Report 1 February - Team B on board Pelagic at Bellingshausen Base - King George Island

Monday February 1st 23.55pm

Sunshine in the morning,13°, temperatures dropping in the afternoon to 0° with loads of clouds and fog coming in. This evening Colonel Konstantin, the Russian base commander, came to Pelagic and we had a meal together. He is a most colourful man, who has been working variously as a military doctor in Afghanistan, as a medical researcher for a cosmonaut program and now as chief of Bellingshausen Base. Later this year, he will go to Geneva to take up a position with the Red Cross. These are only a few of the things he has done.

Whilst at the base we saw how warm a person he is, hugging all visitors that come by and kissing the hands of the ladies! He has wonderful stories to tell about his family in Russia. His ancestors all travelled around the world and some were reknowned singers. He has promised to teach us some Russian songs tomorrow. His favorite slogan is 'no problems, no problems, be happy'. He does everything to make our work easier and it is just great to have a host like him. When you see Doctor Konstantin smiling, you cannot help but smile along.

After dinner, we had a very useful team meeting to discuss what else we want to do here. We reckon we need two more days to do extra interviews, filming and photography. So on Thursday, weather permitting, we will be off further south, to other parts of the Antarctic Peninsula including Deception Island.

Today Heather went up into the hills with Hans-Ulrich Peter, a scientist from Jena University in Germany. He has been working on ornithological (bird life) research on King George Island over a period of 15 years. He is very passionate about his work and eager to show all the interesting things about bird life on the island. Heather saw several brown skua chicks while on the walk. Adult brown skuas resemble large chickens, the young chicks have brown mottled downy feathers and the ones sighted today were as big as blackbirds. Heather was amazed at her incredible luck to observe a skua chick start it's struggle for survival by fighting it's way out of it's egg.

Skua

According to Hans, the human impact on the bird life of the island is extensive. More and more airplanes are coming to the island, either to land on the small airstrip or just cruise around for sight-seeing trips. These jets are flying above penguin colonies to let tourists take a look at them. In the area around the airbase the number of breeding pairs of storm petrels has dropped from 140 10-15 years ago to zero this year. In other places they have found birds that became ill or even died because people fed them with food leftovers from the bases. It seems that many regulations from the Antarctic Environmental Protocol are not well known yet. Hans- Ulrich reckons much more needs to be done in the field of education. He and the other ornithologists on the island did some lectures for base personnel and helicopter pilots to teach them about wildlife and their breeding and feeding places. After that they really did their best to avoid disturbing animals. It seems many people have good intentions, but are just unaware of the problems they are causing.

Another very interesting part of the day was our visit to the Chilean base, next to the Russian one. Adrian did his ambassadorial role, meeting with the Chilean base-commander. Although these are sensitive times for Britain and Chile, both men understood each other coming from military stock and 'broke the ice together'. This opened the door for a tour of the base by the resident doctor whilst Adrian and Commander Klock discussed life in Antarctica. It was exciting to hear that there is a school with an Internet-connection at the base. Tomorrow or the day after we are going to meet the teachers who are due to return from their holidays very soon now, to see what connection could be made to the Mission Antarctica-site. The Chilean base is very modern and there are many people living there. There will be 22 children in the school when the summer holidays are over. The base has even got a little church, a post-office and a shop, things you would not expect on Antarctica. We hope to send some digital photographs of this area to you soon.

Heather Prodger - Standard Life and Kirsten Kuipers