Living and working in the cold - Antarctica: Global Science from a Frozen Continent - page 229

8

Living and working
in the cold

LOU SANSON

Adventure is just bad planning. Roald Amundsen

Not many people get to work in Antarctica and, for many of those that do, it
can prove a life-changing experience. Every year over 2000 scientists and support
personnel travel south to conduct scienti c research. They come from over 30

countries and, while some stay only a few days, others stay for months or even a year
or two. Some spend their time at the 40 permanent research stations scattered
around the continent that are open year around; others make use of the 30
stations that are used in the summer only or undertake long research cruises
offshore, and many more set up field camps deep in the most remote parts of

the continent.
The modern research stations have little in common with the historic huts of
Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton. Built in the early 1900s, their wooden
buildings provided little more than shelter from the cold and wind and a place to
wait out the winter. But today

' s stations, from the smallest, like Norway ' s Tor (home

to only four), to its largest, the United States McMurdo (where over 1000 live in the

summer), Antarctic research stations are like self-suf

'

cient villages. Each needs
facilities for power generation and for dealing with waste, for making fresh water
and for medical care. The stations must be able to store and prepare food and
provide accommodation for scienti c and support personnel as well as be capable

of maintaining and servicing vehicles and running telecommunications units, and
often maintain sophisticated laboratories.
Geology, surveying, meteorology and some biology were being undertaken
on the Antarctic Peninsula after the World War II by the UK, Chile and Argentina.
Whilst the French built a station at Port Martin in 1950, they had hardly started
their science before the station burnt down. So the first major research facility