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Stark and sullen solitudes

No person who has not spent a period of his life in those ‘stark and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole’ will understand fully what trees and flowers, sun-flecked turf and running streams mean to the soul of a man. Ernest Shackleton The scenery in Antarctica can be quite beautiful, but it is stark, and…

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Quite clearly ocean

How inappropriate to call this planet earth when it’s quite clearly ocean. Arthur Clarke I study mixotrophic plankton because I find them fascinating – on land carnivorous plants (e.g. sundews, pitcher plants and venus fly traps) are restricted to certain environments – yet mixotrophs are found in almost all aquatic environments. We’ve known about mixotrophic…

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A churning toilet bowl of ice

A churning toilet bowl of ice…   So, this is another quote from “Sea Gypsies”, and while perhaps it doesn’t evoke the nicest image, it conveys some of the challenges associated with the Antarctic marine environment. The weather can, and will, get nasty and there are lots of different kinds of ice that can potentially…

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If you can’t sew

“If you can’t sew, you aren’t a sailor” (and other things that seem unrelated to working at sea) I heard this quote in the film “Sea Gypsies” featuring a group of mariners who took their sailboat to Antarctica. There are several amusing quotes in the movie, and I liked this one because it expressed that…

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Adventure

Adventure is just bad planning. Amundsen I think that Amundsen may have had a different concept of ‘adventure’. But even when you plan as carefully and completely as possible, things can go wrong. Sometimes it’s small stuff, other times it’s a bigger issue, or it’s out of your personal control. I’m recalling previous cruise when…

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