Don't Eat Chilean Sea Bass
Every Thursday and Sunday evenings in McMurdo there are lectures, mostly given by the scientists working on the ice. This follows a long tradition in polar travel and exploration. Scott and his men had weekly lectures as well. They knew that to survive, or even thrive, on the ice they needed to keep their minds active.
When I was in McMurdo, David Ainley ("A Letter from Cape Royds" in Antarctica: Life on the Ice) gave a fascinating lecture on the fragile Antarctic ecosystem. I came away with many ideas, a vast appreciation for our planet and the determination never again to eat Chilean Sea Bass (which I had eaten; it's delicious). During the virtual tour someone emailed in a question about whether it's ok to eat "sustainable" Chilean Sea Bass. My first thought was that it is not possible to have "sustainable" Sea Bass, since it is a fish that begins to breed only when it is twelve years old. For a more in-depth answer, I turned once again to David. Here is what he has to say:
Antarctic Meteorites
One question we got for the virtual tour was this:
Where can I get genuine Antarctic meteorites? Is there anyone who ships them to the US?
As it turns out, Christopher Cokinos, one of the contributors to Antarctica: Life on the Ice has an essay in the collection about searching for meteorites on the polar plateau. The photo here shows researchers on snowmobiles, combing the ice for meteorites. One of them could be Chris. I post this photo so you can get a sense of how vast the landscape is, especially when you are looking for something as small as a meteorite (see the next photo).
Chris is the editor of one of my favorite journals, Isotope, which publishes literary essays focused on science and the natural world. Chris is just finishing a book on meteorites, titled, The Fallen Sky: A Private History of Shooting Stars, to be published by Tarcher/Penguin in the fall of 08 or Spring of 09--I'll keep you posted. Here, then is his response about buying Antarctic meteorites:
Blog Talk Radio!
We did it! Katy Jensen called in from Colorado Springs, Guy Guthridge hopped off his boat long enough to phone in, and Karen Joyce and David Ainley called in from the Ice for the virtual book tour. My first ever. It was a fun experience and I could have talked all night with these four writers who contributed to Antarctica: Life on the Ice. We covered a lot of topics--climate change, sunrise at the South Pole, penguins and their lives and the fact that it's now 40 degrees in McMurdo (warmer than here in New York). You can listen to the interview by visiting my website. There were more questions than we could answer so I'll try and tackle a few here in the next few days. In the meantime, here's one response from my friend Sue Pierce, from Philadelphia:
In the Antarctic Ocean
When I traveled to Antarctica, working on finding writers to contribute to Antarctica: Life on the Ice (then just a hope in my heart and an idea in my head), I spent a night in Christchurch, New Zealand. There, I shared a hotel room with a complete stranger, Julie Rose, a scientist who was heading out to research on the Nathaniel B. Palmer. I tracked down Julie recently to find out what she's doing and how her research is coming along. It wasn't hard to find her, since she works at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the world's largest private, nonprofit, ocean research, engineering, and education organization. Read on to hear about Julie's experiences on a research vessel and to get a sense of polar ocean research.