Nothing is as it was once… nor the ships, nor the sailors, nor the glaziers
it’s true, modern technology has undeniably changed the way glaziers do their job
…also, glaciers are melting in polar regions at unprecedented rates.
Tag: polar stuff
my arctic environment professor on narwhals: “they’re pretty interesting creatures, I guess, even though they’re not birds.”
my arctic environment professor on a colleague: “this is [name], she used to study polar bears but has improved her life and works on birds now.”
Charles Green, ship’s cook for Endurance, skinning a penguin during the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition led by Ernest Shackleton. The crew had to supplement provisions with seal and penguin meat while they were stranded in the ice for two years. 1914 – 17
Anna Boberg (Swedish, 1864 – 1935): Northern Lights. Study from North Norway (via Wikimedia Commons)
Century old Antarctic Photos recovered
In 1914, an expedition led by scientist Alexander Stevens set out on a ship called the Aurora from Tasmania en route to Antarctica. They traveled there to support an effort by Sir Ernest Shackleton to lead the first expedition to cross the entire continent.
This particular effort would fail. The ship led by Shackleton’s group was caught in pack ice off the shores of Antarctica and crushed, while the Aurora broke loose from its moorings off the coast of Antarctica in a heavy storm in 1914, leaving the expedition stranded until the ship was found, repaired, and returned in 1917 to retrieve them.
The crew of the Aurora completed many of their objectives despite the loss of the ship, but the loss of the other ship would render their presence somewhat moot.
Today is Lunar New Year 2018, and it’s the year of the dog. Sled dogs were an integral part of Arctic and Antarctic exploration, but other dogs were sometimes brought along as pets. There’s no photograph of him, but a Newfoundland dog named Neptune was aboard the Erebus when it sailed into the Arctic. One can only assume he met the same fate as the majority of Amundsen’s dogs during the third Fram expedition.
Hey, personal question I may have asked before (I know I thought about it but I don’t think I actually did) – where are you at grad school and what do you technically study? I’m applying for grad school to do antarctic/polar stuff at the moment, and having been told that one of the programmes I’d applied for isn’t going to run anymore because they want to do things with more than 9 students, I’m trying to look for alternatives and thought you might be able to help. If not, no worries :)
Ah, sorry, I’m not, officially, studying polar anything (other than my one arctic studies class this quarter- UW Seattle has a tiny undergrad minor on the subject, and I needed an interdisciplinary), it’s really just an academic hobby of mine. My actual degree is a Master’s of Museology (museum studies). Good luck with your grad school search, though!
(I think BU has an Antarctic research program for PhD students? and the university of maine has some arctic program iirc)
who has two thumbs and corrected the lecturer on which expedition Apsley Cherry-Garrard was part of?
THIS GIRL.
the real meaning of adulthood is being the youngest person at the various museum/arts & culture related events I go to by only 10 years rather than by 15-20.
Happy first day of winter! Here’s the schooner Bowdoin frozen into her winter quarters, Greenland, 1923.
A Pretty Taste for Paradox 
