DIÁRIOS DE CAMPANHA PROPOLAR 2017-18 |
Sara Ramos, Argentina, 11 March 2018 As any other, this story is about to get its final. On Sunday 4th March, we left Primavera on board of the Argentinian military ship “Canal Beagle”. The best things I’ve learned from Primavera is to coexist in harmony with the different fauna one can find here, to live so close with so different people and of course, to dance Quarteto, the most typical Argentinian dance. The worse part of any journey is packing everything to come back. The logistics to close out the base were especially hard, as the place needed to be completely emptied and clean before being close for the winter. Therefore, we had to join the party of packing all the stuff used to work and survive during the whole the Argentinian campaign: hundreds of equipment, 3 months rubbish, tones of non-consumed food, boat engines, empty gas and oil barrels and so on. Moreover, the pick-up work gets even harder when it comes to the Cierva Point environment. The icebergs, the slippery ground and the curious leopard seals poking around do not help in the boat charging process. After leaving Primavera, we were supposed to stay in the “Canal Beagle” about 5 days until it will drop us in King George Island, where our flight was scheduled to leave Antarctica on 9th March. However, schedules in Antarctica are never definitive and dates and plans use to change in matter of hours due to weather conditions and logistic issues. As per usual, the flight was finally cancelled and it was delayed for 4 days, so we stayed on-board almost 10 days. I confess I’ve learned few things about patience while staying at this ship. When you are on-board, you just can try to keep calm and find a creative way for spending the infinite time in a non-wifi place until the longed plane come to pick you up. Sometimes the situation gets a bit stressful as you must share your life in so tiny areas with another 160 people, so intimacy and lone moments are payed so expensive here. However, not everything is that bad, at the end of the day you realize you have exponentially enriched your cinematic knowledge as you have watched more movies in these 10 days than previously in your life. In addition, you end up knowing much better your colleagues, as you have had long and extended conversations with them. While our stay on the ship, we at least had the opportunity of step on land for few hours and visit Carlini, another Argentinian Antarctic base. People in here were so welcoming and I had the opportunity of try my first and last Argentinian “asado” in outdoors Antarctic style. On March 12th, the Hercules Argentinian plane finally came to pick us up in King George Island and lift us to Rio Gallegos (Argentina). This “Lockheed C-130 Hercules” plane is the main tactical airlifter for many military forces worldwide. It consist in a four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft capable of using unprepared runways for takeoffs and landings making it a good option for supporting the scientific research in Antarctica.
Being inside of this plane while flying is such an experience. It feels like being a soldier in a typical 2nd world war movie. The safety is quite rudimentary, the seats are constitute by belt nets to optimize the space, the cabin is not soundproof so you’d better grab some headphones to stand the deafening continuous noise, finally, the minimal pressurization system makes you strongly feel your body depressing while lifting. Despite of this, flying in such an old school plane is something that I loved to experiment and I’ll keep it on my records. Once landed in Rio Gallegos, everyone split to different destinations and then it becomes the saddest moment, the moment to say good-bye to all the amazing people with who I’ve been living during the past weeks. Despite we insist on this non being a good bye, but a see you soon, we know we are all people from different countries and is gonna be difficult to have the opportunity of meeting again. After a night over in Rio Gallegos, I travel to Punta Arenas (Chile) from where I will take my flight back to Spain on March 18th. Here, I am currently spending some days getting used again to the city life, the crowd, the cars, the commerce and the money. I hope this help to carry out a progressive adaptation back to “the real world”.
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Sara Ramos e Gabriel Goyanes, Base argentina Primavera, Antártica The last week I’ve lived the most exciting and, at the same time frightening, experiences here so far. I have really experienced the Antarctic thrill that runs through your body when you become aware of the risks and dangers that Antarctica entails. On January 25th we arrived to our last Antarctic spot “Cierva Point”, in the continental Antarctic Peninsula on-board of our old friend “The Hespérides”. In Cierva Point we would spend a week in the military commanded Argentinian “Primavera Base”. The landing manoeuvres to reach this place on the very first day were anything but easy and I must confess I experimented one of my biggest adrenaline discharge ever. From the boat, we got in the zodiac that drove us about 2km to the shore passing through the middle of huge icebergs and extremely dense brush. One hour and a half of inaccessible conditions, plus a water way coming into the boat due to an ice crash and a leopard seal chasing our boat almost all the way through, obligated us to suspend the first attempt of getting the shore. A second attempt few hours later with slightly better conditions finally allowed us to landing in the Southern beach of the base where our Argentinian fellows where waiting to receive us. At the first glance, this place is impressive, a small ice-free area where the lovely Primavera Base stands at the bottom of a hill surrounded by water and huge neighbour glaciers. This place is rarely green to be here in Antarctica, the relatively often-sunny weather and a soil rich in substrate and water in the area allow different kinds of vegetation to grow, such as mosses, lichens and gramineas. Moreover, this place constitutes a paradise for penguins, who chose this place as the safest to nest, rise and teach the youngest ones to hunt and get ready to survive during the incoming cold conditions of the winter, when they will emigrate to somewhere else searching for warmer conditions. Not only the penguins make themselves at home in Cirva Point, this place is rich on other different kinds of fauna; leopard seals, whales, orcas, and different birds live as well in the neighbourhood. Looking at the sights of this place on a sunny day, everyone would consider it as one of the most beautiful places on Earth, as my colleague and friend Marc Oliva said me once “we must have done something good in this life to be that lucky to be here”. The week in here passed quickly and we didn’t stop working a minute, the biggest aim in this place was to perform as many drone flights as we could in order to cover the maximum area to create a good map through the drone images after processing them. The mission was almost accomplished until, during the very last performance, the drone just faded away in the cloudy sky disappearing from our sight during enough time to figure out that something was gone wrong and it had fallen. We rushed ourselves up in a firstly unsuccessful search for the accidental drone by the shore cliffs. Minutes later, I fixed my view in a small iceberg about 20m from the shore that seemed to have an uncommon scar on the top; after checking it twice with binoculars, we could not believe we were seeing our drone on it. Despite of the unlucky falling, it had been lucky enough to land in the tiny iceberg instead of in the immensity of the water. Chances to recover the drone and uppermost, its memory card, were almost none if it wouldn’t be thanks to the Pelagic crew, who courageously came crossing the Drake in a sailing boat to record some content for documentary purposes and helped us to pick our drone climbing up in the iceberg. This week has been a bit more stressful than usual because of the unlucky events. Moreover, at the end of the week we received extremely shocking news from The Hesperides ship where we had been travelling few days ago. It seems like one of the Spanish military researches on-board accidentally fell off the boat to the freezing water few miles away. It was already too late when the crew from Hespérides found the death body six hours later. In these Antarctic waters, an exposed person would just stand alive about 5min in the extremely cold water until getting hypothermia. My most sincere condolences to Javier Montojo’s family, I hope this sad event helps to create awareness about the real dangers that this remote place entails.
Pedro Mendes, 22 Fevereiro 2017, Ilha Antártica de King George ![]() Olá, o meu nome é Pedro Mendes, sou aluno de mestrado em engenharia geológica na Universidade de Évora. Faço parte do projeto Hydrotomo juntamente com o professor António Correia (investigador principal) do departamento de Física da Universidade de Évora. Este projeto consiste, basicamente, no estudo geoeléctrico do permafrost e da camada activa e da sua possível influência na evolução de ecossistemas junto à Base Antárctica Coreana e à Base Antárctica Peruana, Ilha Rei Jorge, Antártida Marítima. Eu fiquei responsável pelos trabalhos desenvolvidos na Península de Barton (em cooperação com o programa polar Coreano) e o Prof. António Correia com a parte do projeto realizado na Baía do Almirantado (em colaboração com o programa polar Peruano). É a minha primeira missão na Antártida e, apesar de cansativo, está a ser uma experiência a todos os níveis fantástica. Ter o privilégio de poder trabalhar num “mundo encantado” como este é verdadeiramente enriquecedor e único. Tenho estado a trabalhar com dois investigadores coreanos (alunos de doutoramento em geofísica), o Kwan Soo e o Ju. Assim que o tempo permite caminhamos cerca de 1 hora até ao nosso local de estudo, um caminho duro com subidas e descidas, zonas pedregosas, lamacentas e com neve, mas com uma paisagem deslumbrante que transforma todas as dificuldades em pequenos e insignificantes pormenores. O nosso dia de trabalho começa com partida para o local às 9 horas e regressamos à estação coreana King Sejong por volta das 18 horas. O trabalho está a correr muito bem, estamos a conseguir bons resultados nas tomografias eléctricas e devemos cumprir os objetivos a que nos propusemos. Agora, já na reta final, é preparar tudo para a nossa partida e levar a Antártida no coração com o desejo de um dia poder voltar. Sara Ramos, 21 Fevereiro 2018, Ilha Livigston Fourth week down here couldn’t be better. Last Thursday 15th Feb we said bye to our bulgarian fellows and moved to the neighbour Spanish base Juan Carlos I, located about 20min by zodiac from our previous cosy bulgarian camp. Here we are lucky to be staying in brand new building, that was recently refurbished. Nowadays this place seems quite different than it used to be and now up to 50 people can sleep, eat, work and chill mainly in the same big building. The confort here is guaranteed and some refer this place as the “Antarctic Hotel”. This week we had time to finish all the tasks scheduled on our plan and still had such a nice experiences exploring the area around. First works on field consisted in flying a Phantom drone over the area covering the base in order to create cartography and digitl elevation models using the aerial photographies. As soon as the weather conditions were good enough, we finally managed to go to “Glaciar Rocoso”, an infrequent rock glacier here which movements towards the coast needs to be annually monitored in order to figure out the progressive terrain deformations. There, we annually measure the GPS position of different sticks stacked in the rocky ground. These sticks work as reference points that allow calculating the progression of the glacier through time. Sundays in the Spanish base are free days, so last sunny Sunday we made the most of the time exploring the glacier over the Jonshons’s Bay with the support of Mike and David, the expert “mountaineers” in the area. Walking here is risky as the massive accumulation of ice ends up in the cracking of the whole freeze structure generating crevasses that go from few centimetres to several meters thick and their deepness increase when approximating to the sea. To avoid falling in these dangerous crevasses, the use of crampons and walking in teams secured by ropes is a must. The sight one’s sees from the inside of a glacier was something non-expectable for me at all, something alike a scarped and freeze dessert. However, I consider this as one of my best experiences in the mountain so far. Finally, to put the icing on the cake, we were fortunate presence the most magnificent sun eclipses I’ve ever seen in the right moment and from the right place, as this eclipse was just blurry from the North Hemisphere but clearly viewed from the Antarctic Peninsula. Today is Wednesday 21st and our time with the Spaniards is over. Tomorrow we are expecting to get on board of “The Hespérides” once more to leave the island and head Cierva Cove, in the Antarctic continent, where the Argentinians will host us in their beautiful “Primavera Base”. Pedro Quinteiro, Punta Arenas-Chile. 22-02-2018 A viagem foi longa. Muito longa, com quase 30 horas de voos e ligações. A noção de quanto é que realmente nós voámos só ficou real quando olhámos para um mapa-mundo e vimos onde estávamos no dia anterior e onde estamos agora. Sobrevoar os Andes foi impressionante. Chegámos a Punta Arenas mais cansados do que entusiasmados. Mas agora que o cansaço da viagem começa a desaparecer e o dia previsto para a travessia se aproxima, o entusiasmo regressa. Temos dividido o nosso tempo entre passear por Punta Arenas com a Joana Pereira, a Ruth Pereira, e o Guilherme Jeremias, e a trabalhar no nosso projeto. Há sempre coisas que ficam por decidir e que só algumas horas de conversa e reflexão cara-a-cara conseguem ajudar a resolver. A presença Portuguesa na cidade é interessante, com a estátua do Fernão de Magalhães a ocupar um lugar de grande destaque mesmo em frente ao Instituto Antártico Chileno. Amanhã vamos tentar fechar os últimos detalhes e visitar o centro cultural da cidade. Estamos desejosos de chegar à Antárctica.
Pedro Pina, base King Sejong, Antártida, 17 de Fevereiro de 2018 As fantásticas condições da base King Sejong tornam a nossa estadia na Antártida ainda mais agradável. Já tinha falado num post anterior do novo edifício da base que viemos estrear, onde ficam os quartos para cerca de 60 pessoas, e também os seus vários laboratórios, mas ainda faltava falar de algo muito invulgar nas bases antárticas. Quase todos os módulos mais antigos da base, inaugurada em 1988, foram desmontados com a construção do novo edifício. Mas houve um que resistiu, qual aldeia gaulesa, sendo aproveitado para um pequeno mas muito interessante museu que descreve a história da base King Sejong mas sobretudo as actividades e colaborações científicas da Coreia do Sul e do KOPRI-Instituto Polar Coreano nas regiões polares. E visitando o museu, fica muita clara a estratégia de longo-prazo que conceberam e que têm vindo a implementar ao longo dos anos de uma forma muito sólida e já com alguns marcos significativos: 2 bases na Antártida, 1 base no Ártico, 1 navio polar. Que é reforçada pela crescente colaboração internacional em várias áreas científicas e em que Portugal, através do PROPOLAR, ocupa um lugar de destaque, tal como pude verificar num dos painéis do museu. Também apanhámos (ou fomos apanhados pel’…) o Ano Novo Coreano, de 14 para 15 de Fevereiro. Todos os 8 não coreanos que aqui estão (de nacionalidades portuguesa, norte-americana, brasileira e chilena) participaram nas suas tradições, cozinhando em conjunto na véspera de Ano Novo várias comidas para o dia seguinte. Mas não só cozinhamos como fomos provando um pouco de tudo o que ia estando pronto. Uma excelente tarde! Por fim, e no dia de Ano Novo Coreano, em que todos ficámos descontraidamente na base, ainda deu para ver um eclipse parcial do Sol. Não deu para ver logo logo, pois não estávamos preparados para olhar directamente para ele. Mas assim que construímos uns filtros, com o devido apoio clínico da Hanna, a médica da base, deu para ver que faltava mesmo um bocado ao Sol… E os filtros que serviram para os nossos olhos também se adaptaram às máquinas fotográficas e telemóveis, pois então. O nosso segundo ano novo em mês e meio, não podia ter começado melhor! Sara Ramos, Ilha Antártica de Livingston, 15 Fevereiro 2018 We are in the second week in this remote place and the weather is not blessing us with the best conditions. Cold winds, stormy snowfall and heavy rains are hitting the Island these days. We are living some of the hardest days working outside and many days we feel obligated to stay in the base processing data and doing some PC works. Despite of that, we are making the most of the better days to finish the most important works around. At the beginning of the week, we came back to Reina Sofía Peak, this time accompanied by two of our base colleagues: Nuno and Lucy. Here we managed to fix some of the damaged equipment installed and we showed our colleagues a new territory for them in this Island. At the end of the week, we are anxious to have a light windy day so we can test our last technology drone to fly over the area taking pictures that would be later used to create Digital Elevation Models. We find handling this drone more tendentious that we expected, as it needs to be perfectly programed in order to take in account many facts that could interfere in the performance of the flight. After several attempts, we managed to fly it for a couple of minutes, despite it was not a total successful flight due to different technical problems. When the weather doesn’t make possible working outside, it is a good time for learning a bit more about our colleagues’ projects here, so this week we planned that every team prepares a presentation to explain its project to the rest. This week, we lost one of the members of the team, as the time of Miguel here was schedule to finish at 9th of February, when he shipped himself on-board of “The Hesperides” heading back home. Despite of the odds we have managed to finish almost all the work around the Bulgarian Base and we are planning to move to the Spanish Base for the next week. From there, it will be easier to keep working in monitoring points located in farther away areas from here. Meanwhile, spending our last days in here, we make the most of the free time helping our colleagues with their tasks, exploring the place riding the Ski-Doos or learning a bit more about the magnificent fauna that one can find out here. Sandra Heleno, base King Sejong, Antártida, 13 de Fevereiro de 201 ![]() Nunca vamos desacompanhados, eu e o Pedro, nas nossas caminhadas na península de Barton. A presença mais constante é a das skuas (ou moleiro antárctico, no português). Normalmente amigáveis e curiosas, transformam-se em verdadeiras “guerreiras” se inadvertidamente nos aproximamos dos seus ninhos, “atacando” em voos picados e persistentes. Também impressionante, apesar do seu pequeno tamanho, é a investida das andorinhas do árctico, não só pelo piar estridente, mas porque não largam o alvo (nós!) durante largos minutos. Estas pequeninas aves, com pouco mais de 100 gr, voam dezenas de milhares de quilómetros na sua migração anual entre o Árctico e a Antárctida. Não admira que defendam ferozmente os seus ninhos: atacam frequentemente as skuas, de muito maior envergadura, e são as únicas aves que se aproximam do nosso drone em voo. Nas praias, o companheiro mais fiel é naturalmente o pinguim. Aqui em Barton podemos encontrar o “gentio” e o “pinguim de barbicha”. Os mais jovens são muito curiosos e sociáveis! Parecem muito interessados em nós e nas nossas actividades, chegando a correr em grupo na nossa direcção! O petrel-gigante é outra ave marinha que avistamos com alguma frequência, normalmente em voo nas zonas próximas do mar. Por vezes encontramos ninhos de petrel no nosso caminho, com crias ainda muito pequeninas. Na nossa experiência o petrel-gigante é um animal calmo: reservado, mas não assustadiço. Mais raro é o avistamento da pomba-antárctica: vimos um casal de pombas uma vez somente, na praia, e para nossa surpresa vieram a caminhar atrás de nós depois da “sessão de fotografia”! Mais uma ave sociável de Barton! Pedro Pina, Base King Sejong, Península Barton, Antártida, 10 de Fevereiro de 2018 Nalguns dias, ou de pior tempo ou depois de fazermos os nossos voos, foi possível procurar alguns sensores que tínhamos combinado recolher e que o nosso colega João Branco do IGOT cá tinha instalado numa campanha anterior, em 2015, para monitorizar temperaturas do ar e do solo. Por vezes não encontramos logo o sensor que está ligeiramente enterrado porque, apesar de termos as suas coordenadas GPS a sua precisão é métrica, e a estaca de cor berrante que supostamente estaria próxima a marcar a sua localização se encontra solta e a uns bons metros de distância do ‘X’ digital. Mas com alguma paciência, e picando o solo, acabamos por ouvir a chapa metálica que protege o sensor. Eureka!
É normalmente no regresso à base, sentindo-me mais leve (ou aliviado…) se o dia de trabalho correu bem, apesar de carregado de mais uns milhares de novas imagens dos voos, que mais me apetece fotografar. É que não me canso de apanhar as fantásticas paisagens, os animais ou pormenores da vegetação, dos solos ou da neve e do gelo. Há também alguns blocos de rocha fracturados, bem granditos, que para além da sua dimensão se tornam muito interessantes para ser fotografados de vários ângulos. É que depois pode ser reconstruido a partir das fotos num detalhado modelo 3D usando os mesmos algoritmos que utilizamos para elaborar os mosaicos dos voos do drone! Miguel RAMOS en navegación a bordo del BIO Hespérides por el mar de Drake a 10 de febrero de 2018. ![]() El 31 de enero de 2018, viajamos el equipo de investigación, formado por Gabriel, Sara y Miguel, del aeropuerto de Punta Arenas con destino a la isla antártica de Rey Jorge en el vuelo fletado por el programa portugués de investigación polar PROPOLAR. El viaje fue cómodo y rápido, mucho mejor que la clásica travesía del pasaje Drake en buque, desde donde escribo esta entrada al final de mi etapa, breve pero intensa, de trabajo. Me encuentro en el mar de Drake a borde del BIO Hespérides buque insignia de la investigación polar española, cuando sólo han pasado apenas 14 días de mi llegada a la base antártica Búlgara (BAB) (isla Livingston) con mis dos fantásticos compañeros de trabajo Sara y Gabriel con los que compartiría unos días de ciencia y convivencia con los otros equipos de investigación con los que nos encontramos en la BAB (isla Livingston). La primera impresión al desembarcar fue que el deshielo este año había sido muy intenso, dejando parte del terrenos ganado por el glaciar en los últimos 10 a 12 años al descubierto, con la aparición de generadores y pequeñas estructuras que la inmensa lengua blanca de hielo había engullido, poco a poco, en su avance. La acogida por el jefe de la BAB, Jordan, y su equipo fue, como de habitual, tremendamente afectiva dándonos todo su apoyo para la realización de las actividades de investigación propuestas. El trabajo lo realizamos de forma coordinada con Miro, joven ingeniero Búlgaro voluntario que nos procuraba el transporte del material pesado en una de las motos de nieve y además tomaba una excelentes fotografías con su equipo profesional. Comenzamos por la calibración de los instrumentos de medida de temperaturas, este año formados por unas novedosas cadenas con conexión inalámbrica que nos permitirán en el futuro, durante al menos tres años, volcar los datos sin extraer las sondas y por lo tanto sin interrumpir el régimen térmico establecido en el suelo. Con los instrumentos calibrados, realizamos la reposición de los sensores en las perforaciones, estaciones meteorológicas y nivométricas situadas en diferentes altitudes y orientaciones que conforman parte de las estaciones de medida asociadas a los protocolos internacionales CALM y TSP. Otra de las actividades consistió en la medida de la posición de los puntos de control en diferentes experiencias de movimiento de laderas por procesos de solifluxión mediante GPS diferencial. La visita a las estaciones posicionadas en las zonas más elevadas de la zona Monte reina Sofía, donde se sitúan los sondeos más profundos, entre 15 y 25 metros, en las proximidades de la Base Antártica Española (BAE), con una visita breve a sus nuevas instalaciones, dieron por concluido mi trabajo. Sara y Gabriel continúan desarrollando el proyecto enfocado al estudio térmico del permafrost, y dirigido por el profesor Gonzalo Vieira, con una breve estancia en la BAE y su posterior traslado a la Base Argentina Primavera, situada en la península antártica en bahía Cierva, hasta principios de marzo, buena continuación de campaña para ellos, magnifico final para mí. Un abrazo Antártico para todos los compañeros que hemos encontrado por el camino y que han colaborado para que nuestro proyecto colaborativo entre Portugal y España continúe con éxito. Así como a las instituciones Portuguesas y Españolas como PROPOLAR y programa polar Español que han financiado y apoyado esta actividad. |
DIÁRIOS DA CAMPANHA
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