Antarctic diary - 4 May 2005

23 year old biologist Dan Smale is spending his second winter at British Antarctic Survey's Rothera Research Station on the Antarctic Peninsula. Read the latest entries in Dan's online diary, exclusive to Flipside Extra!

4 May 2005
The weather has been incredibly kind during early May, with temperatures around -10 degrees C and very calm days with some beautiful sunshine. The sun rises at around 10am and sets around 4pm, leaving plenty of workable daylight for diving and boating. The biggest problem for us right now is the formation of winter sea-ice. Seawater freezes at -1.8 degrees C and so, with much colder air temperatures, the surface of the sea is rapidly forming fast ice. These conditions prove very difficult for fieldwork because there is no open water for boating and the ice is not yet solid enough to walk or skidoo across it. Hopefully the sea-ice will thicken up and we can start to cut diving holes and conduct our work through the ice.

Despite these problems we have managed to do some boating and diving of late; 2 sets of water samples were collected last week and 3 essential dives were completed. No such luck today however, as the sea ice is impenetrable by boat. We hope to make the first steps onto the ice later this week... I'll keep you posted. So time was spent in the labs today, preparing lots of experimental markers for forthcoming work.

Exercise at Rothera has become something of a social event this winter, and regular group sessions in the gym and occasional games of volleyball in the aircraft hangar are great for both morale and fitness. Today, six of us completed a strenuous circuit session before dinner and felt fairly pleased with ourselves once the pain had stopped! Dinner was followed by the traditional midweek movie and as each base member gets to pick a film for the rest of the group to watch the films can range from action to comedy to well, plainly bizarre! Thankfully, we were treated to an episode of the comedy Little Britain and a first viewing of Layer Cake - top stuff.