We've spent the last few days working through the tens of thousands of images we collected on our 1000-mile flight across the Ross Sea, and reflecting on the information we gained. The good news: trip was a success and the images will be perfect for getting population estimates. The better news: we also squeezed in Halloween celebrations with the rest of the McMurdo base on Saturday night!
The annual "town Halloween party" is legendary in McMurdo. Some people even plan their costumes months in advance! Luckily, folks who don't remember to pack a Halloween costume can rent elaborate costumes from the station's gear issue office! The night kicks off with a halloween costume competition, followed by a dance party. Winning costumes this year were: "Where's Waldo" (individual category), "Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage" (group category), and "Fleetwood Mac Ops" (McMurdo-themed category).
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| [left to right: giant penguin, red witch, leopard spider monster (?), tony stark] |
On Sunday Michelle delivered the weekly "Sunday Science Lecture" to a packed room. She focused her talk on two of her ongoing projects: our current emperor penguin study and a second study of Weddell seals. Both projects rely on using high-resolution satellite images to count animals from space, greatly improving our understanding of these animals in inaccessible areas of the Antarctic continent.
We have also begun to do outreach by Skyping with gradeschool classrooms across the USA. Amazingly, McMurdo even offers us the ability to connect to Skype from a nearby mountain overlooking the town! This lets students take in the beautiful scenery while we chat with them about penguin ecology. Unfortunately, the time zone difference between McMurdo and the USA means that our Skype sessions need to happen at 6 am McMurdo time! So far, we had skyped with a 7th grade class from Los Angeles (LAUSD school) and a 5th grade class from Potaluma (McKinley Elementary school).
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