Letters from the Southern Ocean

 

Letters from the Southern Ocean

 

31^st December 2020

 

I’ve been stood at the front of the ship for a couple of hours. The lightest of snow flurries in the air. Watching the sun sink slowly lower in the sky but knowing that it will never set. It is past midnight, and with that comes the somewhat strange realisation that it’s New Year’s Eve. The journey is nearly over, we will reach Rothera later today, we will reach Antarctica.

This will be my third summer season working down at Rothera for the British Antarctic Survey. Each experience has been different from the one before, even though it would be easy to presume that this year is the notable exception. Certain aspects of it may become normalised over time, but perhaps that’s just another way of admitting that we can never get our head around it.

While the past six days have been spent in a largely seasick haze, there have been moments of the surreal and the sublime which I couldn’t fail to notice. It has been to see another world, even if that world has been entirely of the sea. I have seen albatross and petrels, and I have seen whales. This evening, this early morning I have seen them blow, I have seen the tail of a humpback whale appear above the surface of the ocean. It brought a tear to my eye. I wasn’t just seeing this for myself, I was seeing it for my friends back home, especially for Mick and Rachel. We’d spoken of whales before I left, and how excited Mick was that I might see some. The sunsets, the colours in the sky have been vast and indescribable. Photos tell not half the story, and even as we stood there in the growing cold one night, Mags, Pete, Rob, Stewie, and I - it was at times a wordless moment shared.

But this night I found myself alone, alone with my thoughts, both thoughts of the future - where I was going, and thoughts of home. To some degree, Antarctica always feels a little bit like a different world - life on station becomes our entire world. It is intense, and it is focused, right from day one. But it is important to remember that it is not a world in isolation; what happens here has an impact on a global scale. In a year where our attention has understandably been elsewhere, we must not forget that the challenges that face us all, both now and in the future, come to us on many different fronts. It is critical that scientific research in the polar regions has been able to continue.

On a personal level I found myself in a world of mixed emotions. There was the obvious excitement at returning to a place and a job that I love, and the chance to be reunited with friends and colleagues from previous seasons. But it is also a time tinged with sadness, and I suppose a degree of guilt. There’s a part of me that wishes I could be going through the same tough times with friends and family back home. I don’t want to escape their darkness; I want to walk through it with them hand in hand. You want to feel like you can be a comfort to them – but maybe I can shed a little light from here.