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This week, at a ceremony in Fleurus, Belgium, Komatsu Europe International presented the International Polar Foundation with a state of the art HB215LC-1 hybrid excavator, which will go into use support polar science at Princess Elisabeth Antarctica.

The excavator was handed over to Vice President of the International Polar Foundation Nighat Amin, and Executive Director Andreas Wagner by Komatsu Europe CEO and Managing Director, Keiko Fujiwara at the headquarters of BIA, Belgium’s official distributor for Komatsu.

The Komatsu HB215LC-1 is a second generation hybrid machine, boasting an average of 25% less fuel consumption and CO2 emissions than a traditional excavator. The HB215LC-1 channels kinetic energy from the braking created bythe turning motion of the exavator's body directly into energy that is used for operating the machine, instead of storing it in batteries.  This means that that HB215LC-1 consumes much less energy than an convention excavator - 25% less, in fact.  For such large machines this is a considerable saving, and the HB215LC-1 delivers best performance of any hybrid excavator on the market. At Princess Elisabeth Antarctica, which is a zero emission, wind and solar-powered polar research station; it’s only natural that we should make the move towards vehicles that leave a light environmental footprint on the environment. We're proud that Komatsu recognises the importance of our work in Antarctica, and the value of maintaining strong and professional public private partnerships. 

On Monday December, 2nd, the HB215LC-1 was loaded on board the Mary Arctica in the port of Zeebrugge for the long voyage south to Antarctica. It’s due to arrive around January 15th - then the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica team will take over responsibility for bringing the excavator on the long 240km trek from the coast to the station, where it will be used for clearing ice and snow and for construction work.

The summer of 2019 passed so quickly. It seems like only yesterday that the BELARE team packed up their gear and prepared the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica research station for overwintering.

But now it’s time to turn our attention once again to Earth’s southernmost continent as we follow the adventures of the 2019-2020 Belgian Antarctic Research Expedition (BELARE).

We’ll be posting more news stories, videos, and photo galleries during the Antarcdtic season this year. In order to be able to give the general public greater access to what happens at the station, we’ve decided to put all of this on the website dedicated to the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica.

There will be regular updates about the goings on at the station and about the important scientific research projects that take place there. Make sure to check it out!

On the evening of 5 November, the first 12 members of the station team (including team leader Alain Hubert, field guides, engineers, mechanics, a doctor, and a cook) arrived at the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica research station to officially start the 2019-2020 Belgian Antarctic Research Expedition (BELARE)season. They wasted no time in getting the station up and running!

Fully charged

The BELARE team was happy to find the battery packs that collect renewable wind and solar energy were fully charged and ready to power the station.  The team was able to get to work getting everything ready for the austral summer research season.

The first tasks consisted of getting the station’s water treatment system started up, checking the scientific instruments that have been collecting data over the winter, and getting the vehicles and equipment ready for use in the field.

Amazingly, within three hours, all of the vehicles at the Winter Park were started up and taken out of the hangar that was built to protect them over the winter. It was certainly worth the time spent building the wooden structure! Before the protective hangar was built, it could take them up to a week to dig all the snow away from the equipment and get them all started up.

The lead team won’t be alone for long, as they will soon be joined by 8 more on 13 November to help them prepare for the arrival of the first sicentists about a week later!

We’ll keep you updated on the latest actives of the BELARE team as they come in!

The International Polar Foundation and its Arctic Futures partners are pleased to invite you all to the second annual Arctic Shorts Film evening. The Arctic Shorts night aims to repeat the great success of last-year’s first edition in raising awareness about the Arctic to the general public.

Where and When?

The event will take place on Monday 18 November in Salle M at Brussels' BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts, located at Rue Ravenstein 23, 1000 Brussels. Doors will open at 19.30 and the event will start at 20.00.

What?

The second annual Arctic Shorts film evening is an official side event of this year's Arctic Futures Symposium, organised in cooperation with the Mission of Canada to the EU and many Arctic stakeholder partners. The event also forms part of the BOZAR Nordic Fall programme of events.

Seven films have been chosen from across the Arctic region to explore the fascinating traditions, the cultures, the music and art which make the Arctic one of the most captivating places on Earth. The seven films do not forget to acknowledge the difficulties and the environmental, as well as social and economic, challenges which affect the communities of the Polar regions.

To discover more about the list of the films and the filmmakers who will take part to the panel discussion at the end of the projection, please consult the Arctic Futures Symposium website.

There will also be a Q&A with a few of the filmmakers at the conclusion of the event.

Registrations

Everyone who is interested in attending the screening are required to register via the Eventbrite link created for the event. The Arctic Shorts night is free of charge but please, keep in mind that seats will be allocated on a first-come first-served basis.

Please contact us at events@polarfoundation.org should you have any questions about the event.

Over the last ten seasons, the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica research station has seen a lot more visitors than originally expected. The popularity of the world’s first zero-emission polar research station with the scientific community has been a welcome surprise.

Originally the Princess Elisabeth station was designed to host about 20 scientists and staff at a time. During a few weeks the peak of the 2018-2019 season, the station was hosting nearly 50 people at once! In order to welcome such a large number of guests and handle increased activity around the station, a number of “home improvements” have been undertaken at the station over the last few seasons.

The station is growing

During the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 seasons, an extension to the station was constructed. With 16 new bedrooms, and a double bunk bed in each, this means 32 more beds at the station. And with two additional toilets, an area to store equipment, plus an indoor space to house the snow melter (which makes drinking water at the station), the new annex is certainly a welcome additional comfort. When there are a lot of people at the station, it’s now possible for everyone who wants to sleep in a bed to do so!

However, increased occupancy puts a higher demand on the station’s water treatment system. This is why during the 2018-2019 season, young Belgian engineer Aymar de Lichtervelde worked on improving the efficiency and doubled the capacity of the station’s water treatment system. The system has never worked better!

More people at the station also means a higher demand for that lovely renewable energy that the station produces. This is why Belgian engineer Guus Luppens has been given the task to design ways to increase the station’s energy production and storage capacity. As someone who built his own zero-emission house in Belgium and has lived completely off-grid for three years, he’s the ideal candidate for the job - plus he practices what he preaches!

Making life easier

A big help to all who are working at the station has been the construction of a new hangar at the Winter park 2 km from the station.  The purpose is to shelter vehicles and equipment form the harsh Antarctic climate during overwintering, when the station isn’t occupied. It means a lot less time clearing away snow and more time devoted to helping scientists conduct their research.

There’s always work to be done to keep PEA a great place to do research!

After a hiatus, we would like to welcome back our regular readers to the official website of the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica, the world's first ever zero-emission polar research station. Since we last posted on this website, a lot of world-class science has been undertaken at the station. We’ve put together a quick summary of some of the major research projects that have taken place at the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica and its vicinity during the last few seasons.

Abuzz with scientific fieldwork

The last few seasons have seen their fair share of scientific research expeditions. The Belgian Antarctic Research Expedition (BELARE) team led by the International Polar Foundation has been there the entire time to support scientists. Below is a short summary of many of the incredible scientific projects that have taken place over the last few seasons:

One impressive scientific achievement happend during the MASS2ANT project led by Prof. Jean-Louis Tison at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. His team of researchers has been looking to better understand the mass balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet over time in the Princess Ragnhild Coast in East Antarctica. During the 2018-2019 research season, his team extracted an ice core at a record depth of 260 metres from an ice rise at the coast, about 200 km from the station (normally it’s difficult to drill that deep into an ice shelf). The ice cores are being analysed in Brussels to determine variation in ice mass balance in the region over time.

Meanwhile, the CHASE project has been building a unique database of organic and inorganic particles suspended in the atmosphere and on the snow surface in the vicinity of the Princess Elisabeth station. When researchers from the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (KMI/IRM), Ghent University (UGent), the Universtié Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) or the Vrij Universiteit Brussel (VUB) have not been present at the Princess Elisabeth, station engineer Benoît Verdin has been doing maintenance on the instruments to keep them collecting data.

Researchers from the University of Bern in Switzerland have been trying to reconstruct past ice sheet coverage under the DEAIS project thanks to a technique called cosmic sampling. Knowing how the ice sheet’s coverage has varied in the past can help researchers determine how it might change in the future.

Researchers from Ghent University and the University of Liège have been mapping microbial life in the ice-free areas of the Sør Rondane Mountains near the Princess Elisabeth Station in the MICROBIAN project. During their visits to Antarctica, researchers have been taking samples, installed monitoring equipment and used drones to make high-resolution maps of their study area in the Sør Rondane Mountains close to the station.

The "From Clouds to Ground: Snow Deposition in Extreme Environment" and LOSUMEA projects, led by researchers from the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (SLF) and the CRYOS lab at the Polytechnic School of Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have been investigating the relationship between snow deposition and surface mass balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. They’ve sought to clarify the relationship between precipitation, drifting and blowing snow, and ice formation.

Belgian researchers from the Vrij Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) have been hunting for micrometeorites in Antarctica, as they can offer clues about the formation of the solar system. Antarctica is a great place to look for micrometeorites, as the blue ice fields not far from the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Station preserve them very well and make them easy to detect. A team went to Antarctica during the 2017-2018 season under the BELAM project, and another team plans to return to Antarctica during the 2019-2020 season to look for more meteorites.

The International Polar Foundation's Science Liaison Officer, Henri Robert, has been studying refugia (areas where species have avoid extinction during time of massive climate change) in Antarctica for the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences under the RECTO project. During the 2017-2018 season, Henri focused on monitoring snow petrel populations, detecting and mapping their breeding grounds and taking DNA samples for an overall population comparison, all while disturbing the birds as little as possible.

Continuing his commitment to helping scientists from the Glaciology Laboratory at the University of Grenoble Alpes in France, Team Leader Alain Hubert has continued to take snow depth measurements along a transect between Crown Bay at the coast and Vesthaugen Nunatak not to far from the station.

Baillet-Latour continues to support science

Of course, the bi-annual Ballet Latour Fellowship has continued to fund the research of early career polar scientists.

2016-2018 Fellowship laureate Dr. Lori Ziolkowski, Canadian scientist affiliated with the University of South Carolina in the US, was awarded the prize for the REMACA project, which was estimating the age of carbon and microbial activity in East Antarctica, with the goal to understand past microbial diversity and climate patterns in the region. Her research findings will be able to contribute to any studies about past climate patterns and microbial diversity in East Antarctica

Lori was followed by 2018-2020 laureate Dr. Kate Winter form Northumbria University in the UK for her BioFe project, which is studying the transport of mineral nutrients in sediments from nunataks to the Southern Ocean via the movement of glacial ice. This is important research as the nutrients feed primary producers in hte Southern Ocean such as phytoplankton, which can take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow and sequester this carbon at the bottom of the ocean after they die. Lori’s project was even featured on Bloomberg News!

Instruments continue to collect data

For many ongoing projects, it’s not always necessary to have scientists on-site.

The GEOMAG project has continued to take measurements of Earth’s magnetic field, with new instruments installed during the 2018-2019 season and maintenance done on instruments that researchers from the Royal Observatory of Belgium (KMI / IRM) first installed there during the 2015-2014 season.

For the ACME project (a collaboration between the Belgian Royal Meteorological Institute (KMI / IMR), the International Polar Foundation (IPF), and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research (WSL)), each day during the course of each season, a member of the BELARE team has been releasing a weather balloon with instruments to profile temperature, wind speed, humidity, precipitation, and air pressure as the balloon rises into the atmosphere.

A collaboration between KU Leuven, the Belgian Royal Meteorological Institute (KMI / IMR), and the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB), the AEROCLOUD project has sought to build a database of cloud, precipitation, and aerosol properties near the Princess Elisabeth station.

The ADWA project led by the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB) has been collecting natural very low frequency (VLF) electromagnetic waves (0 - 10 kHz) to pick up “whistler waves” (pulses of low frequency waves in the atmosphere that propagate around Earth’s ionosphere following the planet’s magnetic field lines).

For more than 10 years the GIANT project (managed by the Royal Observatory of Belgium, the University of Luxembourg and the Royal Military Academy of Belgium) has been collecting GPS, gravimetry and seismology data to track both horizontal and vertical deformation of Earth's surface in order to see how changes in ice mass in the Polar Regions contributes to this deformation.

Seismometers at the Princess Elisabeth have also been collecting seismic data for the SEISMO project over the last decade with the aim of obtaining more insight into the planet’s lithosphere and seismic activity in East Antarctica.

Passing through?

The BELARE team has also helped researchers passing through the region on broader scientific missions.

During the 2018-2019 season, BELARE team members helped an international group of researchers taking part in the Beyond EPICA project during their trek to Dome Fuji on the Antarctic Plateau. Beyond EPICA aims to eventually drill an ice core at Dome Fuji, which many scientists hope will contain ice as old as 1.5 million years, which will give clues to Antarctica’s climate dating back that far.

Scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Germany have often used the Princess Elisabeth station as a base to conduct aerial surveys over East Antarctica in AWI’s Polar 6 aircraft. During the 2018-2019 season, AWI scientists took radar profiles of ice along transects at the coast and on the Antarctic Plateau in order to study the thickness and density of both the Antarctica Ice Sheet and ice shelves at the coast.

The work continues

During the current and upcoming seasons, the BELARE team will remain committed to supporting the efforts of researchers working at or in the vicinity of the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica.

Coverage of the 2019-2020 begins soon!

After many interesting editions over the last decade, it is with extreme pleasure that the International Polar Foundation and its many partners from the Arctic community in Brussels wish to invite Arctic stakeholders and members of the general public to the 10th edition of the Arctic Futures Symposium.

The now well-established annual event is an occasion to bring together experts from different disciplines and parts of the Arctic, as well as to explore key topics chosen by Arctic stakeholders.

The Arctic Futures Symposium will take place on Monday 25 November at the Residence Palace in Brussels EU’s Quarter from 9:00 am until 7:00 pm.

Challenges of a new decade

This year, the all-day event will focus on the challenges that will face Arctic stakeholders in the coming decade and solutions to them.

The event will first look at what’s in store for the Arctic Council in the coming years, before looking at safety and security issues in the Arctic, gender concerns in the region, Arctic labour force and demographic trends, and the sustainable Arctic bioeconomy.

All are welcome

All those who are interested in what is happening in the Arctic region - be they politicians, diplomats, civil servants, academics, indigenous peoples, representatives from industries operating in the Arctic, representatives of civil society, teachers, students, or members of the general public, - are welcome to register to the event.

For more details about the symposium, a draft programme, speakers, and information on how to register for the event, please consult the Arctic Futures Symposium website.

Registration is necessary to attend, as we can’t guarantee a seat to those who wish to turn up on the same day as the event.

If you have any additional questions about the event, you are welcome to contact us at events@polarfoundation.org, and we will be happy to get back to you as soon as possible.

We look forward to seeing all of you again in Brussels at the end of November!

The International Polar Foundation’s Science Liaison officer, Henri Robert, was recently featured on the TV show Click Verde, on the NTN24 network based in Columbia.

Henri Robert, a biologist who also works with the Royal Museum of Natural Sciences in Brussels and has spent a few seasons at the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica station, was asked by the show producers to give an expert explanation of the changes taking place on the planet as a result of climate change.

In the interview, Henri Robert explains how sea level rise (which is happening as a result of land ice in the Polar Regions and mountain glaciers melting due to a warmer climate, as well as thermal expansion of the water as it becomes warmer) is creating changes to ecosystems in coastal areas of the planet. These changes are having a profound impact on flora and fauna, many of which humans depend on for food an other resources.

"Ocean warming and acidification is a consequence of climate change. Not only will both thermal expansion and the melting of the polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers significnatly contribute to sea level rise, warmer water temperatures cause dramatic changes in the marine environment, in coastal ecosystems, and on land," Henri Robert explained.

"Ocean acidification triggered by an excess of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations will alter the chemistry of the water. Carbonate ions (CO3- produced by the reaction of dissolved CO2 in water) will be less available for phytoplankton (tiny createres in the ocean that produce a great deal of the oxygen that we breathe) and for organisms like shellfish, bivalves, sea urchins, and other species at the base of the ocean's food chain. Less carbonate ions also means the formation of coral reefs (which support at least 25% of all marine life) is disrupted."

"Global oceanic currents are also closely linked to the climate on Earth (the colder Polar Regions, the presence of ice in the Arctic and Antarctic, and the warmer tropical zone). Global temperature rise is already altering the climate locally. However, together with shifts in ocean currents, the current climatic zones as we know them now will be affected on a large scale."

"All these effects taken together will affect us all - both humans as a species and all the biodiversity around us, on which we depend for food and resources. Ecosystems unable to cope with the changes are already seeing mass extinctions of certian species."

The interview was translated into Spanish for a Latin American TV audience.

Dr. Kate Winter from Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK has been very active in promoting the BioFe (Bioavailable Iron) research project that won her the 2018 - 2020 Baillet Latour Antarctica Fellowship.

Over the summer, Bloomberg News released an interview that they did with the prestigious Fellowship laureate as part of their Tic Toc “Climate Travellers" series. More recently, a colleague of hers at Northumbria Unviersity put together a multimedia news page looking back at her first season in Antarctica.

Climate Travellers

In a video released on Bloomberg's TicToc platform, Dr. Winter explains the research she's conducting for the BioFe project, and how it’s tied to better understanding the biological carbon pump in Antarctica.

The video shows her and her research assistant James Linighan collecting rock samples from nunataks (rocky outcrops) in East Antarctica in the vicinity of the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica (PEA) station during the 2018-2019 season in Antarctica. The purpose of taking rock samples is to to see if there is bioavailble iron in these samples.

As the ice sheet flows out towards the coast, the ice transports these sediments to the Southern Ocean, where the iron in them provides nutrients that feed primary producers such as phytoplankton (tiny creatures at the bottom of the food chain that live in the ocean). The more nutrients phytoplankton receive, the more they grow, and the more carbon dioxide (CO2) they take out of the atmosphere (taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is a necessary step in photosynthesis).

In theory, the more nutrients that the phytoplankton receive, the more carbon dioxide they can take out of the atmosphere, and the slower the planet warms. When the phytoplankton die, they fall to the bottom of the ocean, where the carbon they’ve taken from the atmosphere is sequestered.

Origins of a climate scienst

In a multimedia news page put together by Andrew Paterson, a masters student at Newcastle University, Dr. Winter tells about how her natural curiosity as a child growing up in the Scottish town of Arbroath and experiences such as a trip to the Arctic when she was young shaped her ambition to become a polar scientist.

In addition to hosting a video with stunning footage of Dr. Winter in the field and an interview in which she raises the issue of preventing Antarctica from being affected by climate change, the news page also talks about Dr. Winter's research and what daily life is like in Antarctica. It also describes Dr. Winter's strong advocacy of promoting STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects to children and fostering their curiosity to explore the world they live in. During her season at the PEA station, she conducted experiments she co-designed with students back in the UK and helped them to interpret the results of the experiments.

Dr. Winter feels very privilidged to have been able to visit Antarctica. She hopes everyone will learn more about the planet's southernmost continent - even if it means just having a look on a map to get to know it better.

Dr. Kate Winter of Northumbria University in the UK is the 2018-2020 laureate of the prestigious Baillet Latour Antarctica Fellowship. During the 2018-2019 research season, she stayed at the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica research station to conduct the first of two field work seasons for the BioFe research project she’s working on, thanks to the Fellowship’s funding.

What is the BioFe research project about?

The BioFe (bio-available iron) project is examining the transport route of nutrients such as iron (which feed primary producers in the ocean such as phytoplankton) from inland areas of the Antarctic to the Southern Ocean.t

It is hypothesised that sediment that comes from landslides and hillslopes derived sediment from mountains that reach high above the East Antarctic Ice Sheet could contain essential nutrients like bio-available iron, which is transported to the Southern Ocean by glaciers that flow from the interior of the Antarctic Ice Sheet towards the coast.

What were the objectives of your field work during this season?

We used a variety of techniques to examine the mountains and ice flows near the Princess Elisabeth Station. Some days we would go out with the radar sled to investigate ice flows around the Sør Rondane Mountains. Radar allows us to peer beneath the surface of the ice and to examine the subglacial topography and layers in the ice, as well as other features in the ice, like sediments.

One of the field guides from the International Polar Foundation made a sled to carry our radar equipment. Each morning we would pack the radar and tow it on the sled behind our snowmobile. Once we reached the field site, we could quickly set up the radar system on the sled and tow the radar across glacier surface.

We took transects close to the base of the Sør Rondane Mountains, across the ice flow, or perpendicular to the sides of the base of the mountains. We went very slowly to get as much detail as possible. For some transects we moved 10 cm every 4 seconds!

While doing the radar soundings, we had to take very accurate GPS measurements of where we were doing the radar survey, and what the topography was like. We used a base station, as well as a roving unit, which we took with us on the sled when we went out into the field, so that we could take soundings down to millimetre accuracy.

I understand you were using a drone in your research as well?

Yes. We were using a Phantom 4 Pro drone to take images of the Sør Rondane Mountains so that we can create 3D models of different rock walls. During the 2019-2020 season, we’ll repeat the measurements again to create another model. By comparing the models from one another, we will be able to see how much the mountains have changed over one year. By identifying gains of rock at the base of the cliff, and losses of rock above, we will be able to see how much sediments the mountains produce over the space of a year.

How often did you get to fly the drone?

We were able to fly the done over the mountains when it wasn’t so windy, which was quite a few times, surprisingly.

Did you accomplish anything else during the season?

We installed a Raspberry Shake seismometer. We had to struggle to find the perfect site for it. But Alain helped us to find an ideal place to put it. Alain helped me put the seismometer inside a windproof shell and attach it to a bedrock surface. To keep it running until next year, the seismometer was hooked up to solar panels that we installed on the mountain, which will hopefully replenish the battery (when there is sunlight) and power the Raspberry Shake seismometer.

Why did you install a seismometer?

Primarily to detect when the rocks might be falling. Comparing drone models from the 2018-2019 season and the 2019-2020 season will allow us to see where the rocks have fallen. But taking seismic measurements will allow us to determine when the rocks move.

What is a Raspberry Shake seismometer?

It’s made by a startup company that specialises in low-cost seismometers which stream seismic data live to the internet. Anyone who wants to be a citizen scientist can install one of their RaspberryPi powered devices to detect seismic activity where they live and contribute to the global seismic observation network. On their website, you can see where the seismometers in their global network are located.

Unfortunately, we can’t link the one we installed on the Sør Rondane Mountains to the Internet, because it would consume too much battery power. But maybe next year we could try to link another unit, closer to the base, so that we could share real-time data with the world.

But in the meantime, our seismometer will still collect seismic data from the Sør Rondane Mountains for my project.

I think it’s the first time a Raspberry Seismometer has been installed in Antarctica. I tweeted about installing it (@DrKateWinter) and I got an email from the company that makes it saying that they are very excited to now have seismometers on all seven continents.

You make an effort to do outreach and communication about the research you’re doing. Did you do any activities along these lines while you were in Antarctica?

Yes. My research assistant James and I filmed some footage discussing the objectives of the project for Bloomberg News. They’re doing a documentary on “Scientists at the cutting edge of climate change research”, and our project will be featured in the promotion for the series.

We’ve also been doing experiments designed by children from a few different schools to help them learn about the scientific method. Now that we’ve carried out the experiments in Antarctica, we’ll deliver them to the schools in the UK.

The children at the schools designed the experiments with my help. During my stay in Antarctica, I filmed the experiments. Now that I'm back in the UK, I’ll show the children the results of the experiments, and they’ll graph the results of the experiments and try to interpret the results and understand what’s happening.

After they’ve done that, I’ll show the students what the scientists at the station think happened to give them a scientific explanation for their results. We hope to get the students engaged in doing science and using the scientific method as much as possible.

How was it being in Antarctica over Christmas and New Year’s?

It was a busy time at the station. The container ship had arrived at the coast and the station team had to do traverses to bring back the supplies and equipment.

Duck a l ’orange was served for Christmas Dinner on the 24th. It was a nice atmosphere to have everyone working at the station sat down together to celebrate. On Christmas Day, we went to do some work on a glacier! In Antarctica we have to make the most of the good weather, so I enjoyed being outside, doing what I love.

On New Year’s Eve, we had some champagne on base, which was quite a treat. We stayed up until midnight to welcome the new year and enjoyed the midnight sun. Then we went to bed and got up again at 7 am to see Alain head off on one of the 18-hour long traverses he did to the coast to get supplies from the ship docked at Crown Bay.

Any final thoughts on your first season at the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica?

It’s been wonderful season. And very comfortable. The staff are very friendly and helpful, and the atmosphere was very warm.

Right before we left, there was a small ceremony at the station to celebrate 10 years since the station was inaugurated. In addition to all the Belgians, French and Canadians, there was also a large team of Japanese researchers, and some Canadian pilots there to witness it as well.

Alain wanted to have a small ceremony while a lot of the scientists, visitors and station crew were still there. His pre-dinner speech came from the heart -  he is always very grateful to the team that helped to build and maintain the station – and so are we. We had a very enjoyable stay, and we look forward to returning next year!