The long journey begins

Turns out, after 4 months in South Western England, the weather is actually quite nice. As in it’s not raining and the temperature varies between 13-15 °C, which doesn’t sound like much but it’s resulted in a large proportion of the population displaying their pale legs wearing shorts (including me). And what do I do? I’m on a train station heading to Antarctica. It’s the beginning of winter down there folks!

Being the only member of a crew non-US based, I have to comply with extra quarantine. But that’s only 4 extra days . Everyone else will join me at a hotel in San Francisco where we will start our first quarantine. Then we’ll fly to Chile where we’ll be in yet another quarantine for two weeks before we sail to Antarctica to play with seals.

Why so worried about COVID 19, you ask? Well, Antarctica is free of covid and we are doing every possible effort to keep it that way. So yes, during the next 3-4 weeks I’ll spend a lot of time by myself locked in a hotel room, but that’s just a minor inconvenience for the amazing opportunity that we are about to have.

Why are we going to Antarctica? We are heading “to the ice” to investigate the impact of climate change on the ecology and physiology of crabeater seals, the most abundant species of seal in the world and a highly specialized predator of Antarctic krill.

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Turns out, flying light is not a concept I’m familiar with. Although this time I’m bringing a lot of gear and instruments for our field season