Stacy Kim | Ice Stories: Dispatches From Polar Scientists

Stacy Kim is a benthic ecologist; she studies the animals that live on and in the seafloor and how they interact with one another in a community. Working in Antarctica gives her the opportunity to understand an ecosystem in balance, one that is minimally impacted by human activities. Observing her frustration with the physiological limitations on scuba diving depths and the logistic constraints on selecting experimental and sampling sites in Antarctica, engineer (and her husband) Bob Zook designed SCINI as a tool to allow research in deeper, more remote polar habitats.

Project Page: First Descents: Exploring Seas Under the Ice

All Posts By Stacy Kim

Bay of Sails

By Stacy Kim · November 18, 2009 ·

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BAY OF SAILS, ANTARCTICA– One of the main goals of SCINI is to explore new areas. Our first target this year is Bay of Sails. I selected this general location because it is an “iceberg graveyard." {Read More »}

Meet Kamille, Benthic Ecologist

By Stacy Kim · November 11, 2009 ·

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MCMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA-- Kamille Hammerstrom drove Antarctic teams to the airport four times before she finally got to go herself. When she got here... {Read More »}

Meet Dustin, Our Software Engineer

By Stacy Kim · November 9, 2009 ·

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MCMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA-- Dustin Carroll, Software Engineer, tells us about his Antarctic experience and his work with the SCINI project... {Read More »}

Field Camp

By Stacy Kim · November 3, 2009 ·

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MCMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA-- We've just returned from 2 weeks at Bay of Sails, where we were deploying SCINI to look at iceberg scours on the seafloor and the destruction, and recovery, of benthic communities there. All our high-tech science and engineering was supported out of the most primitive of camps... {Read More »}

A Day Out the Window of the Lab

By Stacy Kim · October 18, 2009 ·

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MCMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA-- Our lab is way too busy and crowded to allow this, but the lab with the shared fume hood is not yet occupied, so I was able to set up the camera on a tripod and catch the changing light and activity in front of the station... {Read More »}

Drilling the Sea Ice

By Stacy Kim · October 9, 2009 ·

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MCMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA-- Drilling a hole through 7 m (21 ft) of sea ice is the first step in Antarctic diving.... {Read More »}

Tomorrow the Journey Starts

By Stacy Kim · October 8, 2009 ·

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MCMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA-- Last Wednesday the Main Team left Moss Landing, bound for Antarctica. But before leaving, I played one last morning of beach volleyball - as I won't get much beach in my volleyball down south! Here is a short video... {Read More »}

WinFly

By Stacy Kim · September 17, 2009 ·

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MOSS LANDING, CALIFORNIA-- To introduce you to McMurdo Station, Antarctica, let’s get right into the jargon. There are abbreviations and acronyms for everything, and the new language adds to the disorientation of being in a new, strange, and extreme place... {Read More »}

Meet SCINI

By Stacy Kim · September 15, 2009 ·

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MOSS LANDING, CALIFORNIA-- Last austral summer, SCINI engineer (also my husband) Bob Zook and I met up with the Exploratorium's Ice Stories team at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, for a live webcast about the SCINI project... {Read More »}