122 Logistical Extravaganza

Curiously Polar

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News: Get a glimpse on the current seismic activity around the South Shetland Islands and embrace the break-up of Iceberg a-68a into smaller fragments that still are incredibly large or dive into geopolitics, architecture, glaciology, photography and conservation of Antarctica and more with the videos of the seven-day-online-festival Antarctica Now!

While logistics for Antarctic research stations are already challenging in ‘normal’ times, the pandemic has put them onto a new level and pushed everyone involved to their limits. The US Antarctic Programme and the National Science Foundation boarded their field staff in San Francisco and other cities to sail them down all the way to Antarctica. The Russian Antarctic Programme did the same, staffing icebreakers in Murmansk to send them all the way down to the 7th continent to bring the so-called winterers for the Russian stations. Most Antarctic Programmes have either cancelled or drastically reduced their research seasons in Antarctica due to the ongoing global pandemic. The British Antarctic Survey has evacuated staff from a number of research station but puts finishing touches on the upgrade on Rothera station. For those constructions, workforce have been brought to the Falkland Islands and then shipped down to the Antarctic Peninsula. And also the German Antarctic Programme operated by the Alfred-Wegener-Institute faced the necessity of becoming creative and almost causing a diplomatic incident to get the turnover staff to its Neumayer III research station.