Blogs

Despite tight connections we managed to get our self and all out luggage to Cape Town. After a day of summer in South Africa we boarded the Antarctica flight this morning and are now at Troll, the Norwegian research station in Antarctica.

If you want to make new friends at airport, pack your things in a aluminium box! Nothing Seems to draw so much attention as little dented expedition box - everybody wants it to be opened.

Dronning Maud Land is one of the least studied regions of Antarctica in terms of variations in ice sheet thickness and dynamics. There are plenty of potential study sites in the mountain ranges, whose peaks are sticking up through the ice sheet 200–300 km from the coast.

We've had busy weeks in the Amundsen Sea, some days with work around the clock, but now it's finally time for a new blog post.

Our stay at Carlini station is coming to an end. We have completed our second experiment in the lab and started packing our equipment and samples to make room for other researchers.

The field season in eastern Antarctica is coming to an end and it is time to return to the Mario Zucchelli Station.

Photos from the fieldwork at Helliwell Hills, Antarctica.

One of our missions was to pick up a couple of submerged moorings, which have been measuring various parameters during the two years since we were here the last time. But we have had some setbacks on board.

When you work in Antarctica you often face problems that you might not come across in many other research projects. For example, you must take extreme care when you pack your equipment as it can take months to get new equipment – everything from fresh batteries to spare parts for measuring instruments.

We have been on our way for a week now and have started to get into the routines on board. We have entered the ice and saw the first icebergs.

In recent weeks, the diving team have spent a lot of time in the water. We have just finished a project run by colleagues from Ghent University, where we study the effect of the glacier's retreat on biological processes at the sea floor.

On New Year's Day, we moved from the Italica to the Mario Zucchelli Station. The station is a modern research facility with nice rooms, high comfort and quite ample space for about 80 people.

Today, we finally arrived at Mario Zucchelli Station at Terra Nova Bay. It has been a long journey to Antarctica – 14 days on board the Italica and 20 days since my departure from Stockholm!

You couldn't dream about a whiter Christmas than the one we had in Antarctica. In recent days we have experienced snowstorms as well as sunshine.

We have been on board for six days and yesterday we arrived at 60 degrees south. And we've travelled all this way without storms or terrible waves! Instead we've had sun and blue skies – almost like being on a Mediterranean cruise.

Today is the longest day of the year. Unfortunately, there is not too many flowers to decorate the maypole with and noone else on the Argentine base seems to have heard of The little frogs. Sampling in the field interspersed with experiments in the lab.

I don’t know why, but it seems like you always have to be patient when going to Antarctica... We were supposed to embark this Sunday and leave Lyttelton on Monday, but our vessel MV Italica is delayed.

It's been 14 days since we left Gothenburg, but now we have finally arrived at the Argentine research station Carlini where we'll spend the next ten weeks.

Det är nu två veckor sedan vi lämnade Sverige, och vi har ännu inte riktigt nått hela vägen fram till vår slutdestination – den argentinska forskningsstationen Carlini.

Vi påbörjade vår resa mot forskningsstationen Carlini på King George Island för ungefär en vecka sedan. Att ta sig till Antarktis är en spännande upplevelse som tar tid, och innefattar ofta förseningar, så man måste ha ganska mycket tålamod.