Fueling Fish Huts

Today I fueled fish huts with fellow GA Bamma. "Fish hut" is the euphemism for a little wooden box on the sea ice in which people congregate. They have diesel heaters and we filled the tanks. There are 4 huts spread over many miles. We burned 128 liters of gas in the pisten bully. The tank holds 130 liters. It was a long day.

Fellow GA Bamma hails from Las Vegas. When not in Antarctica, she cuts down trees that are on fire (USFS fire fighter). This she likens to large scale gardening. At 5'1", the saws are sometimes longer than she is tall.



Here I am in the PB. Lisa wants proof I have a beard. Here is proof.



The first stop was 13 miles outside of McMurdo. Hutton Cliffs is a field camp where seals are studied. Take a look:



One of the grantees is Dr. Regina. To further our collective knowledge, she wrestles the seals into bags and weighs them. The weddell seals are unusual in part because of the duration of lactation. The pups will nurse for up to a month and the mothers will lose 40-60% of their weight. This is interesting, and interesting things cause lots of confusion results amongst scientists. One of the seal wrestlers got hurt pulling a pup out of a crevasse, so at the end of the day we came back here and took him into town. Coincidentally, this seal-saver also has a blog. Check out the blog of Dan, a fellow birder. His seal pictures are better than mine. Hey, I only had a few minutes to snap with my little camera. Take it easy on me. Here is Regina. She is German, so we expect that she would wrestle seals.



On the way to the next hut we passed by the Delbridge Islands and the Erebus glacier tongue.



Throughout the day we saw animals. Take a look at the bird life - a skua.



We also saw mammals. I walked right up to this guy while he was asleep. This fella clearly has no natural land predators. I was a couple of feet away.



And here is the cuteness alert. That's a nursing pair in the background.