8 March 2012 Arctowski

I enjoyed our tour of Arctowski, a Polish scientific research station on King George Island yesterday.

The people stationed there were friendly and welcoming and had the coffee tables loaded with jam-filled cookies, chocolate, nuts and other goodies. We had coffee and tea together, talked a bit and then headed back to the LMG. I was impressed by how cozy and warm the facility felt. Between the hard wood floors, the wood paneling on the walls and artwork throughout the building, it felt more like someone’s home than a research facility. The station holds 15 people in the summer and from what I could glean by the person I spoke to, most of the research done there involves marine mammals and penguins.

The seven people staying over the winter are facilities managers, not scientists. They know the four American scientists we picked up from Copa quite well and were saying goodbye for the winter. Arctowski is less than a mile from the Copa field camp, and the Polish researchers have a good relationship with the American scientists dating back to the 1970’s. I thought a lot about the Antarctic Treaty while I sat sipping my coffee in Arctowski; I’ll write more on that tomorrow. It’s a fascinating piece of Antarctica’s history.

As we were leaving King George Island we passed the Brazilian station that experienced a fire and explosion a week ago. Tragically, two people were killed in the fire and several others were badly burned. Passing by the deserted station was somber and the people I was standing with on the deck of the LMG shared a moment of silence.