Sunday 21 December 2014

Scott Of The Antarctic!

'Captain Robert Falcon Scott, CVO, RN (6 June 1868 – c. 29 March 1912) was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the Discovery Expedition, 1901–04, and the ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition, 1910–13. On the first expedition, he discovered the Polar Plateau, on which the South Pole is located. During the second venture, Scott led a party of five which reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, only to find that they had been preceded by Roald Amundsen's Norwegian expedition. On their return journey, Scott's party discovered plant fossils, proving Antarctica was once forested and joined to other continents. At a distance of 150 miles from their base camp and 11 miles from the next depot, Scott and his companions died from a combination of exhaustion, starvation and extreme cold.'

This excerpt was borrowed from Wikipedia (thanks Google). There is an amazing amount of information about the expedition, and the more I read, the more fascinated I became!

Captain Robert Falcon Scott (Pic thanks to Google)


And the reason I was even reading about Captain Scott?

Because, just over 100 years later, another Scott is heading southwards on the vessel 'SA Agulhas II' but the outcome of this expedition will be far from tragic. Our neighbour's eldest daughter Mari is part of the team from Stellenbosch University and CSIR accompanying the researchers and she will be carrying out experiments as part of her Honours programme. To read more about it, as I cannot understand most (actually any) of what she will be doing, have a look at the following website www.southernoceanfe.wordpress.com 


The group before leaving Cape Town 

'Mari Scott (1st from right, back row): I am from a small town in the West Coast, Jacobsbaai, and have always been interested in Geography and Biology at school. Since high school I always wanted to study Oceanography or Marine Biology but then decided on rather studying Geology at University of Stellenbosch. I chose Geochemistry as one of my modules, because I knew I would have the opportunity to learn about the Marine part of Geology. In third year, when we had to choose on honours projects, I immediately went to Dr Susanne Fietz, our second year Geochemistry lecturer, to find out which projects she had. She told me about the different projects they were planning for sampling water from Cape Town to Antarctica. I was immediately intrigued because this meant that I would be able to do a project which is linked to Marine Biology. My project is the incubation of dust and the effect it has on primary productivity.'

(I can tell her exactly the effect dust has on primary activity, my activity declines in direct proportion to the amount of dust in the house!)

But, I digress!!

I never realised just how populated Antarctica is! There are bases from just about every country in the world, and South Africa's base is called SANAE IV. Looking at the map below, every red dot is a base, SA's is at the top, almost in the middle.

The bases in Antarctica (Pic thanks to Google)

Unlike Captain Scott, she will not be sleeping in a tent in a sleeping bag made of reindeer skin. If she has to sleep off the ship, it will be in a warm, insulated base on stilts, a far cry from the frozen conditions that Scott's team endured and if anyone needs medical help, a doctor is available all the time.  No frost-bitten toes and fingers for Mari.

The SANAE IV Base (Pic thanks to Google)

She will be back in February after a venture that has made Rob green with envy!

I think he would even eat raw seal meat to have had a chance to accompany her!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I am green with envy too, it's long been my ambition to visit Antarctica and the Norwegian fjords, I hope Mari has a fantastic time!