Well, there is the usual sort of thing, like learning as much as possible in school about science and math, getting a good understanding about how the universe works, including the process of evolution. Then, it’s good, but not necessarily necessary, that you go to graduate school to rub elbows with people who have done research.

Anyone can be a scientist, really. In fact, ‘science’ is basically just a way of looking at things. In science, when you see some pattern out there in nature, or in a test tube, or through a telescope or a microscope, you formulate a preliminary explanation of what you see (which is called a hypothesis). Then, you try to be clever to find ways to DISPROVE your idea. If your explanation can withstand your testing, then you’re probably onto something.

On the other hand, if you are not a person thinking in a scientific way, then you just have an idea about something that strikes you as cool, and maybe you write a poem about it or paint a picture, or just continue to think it to be cool. Truly, there are ways of seeing things that are valid even if you are not being scientific. I’m not talking here about religion, or about morals, these two not necessarily being the same thing. I’m a scientist but I am also religious: I feel the vast and great forces of Nature all around me, and I’m awed and feel insignificant.

For a scientist, the cool part of it, besides the phenomenon itself, is coming up with an explanation that withstands concrete, observable alternate explanations. Then you see if someone else has had those thoughts (by reading stuff), and if not, you write a scientific paper about it and submit it for publication. This is the sort of thing you’d learn about in graduate school, mostly the process of being a scientist, that is, a person who finds stuff out and is responsible enough to tell other people through a publication.

Thomas Jefferson was a person who was not a ‘scientist’ but he was a great practitioner of ‘science’ and was very knowledgeable about nature, especially botany. He once said, in regard to his charge, Meriwether Lewis (the guy he sent to explore the Missouri and Columbia rivers before other white guys did), that “observation unrecorded is knowledge lost”. That’s so, so very true!!! In the olden days, people ‘recorded’ their observations and knowledge by intricate and constant story telling. Now we write things down, take notes, etc., and write papers and essays.

In any case, enough of this book learning side to being a penguin researcher. Let’s see, what did I do yesterday in this process of learning facts about penguins? Yesterday, and the day before and the day before that, we were engulfed in a major storm, winds up to 60 knots (though higher away from the shelter of where our platform tent is located) and from time to time snow so thick one couldn’t see more than a few yards. Well, Roald Amundsen, polar explorer extraordinaire, once said, “If you’ve had an adventure then you haven’t prepared!”

True, but sometimes there are ’small’ things that don’t go exactly as planned. And you have to deal with them before they become big things. This I was thinking, yesterday, upon hearing a thud and a clank outside, at the same time that our heating stove died. Seems we had a gust of wind from an unanticipated direction, which then took advantage of the fact that the propane in one of our canisters had been used up. Thus the canister was about 150lbs lighter than when I hoisted it in place.

Shoot, why now? Definitely not fair! So, I donned all my polar clothes… looking like the Dough-man… got a wrench, and out I went. I proceeded to wrestle with the two remaining, full canisters, which had blown over, too, upon the other becoming too light (these winds ARE strong). This isn’t so easy to do in a hurricane, wearing gloves and a parka hood that wouldn’t sit straight on my head. Thus I was usually seeing out with just one eye. Try untying and then re-tying knots wearing gloves in those conditions! Ultimately, though, I succeeded, made sure all the ropes on various tents and things were snug, and then back inside I went. Heating stove started right up!

That was the highlight of yesterday. Today, with lessening though still blustery winds I ventured down to the penguins. The penguins could care less, of course, what with this weather. The tent, though, which protected the computer that goes with our automatic weighing scale, was in need of help. Thought I’d gotten it right the first time, when setting it up! But the wind had torn some of the sewed-in loops out. So, it was kind of the same story, tying and un-tying knots in very strong winds, with tent flaps flapping etc etc etc, wind trying to take them one way, and me trying to force them the other. I sure am glad that my Dad and others taught me a lot of neat knots. They don’t teach that stuff in science graduate school! Finally, I got the whole thing staked down again in all its important parts. Then, after an hour or two, I went off to see how the penguins were doing. Taking notes as I went, of course, me being a scientist.

These are the kinds of things one has to do to have a successful season of field research. It’s a lot of camping and ‘surviving’ in order to be collecting data and taking notes, and thinking scientific thoughts. So, if you want to be a penguin researcher, do a lot of camping before hand, just to become comfortable with those little ‘adventures’ that arise day to day. Of course, some penguins live in places where the comforts of civilization aren’t all that far away. But I like camping out there in Nature, with my religion all about.

Part of our field camp.

Above is our lodging for this 2008-09 penguin research season. It’s called a RacTent (the blue and yellow structure). You can see the propane canisters in the back to the right, where the anemometer (wind gauge) is located (that pipe sticking up). To the left are the solar panels. Those have to be rotated now and again to keep them facing the sun, especially when there are lots of clouds and not much reflectance off the snow.

Inside the RacTent.

Above is the inside of the RacTent. In the far right corner is the propane camp stove, underneath which are about 5 boxes for recycling, one box for a different kind of stuff: food waste, cans, mixed paper, and non-recyclable stuff (plastic and cellophane food wrappers, etc). To the right is the propane heating stove. Anything put on the floor is liable to freeze, including your feet. Walking around, though, the upper half of your body is comfortably warm. To the left, you can see my ‘desk’ and laptop. Note the telephone on the card-table. That’s a wireless connection to McMurdo Station. The other morning at 5:30AM, the McMurdo Fire House called saying that someone from this number had called in a 911 code. Must have been some penguins fiddling with the antenna, or some electrons that the wind had overly excited.

The computer tent, with Adélies.

Here’s the tent containing the computer, with the automatic scale to its left. Solar panels that run the computer and scale are to the right of the tent. The wind is very, very clever about un-raveling things, wanting everything to enter a state of chaos. So, one has to keep paying attention to the small things, so they don’t become big and chaotic.

The green, plastic fence surrounding the penguins directs them to go and come by walking across the scale.

Long before anyone ever set eyes on Antarctica, many were sure it was there. Belief in a Terra Australis Incognita—“Unknown Southern Land”—first took hold among the ancient Greeks. Great believers in symmetry, the Greeks were convinced that the great landmass in the Northern Hemisphere would have to be balanced by an equally great landmass in the Southern Hemisphere.

A 1570 world map showing a vastly exaggerated southern continent.

Confirmation of the southern continent was long in coming; Terra Australis remained incognita for centuries. Captain Cook set out on a massive three-year search for it in 1772. After being driven back north again and again by pack ice, Cook concluded that if there was a southern continent, it wasn’t worth getting to.

Cook unwittingly sowed the seeds of future exploration, however, with his detailed reports of ample seal and whale populations in the Southern Ocean. Hunters flocked to the area and drove seal populations to near extinction. In 1821, a seal hunter driven off-course by a violent storm was the first to land on Antarctica. With seal populations waning, however, interest in exploring the high southern latitudes waned as well.

Food provisions sit frozen in time inside Scott’s hut. Various parties of British explorers used the hut for survival in the early 1900s. Courtesy of the National Science Foundation.

Robert Falcon Scott’s expedition, having reached the South Pole, January 18th, 1912. None in this party would survive the journey back.

But in the late 1800s, a frenzy of whale hunting in the Southern Ocean spurred a frenzy of exploration; the “heroic age” of Antarctic exploration began. Akin to the “space race” of the 1960s, countries vied to be first to explore the icy continent, and reaching the South Pole became a worldwide obsession. A team led by British explorer Robert Scott came within 463 miles (877 km) of the pole in 1902. Another British team, this time led by Ernest Shackleton, came even closer in year 1908, but was forced to turn back just 97 miles (180 km) from the goal.

Traveling by dogsled, a Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen was the first to arrive at the South Pole on December 14, 1911. A competing British team led by Scott arrived just a month later, greeted by the demoralizing site of the Norwegian flag. Plagued by accidents and storms, and short of food, all five members of the Scott team perished on the return trip.

Ernest Shackleton led a later ill-fated effort to traverse the entire continent by dogsled in 1914. Before even landing, the Endurance was trapped and crushed by pack ice, leaving the crew to winter over on the ice. Shackleton and five others set out for help in a tiny lifeboat, braving 100-foot (30 m) waves in the Southern Ocean, securing a rescue by whalers four months later. Miraculously, all survived.

The Endurance stuck in the ice.

Admiral Byrd, just prior to the South Pole flight of 1929 with a stone from former pilot Floyd Bennett’s grave. Byrd dropped the stone, wrapped in the small American flag, from the plane when they were over the South Pole, in honor of his pilot of the North Pole expedition of 1926.

The onset of World War I cooled interest in Antarctica, but exploration began anew with the advent of the airplane. American pilot Robert Byrd was the first to fly over the South Pole in 1929 and made repeated flights over the continent during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Scientifically minded, Byrd conducted many experiments in his Antarctic travels, setting the precedent for Antarctica as a land devoted to scientific research.

After World War II, countries around the globe scrambled to establish footholds—and claim territory—on Antarctica. A flurry of base-building ensued. Many bases were also built in anticipation of the 1957–1958 International Geophysical Year (IGY). U.S. base-building efforts centered on McMurdo Station (1955) and the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station (1957). Tensions over territorial claims led to the signing of the Antarctic Treaty in 1959, establishing Antarctica as a place for only peaceful, scientific purposes, and excluding military or mining activities.

Today, exploration of Antarctica is still mainly scientific, though tourists are “exploring” the continent in increasing numbers. In 2007, 46,000 tourists visited Antarctica, mostly on cruise ships. Fearing disruption of the breeding sites of penguins and other wildlife, some are calling for tighter limits on tourism to reduce environmental impact.