The exhibition has been open for over four months now and has seen the graduation of countless ice cadets. If you are yet to visit the exhibition, here is a virtual tour showing some of the exciting things you are missing out on. It all begins with a briefing from Sanjit, our Ice Station Commander, who will guide us through our Antarctic adventure. We soon learn of the perils that lie ahead as we enter the freezer room. This is set at a chilling -10ºC and you wou...

The exhibition is open now, phew! And we’re getting some great feedback. The games are particularly popular. The firm favourite is the meteorite hunting game which is based on the adventures of Natural History Museum's Sara Russell who has been meteorite hunting in Antarctica with ANSMET. This photo is of my friend Paul on the meteorite hunt. It's a great game because visitors not only learn about meteorites but also the terrain of Antarctica. Meanwhile I have started following our visitors around the exhibition for evaluation. I watch where they go and what they do, ideally without being spotted. This, combined with exit surveys, will help us to see what visitors are learning and how much they enjoy the e...

The banners up are, the invites are out, and our contractors are downstairs building the structure for Ice Station Antarctica. This week we’ve been watching the video diaries that the winterers recorded for us. They are funny and poignant. My favourite one is Vicky the doctor getting a dental checkup from an engineer, carpenter and electrician; ‘I’ve got very very clean gums now!’ I love the diaries and think they are a treasure in the heart of the exhibition – a chance for the visitors to hear about real life Down South. The rest of the exhibition is full of quotes from scientists and support staff. It is their stories which engage people with the science and life down in Antarcti...

A small but nevertheless very important piece of the puzzle in the study of climatic reconstruction of the early history of the earth is Sven Kretschmer's project with his working group from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven. His scientific instruments include the Schwerelot and the multicorer. During the whole of this expedition ANTXXIII/9, it is these drilling instruments that make the ocean floor core drilling project possible. The exact positioning is determined by parasounding equipment. The concentration of thorium 230 in sediment is particularly interesting to geochemists. This radioactive element is a disintegration product, and in water it is extremely insoluble, so it binds immediately to single minerals or other organic particles. In this way, thorium ...

Polarstern’s biggest fish catch in 24 years of research in Antarctic waters. New hope for commercial fisheries? Quite the opposite, a good catch doesn’t necessarily mean that depleted stocks have recovered. Five tons of marbled Antarctic cod (Notothenia rossii), now that was surely a big surprise to scientists and crew alike considering that previous and subsequent hauls barely ever reaped such plentiful harvests. Their shimmering silver and dark blue bodies, which can grow up to 70cm, were piled on the aft deck of Polarstern. In combination with previous stock assessments, fisheries biologists onboard interpreted the catch as a sampling of a discrete, small-scale aggregation of this fish species. ...

By Linda Mackey — Twenty-five Arctic Quest artists followed in the footsteps of great artists and explorers of the past, as they marked the 100th anniversary of Amundsen's 1906 navigation through the Northwest Passage with a journey of their own this summer. During a twelve day voyage aboard the Akademik Ioffe, the group Arctic Quest recorded their impressions on canvas, paper and film as they traveled up the east coast of Baffin Island, Greenland, and parts of the Northwest Passage, ending in Resolute. Every day brought new surprises including icebergs emerging from the fog, waking up to Orca whales, circling incredible icebergs, taking a zodiac ride to the base of the icefields in Illilisat, Greenland, or donating art supplies to Inuit children in the Arctic communi...

As we continue to organise our life on board for the long polar night ahead, a constant preoccupation is the production, use and discharge of water. Ensuring that we have a sufficient amount of good quality water for our basic needs is a big task for at least two people each day. Like most large boats, we have a watermaker onboard that makes freshwater from seawater through the process of osmosis. In temperate climates we can produce up to 200 liters per hour. However, in our current position close to 83 degrees north the water temperature is -1.5 degrees celsius and the temperature in the forward hold (the location of the watermaker) has descended to -7 degrees, below the minimum operating temperature of 0 degrees. Therefore, we now produce our water by melting ice and sno...