What's It Like to Live and Work in Antarctica?

The South Pole's frigid desert continent bears very little natural life, but hundreds of researchers and support staff live and work there. Learn what that's like in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio Pay
brain Stuff Lauren Vogal bamb Here. We tend to think
of Antarctica as being a giant, frozen, empty waste land.
If that's the impression you personally have of the continent
at the south end of our planet, well done. It
is indeed just as huge, frozen and full of a

(00:24):
whole lot of nothing as you think it is. And
that's said. As with all deserts, people do live and
work there. In the case of the southernmost continent. The
humans they're mostly comprise polar researchers trying to figure out
what Antarctica's deal is, and the drivers, mechanics, cooks, pilots,
and electricians who support them and keep the research stations running.

(00:47):
So what's it like living and working on the most
remote place on the planet. There are a few different
ways to live and work in Antarctica. The continent is
home to seventy five individual research stations, and they're run
by thirty countries. Of these science spaces, forty five are
actively operating year round, although most are accessible for only

(01:09):
a three month window every year due to weather conditions.
Researchers first have their stuff shipped to a base like
the U. S. McMurdo Station on Ross Island, which they
use as a staging area for their field expedition. McMurdo
Station was officially established in nineteen fifty two and can
support more than one thousand, two hundred residents at a time.

(01:29):
Once team members are ready for the field, they're taken
with all of their stuff in a plane and dropped off.
Some researchers work on ships, but not all ships are
research vessels. During the austral summer, cruise ships regularly depart
from Argentina and travel to the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula,
which is considered the Banana Belt of Antarctica. It's much

(01:50):
warmer than the rest of the continent and is where
virtually all the wildlife hangs out. However, for such a
largely lonely place, you're early alone there. Pretty much everybody
on Antarctica lives in cramped quarters, either in tents or
in dormitories or on ships. We spoke via email with

(02:11):
Dr Narita Wilson, an invertebrate marine molecular biologist at the
Western Australian Museum. She said it's tough not getting any
loane time for many weeks at a time. I've always
been based on ships, where the work hours are long
and the sleeping quarters are close, often four in a
very small bunk room. Being alone requires a having the

(02:32):
time and be having a place to go. Because of safety,
you can't always roam the decks of the ship alone,
so mostly you are in company. The research stations themselves
are kind of like small towns, but only kind of.
Very few people over winter there, and the continent has
no indigenous population, so nobody was born there. There are

(02:54):
no children around, and nobody has much of a history there.
We also spoke with Dr Jenny Baseman, a polar researcher
and the executive director of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.
She said, and an Arctic research station is like a
remote mining town, but because it's nobody's permanent home, it's
everybody's home. Everybody's very friendly and helpful. Everyone feels excited

(03:17):
and fortunate to be there. Because there's twenty four hour
daylight during the austral summer. The temporary residents work a lot,
but in their free time they hang out at the
bar or the coffee shop and go to a movie
or play trivia. Sadly, the bowling Alley that the U. S.
Navy built at McMurdo in the nineteen sixties closed in
two thousand nine. However, there are absolutely challenges to living

(03:42):
and working normally. For example, the weather can and I quote,
turn to milk in five minutes. One Dr David dal Mayer,
Professor emeritus in the University of George's Geology department, spent
twenty years as a naturalist on small Antark Dick cruise ships.
He also spent a few field seasons out on the

(04:03):
ice studying the geology of the area. He remembered my
first day in the field, we got dropped off six
hundred miles inland from mcmurdough. We watched the plane turn
into a little speck in the distance, and we started
to our field site. Pretty soon the wind came up,
a thick fog developed, and all of a sudden I
realized we were walking over our own tracks. We were

(04:25):
walking in circles. We shut it down, put up the
emergency tents, and we sat there for two and a
half days. I'd say the wind was easily fifty knots
and making it even more difficult out on the ice.
It's tough to judge distances. Del Mayer said, you look
at something and you think, oh, that's maybe four miles away.
Eight hours later, you're only halfway there. There's no reference

(04:49):
for distance out there. All of this is part of
why scientists who arrive in an Arctica must undergo survival training.
Survival schools teach them skills like how to build shelter
out of ice and snow. Perhaps most strangely, though, there
are no smells there. With the exception of the other humans,
you're almost constantly around almost nothing on Antarctica smells throughout

(05:14):
most of the continent. There are no plants or animals
to stink up the place. Baseman said, when you're coming
back on the plane from McMurdo to New Zealand, about
three quarters of the way back, you can start smelling plants.
Your sense of smell is so desensitized that the smell
of pollen in the air just washes over you. It's incredible.

(05:39):
Today's episode was written by Jescelyn Shields and produced by
Tyler Lang. For more on this and lots of other
cool topics, visit how Stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff
is production of I Heart Radio for more podcasts my
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