A Tour of Crary Lab

A few days ago, someone kindly organized a special tour of the Crary Lab here in town for those of us who work in the kitchen that might not be able to make it to the weekly tours of the heartbeat of McMurdo. We had a great time getting a better picture of what our work supports. The scientists that shared their knowledge with us were eager to talk about their work and we learned some interesting things from them. Sometimes in the day to day it's easy to forget why we are here; to support the science that goes on in the continent. Here are some pictures of our time.

 This poster is a listing of all the current scientific projects that are ongoing for this summer season. Included on this list are research projects on geospace, ecosystems, tech development, earth science, glaciology (study of glaciers), oceans, and atmospheric science. We were told that sometimes people come to study volcanology (study of volcanos) but this year there aren't any projects going on right now.

 These are two taxidermied birds side by side for comparison. The one on the left is an Adelie penguin, and the other is a Skua. These two birds are almost exactly the same size, but they are very different from each other. The Skua is a large scavenging bird that has hollow bones and flies, but the Adelie penguin does not fly, and uses its wings as flippers.

One of the most exciting parts of our visit was the touch tank, that has a small selection of sea creatures that live right in the frozen-over sea right by the base. We technically live on the beach of an island, but right now the sea is completely frozen over. These sea animals are specially adapted to live in harsh, frozen conditions. This is a sea spider, that I got to hold.

 Here are some other animals in the touch tank, including a sea star.

 There were lots of tanks of these special Antarctic fish being studied. These fish are unique in that their blood contains an "antifreeze protein" that keeps ice crystals from growing in the fish's blood since their saline level is low enough that it would normally freeze and kill the fish in the icy waters of Antarctica. Other fish and animals also have this antifreeze protein, we learned, including animals that live in the Arctic. If you want to learn more about these fish, visit this great website that's part of one of our scientist's research. He has some underwater videos of the land under the Antarctic ice and more info about the fish.

Finally, here is a stuffed Emperor penguin. I probably won't see an Emperor while I'm here unless I'm lucky enough to go on a field trip to see them, but it's still fun to see what they are like close up.