressed in the Sun

are not necessarily those of the Foundation.Use: Reproduction and distribution are

encouraged with acknowledgment of sourceand author.

Senior Editor: Kristan HutchisonEditors: Brien Barnett

Kris KuenningCopy Editor: Melanie Conner

Geoff JolleyWendy KoberJD Menezes

Publisher: Valerie Carroll,Communications manager, RPSC

Contributions are welcome. Contact theSun at [email protected]. In McMurdo, visitour office in Building 155 or dial 2407.

Web address: www.polar.org/antsun

It says here that FDA studies show living in extremecold and darkenvironments will have an adverse effect on you physicallyand psychologically.

What!!! I’ve neverlookedor feltbetter in all my life!!!

Supposedly, you’ll experienceloss of appetite, restlessness, anxiety, depression,insomnia, and moodchanges ...

... plus,many also havethe infamous“AntarcticStare” thatmakes themresemble thewalking dead ...

... and worst of all is that you’ll get short-term memory loss. Now what do you think about that?

Think about what?

Cold, hard factsPeople on the Ice

Here’s the lowdown on this year’sRPSC crew, including contractand full-time personnel:

35 are sailing the high seas675 are melting at Mactown196 will see the South Pole20 are chillin’ at Palmer

For all ships, stations:

“Two guys for every girl”(apologies to the Beach Boys)

Men: 615 (67 percent)Women: 309 (33 percent)Youngest: 18Oldest: 68Average age: 37

White: 844Black: 7Hispanic: 23Asian or Islander: 10American Indian: 9Other/not indicated: 33

Top 10 home states:

“The West is the best”(um, )

Colorado: 197Alaska: 69Washington: 64California 52Montana: 39Idaho: 36Minnesota: 35Oregon: 34Wyoming: 29Texas: 20

There are people from 49 statesand three foreign countries.

Only Delaware is not representedamong the RPSC crowd, thoughthere are grantees who call thestate home.

Other places some call home:New Zealand: 2Ontario, Canada: 1Virgin Islands: 1Source: Raytheon Polar ServicesCompany, Human Resources

Find this image and manymore at the Antarctic PhotoLibrary. Click on the link off

the Sun’s homepage.

Melanie Connor / Antarctic SunAn Adelie penguin defends itsnest from a skua.

November 16, 2003 The Antarctic Sun • 3

By Kristan HutchisonSun staff

Oceanographers were stunned when theexpected slow flow of cold water from theAntarctic continental shelf became morelike a torrent one evening last March.

Though the Antarctic slope study hadbarely begun, the results have alreadychanged the way oceanographers think ofthe cold, dense water that drops from theAntarctic margins and drives ocean circu-lation.

“Every time you go out and make mea-surements in the real ocean, you makediscoveries,” said oceanographer ArnoldGordon from Lamont-Doherty EarthObservatory of Columbia University.“We’ve been surprised by the observa-tions, so we’ll be challenged to come upwith an explanation.”

The observations occurred during acruise aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer inthe western Ross Sea from February toApril. During the cruise, the researchersset out a dozen instruments attached tomoorings anchored to the seafloor from270 meters to 1,780 meters deep. Theinstruments record the ocean currents,temperature and salinity of the water forone year. The moorings are clustered in a50-kilometer area southeast of CapeAdare, where the continental slope makesan abrupt turn to the north.

Thick ice covered some of the locationswhere Gordon needed to deploy the instru-ments, so two of the monitors had to beplaced in the wrong locations. Three weekslater the Nathaniel B. Palmer returned tomove the misplaced instruments, givingGordon a sneak preview of the data.

He’d expected to see the cold wateroozing down a 1-degree slope. Instead hefound it rushing down at a 10-degree to30-degree angle, moving with a speed of 1.8 kph. Most dra-matically, late in the day March 12, an outburst of dense shelfwater dropped at a rate of about 5.5 kph. The water temperatureat the sea floor was –1.6 C with a salinity of 34.78, significant-ly colder, saltier and therefore denser than the average. Foralmost seven hours the cold current descended at a 90 degreeslope from 500 meters to almost 1,400 meters deep.

“It must have plummeted like a rock,” Gordon said. “Youcan think of it almost like an avalanche.”

The Ross and Weddell seas both produce Antarctic bottomwater, as do a few locations along the coastline of EastAntarctica southwest of Australia.

Cold air blowing off the continent chills the coastal water,freezing some of it into ice and leaving a saltier, -1.9 C waterbelow. This dense water moves to the edge of the continentalshelf and sinks to the deep sea floor, spreading north out of theSouthern Ocean.

The movement of the cold bottom water sets in motion glob-al scale circulation in the ocean, as the fresh, cold bottom waterlifts up older water that has had time to be warmed by the lay-

ers above. The warmer water moves backto the Southern ocean, where the cyclecontinues.

The cycle prompted by Antarctic bot-tom water helps drive deep ocean currents,circulating nutrients from the deep sea tothe top layers of the Southern ocean, wheremarine plants and animals use them. Thecirculation also draws carbon dioxide intothe ocean. The ocean has absorbed as muchas half of the CO2 released through theburning of fossil fuels. Currently the oceanis very cold in a geological sense becauseof the influx of Antarctic bottom water. Butnobody knows yet what controls the pro-duction of the cold water or what exactlyturns the tap on higher or lower.

“If for some reason you turned off yourcold water source, like stopping theAntarctic bottom water source, then all ofa sudden 80 percent of the deep water willbe isolated from the climate system,”Gordon said.

The deep ocean circulation wouldslow, potentially altering the ocean’s abil-ity to absorb carbon dioxide and reducingthe nutrients reaching the surface.Researchers want to learn what processescontrol the formation of bottom water inorder to predict how the water mightchange with global warming.

“What we were trying to do at thispoint is get the climate models correct,”Gordon said. “Just so we can predict howour activities will alter the climate.”

The two flow patterns detected by thecruise have different implications for theocean. When the cold water drops moreslowly, it has time to mix with the layersit is passing, warming slightly and chang-ing its nutrient and chemical makeup. Thefast-dropping cold water doesn’t havetime to mix or change.

“By this water sinking so rapidly to the sea floor, it gets intothe deep ocean without much alteration,” Gordon said. “Theoutbursts, such as measured on 12 March, allow more concen-trated dense waters to get into the deep ocean.”

It’s possible the March 12 event was an isolated instance, butGordon expects to find it happens every few weeks.

“We don’t really know what caused the event observed on 12March. We think it had something to do with the tides,” Gordonsaid.

If it does, that will change current climate models, whichdon’t take tide into account, yet. Gordon said tides will proba-bly need to be added into the predictive models. He will presentthe early results in January at the ocean sciences meeting of theAmerican Geophysical Union.

“We’re hoping that what we learn about the physics is trans-ferable to other areas in the Antarctic,” Gordon said.

A follow-up cruise is planned for this February, with MartinVisbeck as chief scientist to collect the current meters andreplace six of them. Another cruise in October 2004 will look atthe late winter conditions, with Stan Jacobs as chief scientist.

Probes detect cold-water ‘avalanche’

Image courtesy Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatoryat Columbia University

The graphic demonstrates how cold watercascades off the continental slope anddives beneath warmer water, creating acirculating effect.

By Ann Peoples

I n 1981, I drove a shuttlebus betweenMcMurdo and Willy Field. If one ofmy passengers had predicted that 20years later I’d be in business school

earning an MBA and telling stories aboutthe Antarctic Program, I’d have assumedsomeone slipped through the psych exam.After all, what does the U.S. AntarcticProgram have in common with businessschool?

As it turns out, quite a bit. It was while working on one of the

Antarctic Program contract re-bid teamsthat I became interested in the relationshipbetween traditional profit and loss busi-nesses and organizations like the U.S.Antarctic Program. That interest plantedthe business school seed. Once the re-bidwas over, I entered business school atUniversity of California, Irvine.

The connections between the Antarcticprogram and business surfaced in my firstclass – Organizational Behavior. This classhighlighted the complexity of organizationsgiven their unique combination of fourthings: Structure, human resources, politics,and culture. Can you imagine the fun I hadwith this topic? Even in a world of uniquebusinesses, the Antarctic Program stood out,especially in culture and human resources.Retail businesses were similar to theAntarctic Program in the way their person-nel doubled on a seasonal basis, but theydidn’t have the cross-section of interests andskills we see in the Antarctic Program or thework location’s environmental rigors. As forcultural symbols – nobody can beat “ThePole” and all it stands for.

Commonalities between the AntarcticProgram and the commercial businessworld emerged in all my classes. Yes, wedid the number crunching that is expectedof an MBA: Financial management,accounting, and statistics. But the under-lying theme, even in these quantitativeclasses, was using the information to makebetter decisions about your course ofaction, and to listen, in a numeric lan-guage, to the feedback from customersabout their priorities and your perforance.

The Antarctic Program provided a gold-mine of practical examples for my classesin decision modeling and negotiation.

Multiple stakeholders, large capital invest-ment and huge fixed costs, tight timelines,and limited second-chance opportunitiesmake the Antarctic Program’s resourcedecisions and allocations more difficultthan many commercial outfits.

Extrapolating the Antarctic experienceinto business school discussions hit homein a personal way in my last class –Leadership Practices. The course materialmentioned three Old Antarctic Explorersby name. Not surprisingly, Shackleton andScott were there. The third was Rob Hall.Rob was a Kiwi survival school instructorin the mid-1980s when I was the BergField Center Manager and survival schoolwas a joint U.S.-New Zealand programrun out of the BFC. He was also one ofseveral mountaineers who died on MountEverest in a May 1996 storm.

The leadership class examined the qual-ities of successful and failed leaders and thedifference between crisis and everyday sit-uations in leadership emergence. How theclass used the Antarctic explorers as exam -ples was surprising. We discussed the dif-ferences between “leaders” and “heroes”and whether the two were mutually exclu-sive. We debated whether leaders couldemerge without adversity. We studied eachexplorer and his situation. Was Scott a heroor a leader? How about Rob Hall? Did

Shackleton demonstrate qualities of both?How do these people relate to modern busi-ness? The conclusion wasn’t surprising -whether you’re on the Ice or in a businessoffice the characteristics underlying suc-cessful leadership are the same. Leadershipis about vision and values. It’s about suc-cessfully managing conflict and dealingwith adversity. Leadership is setting theexample. It’s the need for endurance andinnovation in order to survive and thrive.

What is it about Antarctica and its peo-ple that runs parallel to the businessworld? It’s the shared individual drive.Business starts with entrepreneurs – inde-pendent types with a willingness to exper-iment and a tolerance for risk. Antarcticabeckons to a similar type person. Whetherit’s creating a new service, asking a newresearch question, or traveling and work-ing in unusual areas, it’s about the enthusi-asm to try something new – and the driveto be successful at it.

I learned a lot in business school butone of the most exciting things was look-ing at my time in the Antarctic Program ina different light. In this, T.S. Eliot springsto mind:

We shall never cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.

After 15 years in the Antarctic Program,Ann Peoples left in 1995. Along with sev-eral other Antarctic veterans, she went toJohnston Atoll where she worked as theOperations Director. She eventually left theAtoll to work on one of the AntarcticProgram contract rebid teams. In 1999USGS named a series of islands nearPalmer Station “Peoples Rocks” in herhonor, recognizing a career that started asa shuttle bus driver and included being thefirst woman BFC Manager and the firstwoman Station Manager. A year later, sheentered business school at University ofCalifornia. In June 2003 she received herMasters Degree in BusinessAdministration (MBA), graduating first inher class. Peoples attributes her classstanding to the unique perspective shebrought into the classroom. She says shestill feels the deployment itch every August.


Perspectives Perspectives

Lessons learned on the Ice useful in business

Photo courtesy Ann Peoples

Ann Peoples takes a break in front ofMount Erebus during her time on the Ice.

Bagel holes at the PoleBy Peter RejcekSouth Pole Correspondent

South Pole … a seemingly endless 360-degree expanse of ice and snow that, with aquick trick of the eye, seems to undulate likea restless ocean. At this final frontier of rel-ative hardship, one wouldn’t think youcould find a good bagel.

Think again.Thanks to Jack Giacalone, along with a

steady stream of volunteers and the help ofthe kitchen staff, Polies need not miss out ontheir regular diet of a bagel — cream cheeseoptional.

For the third summer in a row,Giacalone, a surveyor with Raytheon, istaking his passion for baking into thekitchen, mass producing bagels on a week-ly basis. He and a couple of volunteers cre-ated the first big batch of the season lastSunday. Giacalone is wintering for his firsttime, meaning fresh bagels year-round.

“I’m a natural in thekitchen,” Giacalone said,explaining why hedevotes his time to pro-viding the popular break-fast staple to his fellowPolies. “It’s relaxing.”

The work usuallytakes place on Sundaynight. Giacalone preparesthe dough beforehand,using a commercialprocess he learned whileworking as a baker andthat he later applied to hisown bakery and espressostand in Seattle in the1990s. By the numbers, ittakes about 22 kg offlour, 11 liters of waterand 680 grams of sugarto make 30 kg of dough.That makes 268 bagels.

“They’re the bestbagels I’ve ever had,”said Polie Andrea Dixon,who turned up Sunday to

help mold the dough into 113-gram, dough-nut-shaped bagels.

“There are a lot of people who want tohelp,” Giacalone noted.

By the time the volunteers arrive, thedough is ready. Giacalone sends 4 kgchunks of dough through a slicer — aheavy appliance with a slot machine-armthat cuts the dough into bagel-sized pieces.

After that it’s just a matter of taking thefist-sized dough and flattening it with thepalm of the hand, folding this pancake threetimes into a fat sausage and then rolling itwith both palms until it’s about the length oftwo hands from thumb to pinky. The longroll is then wrapped around the hand likebrass knuckles, with the two end piecessqueezed together, quickly rolled andplaced on a cookie sheet. The bagels arethen frozen, later to be thawed, boiled andbaked by the kitchen staff.

“It’s really very simple,” Giacalone said.This batch included both plain bagels

and pesto bagels, using fresh basil from thestation’s greenhouse, which Giacalone alsohelps maintain with volunteer help.

Giacalone’s bagelsare just one of thetouches that make com-ing to Pole for the firstor tenth time special.Also back this year isbingo night onSaturdays, with JamesBrown calling the num-bers. Saturday’s firstinstallment found thegalley packed, with res-idents vying for a vari-ety of prizes, from thelatest souvenirs to arriveat the station store tobars of chocolate.

The weekly Sundayscience lecture is alsoback this year. LastSunday’s lecture waspresented by RobertMorse on neutrino par-ticle physics. Asalways, the lecture drewa standing-room-onlycrowd to the new galley.

Nathaniel B. PalmerCompiled from reportsby Don Michaelson

After 4 days at a standstill with enginetrouble, the Nathaniel B. Palmer turnedaround to return to Lyttleton, where theengines can be fixed. Along the way, itstopped to do as much science as possible.Able to cruise up to 6 knots through thinice, the Palmer was not setting any speedrecords, but was making progress. Itreached the ice edge by noon Nov. 9 andspent the afternoon with the free-fallingconductivity, temperature and depthinstrument, understanding the system andgetting the weight right for a straight downfree fall. The ship floated around in placetill the early morning hours, then the sci-entists collected oodles of water justbefore sunrise. The day was spent doingmore sampling. When the weather cleared,the scientists took a Zodiac out to harvestsome brown ice. After three days, the shipcontinued to Lyttleton, New Zealand witharrival expected Nov. 20,

Laurence M. GouldCompiled from reports by Steve Ager

The Laurence M. Gould left PuntaArenas Nov. 7. The ship was hammeredentering the Drake Passage, with 4 m to 8 mseas and 96 kph winds gusting from thesouthwest. As a result, the crew started tak-ing water measurements a little farther outthan usual. Once the Gould got out of thewind tunnel between Tierra Del Fuego andIsla Estados, things calmed enough to turnthe ship into the weather to reload thelauncher. The next day conditions in theDrake Passage calmed down a bit.

The Gould arrived at Cape Shireff to setup a camp there on Nov. 11. After an earlybreakfast, the crew began boating opera-tions at 6:00 a.m. With two Zodiacs runningfor 5 hours and excellent weather condi-tions, the crew had all equipment and per-sonnel ashore by 10:30 a.m. The Gouldheaded south for Croker Passage to carry


around the continentSOUTH POLE

McMurdo StationHigh: 34 F/ 1 C Low: 9 F/ -13 CWind: 31 mph/ 50 kphWindchill: -31 F/ -35 C

Palmer StationHigh: 37 F/ 3 C Low: 21 F/ -6 CWind: 60 mph/ 97 kphWindchill: 5 F/ -15 C

South Pole StationHigh: -23 F/ -30 C Low: -47 F/ -44 CWind: 31 mph/ 50 kph

the week in weather

SHIPS

Photo by Peter Rejcek/Special to The Antarctic Sun

Jack Giacalone rolls out a bagel inthe South Pole kitchen. See Palmer on page 6

out some night fishing on behalf ofresearcher Jeannette Yen, before continuingto Gerlache Strait and Palmer Station.

Roasting pigsBy Kristan HutchisonSun staff

After a week busy with science andlogistics work, Palmer Station residentsgathered on the pier Saturday evening tobarbeque hamburgers, garden burgers andbratwurst. Their grill is a mark of Antarcticingenuity, created from a hinged barrel andscrap metal, with the figure of a pig on top.

The homemade pig roaster was createdlast year, after the cook ordered a pig didn’thave a place to cook it.

“It’s a tradition. Antarcticans always hadpig roasts,” said Palmer Station cook WendyBeeler. “If you go through the photo albumshere you’ll see lots of pigs.”

In keeping with tradition, Beeler ordereda pig. When the 40 kg carcass arrived on theLaurence M. Gould in January she realizedit wouldn’t fit in the oven.

“I never knew how we were going toroast it,” Beeler said. “The roasting in theground got ruled out because of environ-mental issues.”

Beeler found a photo of a furnace turnedinto a pig roaster online. That inspiredwelder Bob Jirschele, who worked onSunday and before and after work to turnscrap metal into a roaster. Jirschele hadsome experience with roasters, since he hasa larger roaster at home made by his stepfa-ther.

“They had an image and they just wentfor it,” Beeler said.

By February the roaster was ready and

Palmer celebrated the return of the LongTerm Ecological Research cruise with aluau.

“It’s no question you’re having a partywhen there’s a pig around,” Beeler said.

Since then, the roaster has also been usedfor hot dog, duck, and steak. Beeler orderedanother pig recently, but ended up with 30kg of ham hocks instead.

“I think we need to work on our Spanishtranslations,” she wrote.

Importance of KrillBy Kerry KellsPalmer correspondent

Macrozooplankton — large animalplankton species mostly at the mercy of cur-rents — otherwise known as krill, live herein the Southern Ocean. Studies of krill arean important aspect of the Long TermEcological Research project. They are the“prey” component of LTER, prey to thepenguins, fish, whales and seals that live inour area. For LTER, the physical processesthat help or hurt the success of krill are animportant component related to the inter-annual differences in the extent of pack ice.What drives the success of krill, what fac-tors relate to a healthy school and how iskrill success linked to phytoplankton suc-cess and to penguin success?

Krill are sought, observed and collectedby the acoustic/trawling Zodiac as well asby scuba diving. Our researchers on station,with Robin Ross and Langdon Quetin as theprincipal investigators, study the interac-tions among krill, its food sources and itspredators. While the adults form schools(large cohesive groups that swim together),the young larval krill tend to swarm (small-er, looser groups that are more chaotic).Food sources include the phytoplankton(free-flowing plant life) that develop on theocean ice, noticeable by the yellowish tingethey create on the ice. Larval krill scrape the

ice to feed directly on these microbes.Looking through a microscope at juvenilekrill, one can see a greenish section of theiralmost transparent bodies. This is the phyto-plankton in their stomach and digestivegland. Krill are a source of food for pen-guins, different types of fish, whales andeven leopard seals. While penguins will eatfish as well, in our area they prefer krill.

In the laboratory, collected krill are test-ed on their physiological condition (howhealthy they are, how fat or skinny), meta-bolic rates and growth production. A couplehundred krill are required for several tests tobe run. The krill have a hard skin, almostlike a shell, called the exoskeleton. Likelobster, they shed this skin as they expand tothe next larger size. Scientists then measurethis larger size to the smaller, discardedskin, to determine growth rate. They focuson the spine section of the tail and the mainpart of the animal’s body. Carbon, hydrogenand nitrogen ratios are measured to deter-mine how fit the krill are. Back in the States,analysis of protein and lipid components(fat content) reveal the physiological orchemical conditions of krill.

Sea ice affects everything that is goingon in the Southern Ocean. Without the ice,the phytoplankton that larval krill depend onis unavailable as a food source. Most impor-tant to the larvae is the end of the winter icecover. Adult krill are not as dependent on iceas larval krill and are better able to make itthrough a long winter of low light, low phy-toplankton and heavy ice. This past winterwas a low ice season in the Peninsularegion. In the middle of the summer sea-son, additional surveys focus on schoolingbehavior, swimming behavior and fieldingestion protocol used at sea. Krill arethen another piece of the Southern Oceanecology puzzle and an important factor onthe food chain.


What part of your workis harder becauseyou’re in Antarctica?

“It takes an hour togo to the bathroom.”

Lisa AikenSouth Pole materials

person fromSt Mary, Mont., third

season

“It’s cold. I’ll tell youwhat makes it easier.People can’t call me.”

David SaltzbergANITA-lite researcherfrom Los Angeles, first

season

“Here at Palmer,the scenery keeps

getting in the way.”Mike Jayred

Palmer station wastemanagement specialist

from Livingston,Montana, 5 seasons

PALMER

Palmer From page 5


By Kris KuenningSun Staff

A vacant stare. A perplexing mid-sentence pause. A general vague-ness or malaise.These are some

symptoms of a problem that used to beknown as “winter-over syndrome.” Nowbelieved to be linked to thyroid hor-mones, the disorder is more commonlyreferred to as polar T3 syndrome.

Psychologist Larry Palinkas and ateam of others, including physiologistKathleen Reedy, have been studying theeffects of extreme cold on the body formore than a decade.

The researchers have discovered thatpeople living in Antarctica commonlylose one degree in body temperature.They also consume 40 percent more calo-ries and use 35 percent more energywhen resting or exercising when com-pared to their routines in temperate envi-ronments.

Research has also documentedchanges in the thyroid system, which is

responsible for regulating the body’smetabolism. The T3 hormone and relatedhormones are decreased in the centralnervous system and increased in the mus-cle tissue. While this extra thyroid hor-mone in the muscle helps create frictionto keep the body warm, the deficit in thecentral nervous system makes people for-getful, sluggish and even depressed.

Palinkas’s team wanted to know moreabout what causes polar T3 syndromeand how it can be treated. Last year, 40summer and 40 winter participants fromMcMurdo were given either a placebo orone of two treatments. Some people tooka daily tablet of thyroxin, a thyroid hor-mone, while others ate applesauce mixedwith powdered tyrosine, an amino aciddietary supplement.

“Our preliminary analyses indicatedthat the two interventions performedabout the same, with the thyroid supple-ments performing slightly better in reduc-ing symptoms of fatigue, depression, andanger, and both doing much better when

compared to the placebos some peoplewere taking,” Palinkas said.

So far, only the early summer datahave been collected and processed butthese early results have helped Palinkasrefocus the study this year.

“Although we are awaiting theremainder of the data collected during thesummer and all of the data collected dur-ing the winter to complete our analysis,we felt that we had enough informationto select the thyroid supplements to com-pare with light therapy for this comingyear,” he said.

Now that they understand how thyroidchanges occur, they want to know moreabout why they occur. Is it simply thecold? Or are the long, dark winters alsoto blame? Understanding the syndromebetter will make it easier to treat and pre-vent, Kathleen Reedy said.

Reedy and Marc Shepanek are cur-rently recruiting 20 volunteers from

Shedding light on winter bluesPolar T3 researcher Kathleen Reedy checks the bloodpressure of study volunteer Mike Blachut, who will spend both summer and winter at McMurdo Station.

Photo by Kris Kuenning/The Antarctic Sun

See T3 on page 8


McMurdo and 20 volunteers fromSouth Pole to participate in the studythis year. They especially want winterparticipants because of a new compo-nent in the study, light therapy. Studyparticipants will take thyroxin or aplacebo and sit beside a light box for30 minutes each morning, five days aweek. Throughout the year, they willbe asked to record information abouttheir diet and sleep patterns. A com-puter program will track changes inthe participants’ mood and memory.

Studying participants at the SouthPole will compare the conditions atMcMurdo to an even colder environ-ment. If cold is the major factor inT3, it should be equal or greater at thecolder South Pole station thanMcMurdo.

By comparing light treatment withthe thyroid supplements, Palinkashopes to determine how much of thePolar T3 is related to darkness andhow much is related to cold tempera-ture.

Light therapy has been used suc-cessfully in a variety of mental disor-ders and behavioral changes includingPMS, sleep disorders and SeasonalAffective Disorder. SAD, as it isknown, is a form of depression that isusually linked with the change of sea-son.

“Most people with SAD usuallybecome depressed in the late fall andearly winter when it starts to becomecolder and darker,” Palinkas said. “Afew become depressed in the latespring and early summer.”

Palinkas looked for occurrences ofSAD in people at the South Pole in1991. He found no cases over sum-mer and only a handful over winter.

He did discover that many peopleexperienced sadness, fatigue, lethargy,

carbohydrate craving and social with-drawal, especially in the winter.

Palinkas refers to this as subsyn-dromal SAD. He said S-SAD is not apsychiatric disorder and would notwarrant treatment with antidepres-sants or psychotherapy, but that peo-ple with those symptoms have bene-fited from light therapy.

Because of this, there is a commonbelief that reduced light exposure inwinter is responsible for SAD.

“However, the evidence from ourprevious research on the Polar T3suggests that exposure to cold (even

in people who spend most of theirtime indoors) may be associated withthe increase in metabolism andchange in thyroid function that isassociated with the change in moodand behavior,” Palinkas said.

Palinkas believes SAD, S-SADand the Polar T3 may be related. Notonly are many of the symptoms thesame, they are also both more likelyto occur in winter than summer.

Some (but not all) studies ofpatients with SAD have reportedchanges in thyroid function similar tothose found in people experiencingthe polar T3. In all three conditions,

resting metabolic rate increases eventhough they feel more fatigued.

Antarctica has a reputation forbeing a dangerous place, yet the mostcommon worries for people headedhere are social, according toChristchurch psychologist Gary Steel,who has studied mood patterns inpeople at New Zealand’s Scott Base.

“The chief challenges people men-tion prior to going down are not somuch the environment as the socialaspects.”

Even with the stress of isolation,cold and unvarying light or darkness,

Steel said the number of people whoexperience problems are still theminority.

“Most people do extremely well.They not only survive, but thrive.There are also positive aspects –heaps of them. That’s the sunnierside.”

To help explain the dark side, theresearch goes on.

“With each study we learn some-thing new. People are incredibly help-ful because they’re so curious aboutwhat’s happening to them,” Reedysaid. “And because they can see itwill help others in the future.”

T3 From page 7

“Evidence from our previous research suggeststhat exposure to cold... may be associated withthe change in mood and behavior.”

- Researcher Larry Palinkas

Four photo categories:(One entry per category per person)- Scenic - Wildlife - People - OtherPhotos may be digital or traditional,preferably at 300 dpi

Antarctic Photo & WritingFestival

DEADLINE: 7 A.M. DEC. 14Outlook users, e-mail entries to MCM-Antarctic Sun, others to [email protected],or stop by the Sun office at Building 155.

More rules: One entry per category per person for both the photo and writing contests, so choose your best. Thecontest is for photography and art with an Antarctic theme. This will be broadly interpreted. You do not have tobe on the Ice to enter. Winners will be printed in the Sun, on the Web and posted on Highway 1. E-mail staff formore info.

Four writing categories(One entry per category per person)- Poetry: Up to 30 lines- Haiku: Traditional 5-7-5 syllable poem- Micro-fiction: Up to 300 words- Non-fiction: Essays, letters home, e-mails,memos, journal entries, etc.; up to 300 words


outdated structural, environmental, codeand safety controls, and communicationand data transfer technology, according toSouth Pole National Science Foundationrepresentative Jerry Marty.

This time, the problem of snowdriftshas been addressed by putting the entirestation on columns that can be jacked upwhen required.

After five years of construction, workhas been completed on the fuel storage,garage, shop, and new power plant, aswell as four segments of the elevated sta-tion. In March 2003, the first two wings ofthe new station were occupied. For thefirst time the winter staff lived, ate andsometimes worked under one roof. The 36residents enjoyed walking to breakfast intheir slippers instead of four layers ofextreme cold weather gear.

“It was almost cush,” said winter heavyequipment operator Rob Shaw. “It wasdefinitely a dramatic change. It was a lotof fun just to be one of the first 36 peopleto occupy the new station.”

South Pole engineer Patrick Hoveydescribed the accommodation as “almostlike a hotel room. I could not have done awinter in the old living quarters.”

Previously, winter residents werehoused under the protection of the domebut the walk to the dining room stillrequired a heavy layer of protective cloth-ing.

The new rooms are single occupancyand will eventually have telephones andcomputer network connections.

Of course, some people go to the SouthPole to enjoy the extremes. Dan Naber haschosen to live in one of the Jameswaybuildings at the summer camp.

“I like having a brisk walk each morn-ing to help wake up and feel what the dayhas brought,” he said.

With the construction still underway,Naber finds the summer camp morepeaceful.

“I like the lived-in feel of theJamesway,” he said.

No matter where you choose to sleep,everyone at the South Pole eats in the new,roomy dining area.

“We were all pretty proud of the newdining facility,” Shaw said. “There ismore seating and windows overlookingthe geographic and ceremonial SouthPole.”

This winter, Polies watched the week-long sunrise from the windows of the din-ing hall. After six months of darkness,

watching the sun make its annual appear-ance over the horizon was a spectacularevent.

“To see that from the new dining facil-ity is fabulous. Everybody was so pumpedup,” Shaw said.

The winter work focused on the indoorconstruction of the module that will housecommunications and medical facilities, aswell as the store, the greenhouse, a quietreading room and personal computerworkstations, according to Hovey.

“It’s 80 percent done now. They areplanning to have it done by the end ofsummer,” Hovey said.

Winter construction work is confinedto indoors and can be limited by the isola-tion of winter, when planes don’t fly.

“If you’re short of materials, you haveto wait,” Hovey said.

This summer, outdoor construction willcontinue on the metal framing and panelenclosure of the fifth and sixth segmentsof the elevated station. Work will also bedone on the emergency power plant, hous-ing, administration and communications,according to Marty.

The entire elevated station project isnot due for completion for another fouryears, according to Ric Morris, director ofFacilities Engineering Maintenance andConstruction for the Antarctic program.

The next big construction project forSouth Pole will be building the shield andsupport structures for a new 8-meter tele-scope, according to Morris.

Measuring 43 meters in diameter and17 meters high, the shield that goesaround the telescope will be equivalent insize and shape to the old dome. “Butupside down,” Morris said. “We’re start-ing the engineering work and are buyingmaterials this year to be on next years’

See Building on page 10

Building From page 1

Tim Nicoll, an IT tech for Raytheon PolarServices, sits in one of the dorm rooms atthe new elevated station at South Pole.

Photo by Brien Barnett/The Antarctic Sun

South Pole residentsand visitors relax inthe new dining hall onthe upper floor of theelevated station, whichis under constructionnear the old dome.


“It was a lot of funjust to be one of the

first 36 people tooccupy the new

station.”- Rob Shaw


vessel for work starting two summersfrom now.”McMurdo modernizes

“This year is a fairly slow year as far asconstruction goes at McMurdo,” Morrissays.

Three projects are being completed thissummer, said Randy McEndree,McMurdo Facilities, Engineering,Maintenance and Construction manager.

A new Science Support Center hasbeen constructed and is in use this season.

Final touches also are being made tothe Joint Spacecraft Operations Center,which will become home to the McMurdoInformation Technology department aswell as NASA Polar Satellite Operations.

A new wastewater treatment plant isalready operational, but a final lift stationwill complete the system this summer.

Future construction planned atMcMurdo includes upgrades to the powerand water plant in 2005 to improve the sta-tion’s emergency capability, Morris said.

Three more bulk fuel tanks will arriveby ship at the end of the summer, whileold tanks are being demolished to beshipped back to the U.S. along with thedeconstructed remains of the old ScienceSupport Center building.

Other things in the near term, which arenot yet funded, are new living spaces andtrade shops, Morris said.

He said the plan for the new dormito-ries may include four-story buildingsalong the road to the ice pier with singlerooms and shared bathrooms.

Buildings are continually being phasedout and replaced by newer, more efficientones.

“The buildings in McMurdo are fairlyold. There are some from the 1950s, a lotfrom ’60s and early ’70s, that are notdesigned for what they’re being used for.New building is dictated by function, safe-ty requirements and somewhat by aesthet-ic,” Morris said.

“McMurdo was set up as an expedition

site so there was no real planning when itwas started.”

Town planning for the future includesseparating the living and recreation areasfrom the industrial areas without expand-ing the existing size of the town.

Upgrading Palmer“We live for upgrades here,” said

Palmer Station Manager Joe Pettit.Palmer Station has been upgraded

twice in the last five years, with renova-tions to the laboratory, boathouse and pri-mary living quarters. The remodel createda noise buffer between the lounge andbedrooms, and added a women’s bath-room.

In the lab, new counters and shelvesmade the area easier to work in and keepclean, while fans made it safer to workwith chemicals.

“That was a great thing for the commu-nity and the science,” Pettit said. “The sci-entists come in and if they’re comfortablethey get a lot more done.”

The next major project at Palmer will bea building to house instruments trackingchanges in air quality, the atmosphere, andseismic activity. The 140 square meterbuilding is scheduled for construction in2005.

“It should have a positive impact over-all. Again, it will be replacing a ratherarchaic building,” Pettit said.

Currently those instruments run insidethree wooden buildings uphill from therest of the station, with the weatherbeatenlook of an old, blue cabin.

The new building will be a unique tri-angular building with many windows totake advantage of the view of mountainsand water. Raytheon Polar Services archi-tect Steve Meredith designed the three-sided structure to represent the three orga-nizations that will use the InternationalMonitoring System building.

“They all said that their air samplingstack had to be the highest. You can see

how that would go,” Meredith said. “I hadthree entities and I had to put them in thebuilding as far apart as possible, and thetriangle was born.”

One of the three entities is the group ofComprehensive Test Ban Treaty monitors,which will pay for the $500,000 building.

Support columns and closets will fillthe three corners, so all the inside spacewill be useable.

One of the challenges at Palmer is find-ing a level place to build. The entire sta-tion clings to a rock peninsula, slopingfrom a glacier down to the water. The newbuilding will be built high on the hill,beside the buildings it is replacing.Elevated even higher on columns, the newbuilding will stand out.

“As an architect, I always strive foraesthetics in my buildings, somethingunique,” Meredith said. “I think that’swhy someone would hire an architect.”

In the long term, Palmer will need anew pier to replace the original pier. Theexisting pier was built in 1967 from sheetpiling, set on bedrock and backfilled withrock. The pier is sufficient for theLaurence M. Gould, but doesn’t extendinto deep enough water for the NathanielB. Palmer to tie up.

The new pier won’t necessarily accom-modate the NB Palmer either, though if itextends another 15 feet out with a slightchange in orientation the NB Palmer couldtie up, said Morris.

So far, a number of ideas have beenfloated, including a solid concrete pier, afloating barge tied to the shore, a jackupbarge that secures to the rock with extend-able legs or extending the round piers thatare there. The cost estimates range from$5 million to $6 million, but it will bethree to 10 years until it is funded andbuilt, Morris said.

“There are some cost advantages toseveral of the designs, but no decisionshave been made,” Morris said.

Building From page 9Photo by Kris Kuenning/The Antarctic Sun


Above, older buildings slated for replacement at PalmerStation. At right, construction coordinator Tom Cohenourpulls out a tile at the nearly-finished J-SOC building. Theremovable flooring allows easy access to cables.

sphere to detect neutrinos. The more hitsthe better.

While Morse described the detection ofthe neutrinos and creation of the sky mapas an achievement, he described the dataas “not yet conclusive.” That’s becausenearly all the neutrinos in the map wereproduced locally, relatively speaking, bycosmic ray collisions with nuclei in theEarth’s atmosphere. They are not the high-energy “extraterrestrial” neutrinos fromother galaxies and black holes scientistsare seeking. To find those neutrinos, muchmore data must be collected.

“You have to basically start hunting forhot spots of neutrinos. And the way youstart hunting for hot spots in the sky is youjust have a lot of data,” Morse said.“There’s no substitute for having a lot ofdata.”

The sky map is limited by the amountof neutrino data AMANDA is able to col-lect. On average, the telescope receivesabout 10 million events of some kind aday or about 100 per second. Those eventsare collected into about 10 GB of data aday and analyzed using specialized soft-

ware and banks ofcomputers back inthe United States,according toDarryn Schneider,the project’s infor-mation technologymanager. The out-put of data revealsthat only aboutthree to five neutri-nos are detectedeach day.

In 2000,AMANDA detect-ed 1,555 neutrinoevents and veryfew, if any, werec o n s i d e r e de x t r a t e r r e s t r i a l .Morse said the tele-scope has countedabout 5,000 neutri-no hits to date. Itseems like a lot, butit’s not.

According toWebster’s NewWorld Dictionary

of Science, about 10 million neutrinosfrom the Sun alone will pass through yourbody by the time you finish this sentence.

“The beauty of the neutrino is also itscurse,” Morse said. “The very fact it’s soantisocial means that it’s able to traversebillions of light years … [which means] itcan’t interact with anything. The chanceof it interacting with our detector is one in

a billion.”The data collected so far do not indicate

any substantial patterns that researcherscan use to focus their work, he said. Moretime and perhaps a bigger telescope, suchas the project planned at South Pole namedIceCube, will help bring the origin of theuniverse into better focus, he said.

Francis Halzen, a physics professor andtheoretician at the University ofWisconsin, Madison, said AMANDA hasproved its worth as a concept neutrinodetector. The telescope has grown in sizeas the concept gained focus, starting withsix strings of light detectors and growingto 19 strings covering an instrumentedarea of about 0.2 km wide by 0.5 km deepor about 1/60th of a cubic kilometer.AMANDA is not quite the optimum sizefor a neutrino telescope, which is onecubic kilometer, but is still enough toshow results and set up the potential fordiscovery.

“It has contributed technology to doneutrino astronomy,” Halzen said by tele-phone from Madison. “It has become bigenough, although not a kilometer cubed, ithas reached the size where it has madecontributions to science.”

Halzen describes AMANDA as a truetest of technology. Halzen credited theNational Science Foundation andRaytheon Polar Services for providingsupport and managing the logistics of thetime and materials intensive project. Theteam overcame early problems, such asbubbles in the ice, by drilling deeper.

“I think that actually why AMANDAworked is we were lucky,” Halzen said.“We were lucky when it comes to the clar-ity of the ice.”

The highest-energy neutrinos fromAMANDA have painted what Morsecalled a “foggy” picture of possible pointsources of extraterrestrial neutrino

sources. “I believe we are seeing evidence for a

diffuse extraterrestrial neutrino flux fromthe highest energy neutrinos,” Morseexplained.

More time spent collecting data orexpanding the telescope, beginning withthe initial IceCube strings, may result in aclearer picture.

“Our data show the detector works,”Halzen said. “Whether there are faint sig-nals beyond the atmosphere, I don’t know.We will know when we have analyzed allof our data.”

Halzen said he expects a paper aboutAMANDA’s discoveries to be publishedin a few weeks in Physical Review Letters,the American Physical Society’s journal.

AMANDA, though, will continue togather data and every bit helps.

“This is not a resolution problem atpresent, this is a numbers problem,”Morse said.

And, if he begins to get a lot of datapinpointing neutrino sources, then what?

“If there’s one of anything, there’s amillion out there.” Morse said, smilingbroadly. “Neutrinos tell you there is theinteraction of ordinary stuff. Protons andneutrons, the stuff we are made of … Thatindicates that whatever is out there pro-ducing that is stuff we’re familiar with.”

And that is what astrophysicists want toknow most: What is the rest of the uni-verse made of and what is happening to it.AMANDA and its successor may revealdiscoveries as yet unimagined.

“People take pictures of the sky usingvisible light, blue, red, X-rays,radiowaves. Each time people have madea picture of the sky using a different tech-nique they have seen totally differentthings,” Halzen said. “We can discoverthings that I can not tell you about rightnow.”


Amanda From page 1


Researcher BobMorse pointsout the wiringand electricalhardware thatsort data com-ing from detec-tors in theAMANDA tele-scope. Thehardware isinside theMAPO buildingat South Polestation.

The path of a particlethrough the tele-scope. It enters at thebottom and triggersdetectors as it goesthrough.


Prof i le

By Kristan HutchisonSun staff

S kip Owen knows everyship in the Antarctic pro-gram inside and out, even

one that hasn’t been built.He started out as a deckhand

in 1983, on the Antarctic pro-gram’s first research vessel, theHero . Now he’s project manag-er working on the design speci-fications for the next polarresearch vessel. He’s also one ofabout 10 people who take turnsas marine projects coordinatoraboard the vessels. Essentially,he acts as a liaison between thescientists, support staff and theship crew.

“It can be a very difficult jobon a very scientific cruise,” saidOwen, who specializes in cruis-es requiring small boat andmooring work, and sometimesones no one else will take.

Difficult or not, he does itwell, say those who have beenon board.

“I love that guy. Twentyyears and he’s not pretentious,”said Mark Furnish, waste man-ager for the Antarctic Programwho was on a September cruiseon the Laurence M. Gould. “Heknows his stuff.”

Owen can hold his own forhours over a couple of piscosours in a Punta Arenas pub.Just don’t ask him to verify any-thing he says.

“We don’t call it completeB.S. It’s a sea story,” said Owen.

Owen was born in NewHampshire, but he really grewup in Maine, where his familyspent summers on an island inPenobscot. He spent almost asmuch time on the water as onland.

“I grew up in boats, smallboats, lobster boats,” Owensaid.

When it came time for col-lege he enrolled in a merchantmarine training program with aminor in marine science at the

University of South Maine. Inpart, he wanted a career thatwould keep him out of the officeand give him large periods oftime off. When he graduated hehad his choice between a posi-tion on the Oregon StateUniversity research vessel or theHero.

“I just was ‘Hmmm,Antarctica, that sounds interest-ing,’” Owen said.

He started the year after theAntarctic program switchedports from Ushuaia, Argentinato Punta Arenas, Chile.

“It was a pretty small opera-tion here. We had an agent, butwe did all the clothing issue,”Owen said.

He moved up quickly, fromdeckhand to second mate. Inthose first years Palmer was aseasonal station, closing com-pletely in the winter. When thePolar Duke replaced the Hero in1984, Palmer Station and themarine operations both becameyear-round.

Owen remembers arriving atPalmer Station during one ofthose first winters. It had been aparticularly difficult one at thestation, with personality clashes.The ship arrived to an emptyand unshoveled pier. None ofthe station paths had beencleared and nobody was out.They finally had to push openthe station door against the pileof snow blocking it in order toget in and find the winter crew.

When the National ScienceFoundation decided it neededanother vessel, designed specif-ically for Antarctic research,Owen worked on the design andconstruction of the Nathaniel B.Palmer. In 1992 he was on theNB Palmer’s first trip to theAntarctic. It happened to be intothe Weddell sea ice camp.

“It was quite a challengingtrip for its first,” Owen said.

Having crossed the DrakePassage more than 50 times,

Owen has seen his share of badweather. Usually a four-day trip,the 1,450 kilometer voyageonce took nine days on the Heroand seven days on the Duke.Particularly bad seas once tookout windows on the bridge ofthe Duke, Owen said.

Another time on the Duke aplywood storage cupboard hold-ing about 100 cases of sodabroke open.

“We had these cans of sodarolling everywhere and every-thing was drenched in thissticky stuff, which actuallymade for good walking,” Owensaid.

More often he just has tohandle the human effects ofrough seas, from broken limbsto seasickness.

In August, Owen returned tothe Antarctic program after afew years running a small boatfor the Marine EnvironmentalResearch Institute in Blue Hill,Maine.

Between stints with theAntarctic program, Owen alsoran his own small boat business-

es, ferrying passengers aroundthe Penobscot Bay and lobster-ing.

Owen still has a lobsterlicense, and a seven-meter lob-ster boat named Euphoria. Buthe also owns land in Mariaville,Maine, not far from his parents,siblings, nieces and nephews.He’s planning to build a homethere, using recycled and greenmaterials and alternative energysources. So far he has the sitecleared and a three-season campset up on a shed with electricity.

“I’ve done my share of 150-year-old home remodels,” saidOwen, who spent several yearsworking on the old farmhouseon his family property onMatinicus Island. “Working onan old house, it’s kind of a ther-apy, or an obsession.”

The most unusual aspect ofhis home-to-be, consideringOwen’s waterborne history, isthat it is landlocked, withouteven a view of the water.

“You start to look forward tothat when you spend your wholelife on the water,” Owen said.

Sea stories

Skip Owen returns from launching instruments off the back of the Laurence M.Gould during a September cruise across the Drake Passage.


Skip Owen

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