Hutton cliffs, Antarctica
77 ° 43 ′ 58˝ s 166 ° 51 ′ 57˝ e
December 13, 2010
I am sitting next to the hole waiting for the seals to return.A few minutes ago, barely the divers disappeared in the dark waters, I saw the faces of the seals out to the surface and I found myself reflected in their deep black eyes, bright as a sphere of ónix.The only sound in the wooden cabin is the fan slice that blows hot air directly on the circular opening in the ice.
I don't feel cold.But the air of each exhalation forms a passing cloud in front of my face.I am sitting on the heavy white boots, with my knees and hands on the wooden floor, like a child in a kindergarten waiting for him to call him the teacher.And I am there in a very similar condition.When I received the invitation to spend the day with the divers, I promised the teacher who would go to learn, help and not hinder.Seeing the German volcanologist still pale for the scare and lying in front of the heater at the corner of the cabin reminds me of my promise.(You may be interested: the scientist who translates science on Antarctica to save her)
The minutes seem slowly.The rope next to the pendant staircase with the metal steps that disappear in the water remains motionless.She could probably go out to chat with "the girls of worms."Or distract myself seeing the ice wall that is discolored from the top of the cliff behind the cabin.But I don't want to make any mistakes.I don't want to stop being there, present.I don't want to exasperate the divers.I don't want to lose samples.Learn, help and not hinder.I also want to see the seals.But the seals did not return.Under the trance induced by the sound of the fan and the soft movement of the surface of the water my mind was drifting for what had happened that morning.
I got rid of silence from the cabin.I took my clothes and the orange backpack into the hall so as not to wake up to Elio.In the town where everyone has to share a room it is normal to see people finishing dressing in front of their door.I left my black overall and the thermal clothing on a roll on the brown carpet that reminded me of the fur of an old Olympic pet.With two strokes of water I washed my face reflected in one of the three oval mirrors, each in front of a sink.With half a glass of water I finished brushing my teeth.I said goodbye to the pilot's mirror that was finished shaving and left the bathroom that the occupants of the first floor of the 206 building shared.
I crossed the field they call Derelict Junction, the abandoned crossing. With each of my steps I listened to how the ice shells that formed on the reddish stones were broken. I entered the main building through the door next to the only ATM that exists in almost 5,000 kilometers around. I crossed the corridor to get to the hand washing station, next to the open room where the coats are hung. The gallery in which food is served for the inhabitants of the base was almost empty. Without really sitting, I swallowed a cup of cereal with milk, almost without chewing, such as a goose, a skill that I had acquired since I had started working in the laboratory. I had also started to drink coffee, I express every time with fewer sugar, but that morning there was no time for that. I collected lunch for the whole group; A paper bag with two peanut butter sandwiches and raspberry jam in whole wheat bread, two cookie packages and a chocolate bar for each. (You may be interested: from Chocó to Antarctica: following the track of mercury in whales)
With the same feeling that I had that morning when my dad took a detour to take me to see Godzilla in one of the cinemas in the center of Bogotá, instead of leaving myself at school, I went down on the path of volcanic stone in the opposite directionto which every day I took to the base of long -lasting balloons.I followed the path of volcanic gravel around the laboratory that bears the name of the geophysicist Albert Crary, a huge building on metal piles that clings to the hillside as a barracks of the galaxies war.I found the curve with the huge metal cylinder, where the basketball court and the gym are.
A little later, behind the promontory where the helipad is and from where the frozen sea foam is seen on the coast, the teacher and the divers were already in front of their cabin putting the yellow tanks of compressed air and the large canvas bagswaterproof with two red pistebully.With its war tank caps and its tractor cabins, these were the coffers that were going to take us to the place that the divers call “the glass wall”, near the tongue of a glacier that extends over the frozen sea, 14 kilometers from which my home has been for a few months: the McMurdo base on the island of Ross, the largest human settlement in Antarctica.
The teacher is Adam, an expert marine biologist in the mixture of biology, information science and mathematics that carries the enigmatic bioinformatics name.The girls of the worms are the two doctoral students of him.It is also his first time in "The Ice", which is the way in which its temporary inhabitants refer to Antarctica.This is one of the numerous excursions in which they look for the polican worms that build and live in sediment tubes networks in polar waters.
I go in the passenger seat.The volcanic stones creak under the pistenbully and it is impossible to talk once we start the march.Just before touching the ice, we stop.I open the door and go out of a jump to look for the broom and remove the stones trapped in the caterpillars.The dark surface of a stone is heated faster than the frozen sea and opens holes in the ice.The route we follow is the same for which people enter and load from the runway on the frozen sea, not cleaning the caterpillars is to endanger the largest airport in the entire continent, the Ice Runway, the ice rink.
Already on ice pistenbully lets us listen to the voices on the radiotele.We follow the lines drawn by the vehicles that come and range from the airport to a point marked by a red flag where the traces form a bifurcation.We take the road to the right, the direction opposite to the airport.While she holds the steering wheel with her left hand, Stephanie picks up the radio headset and informs the dispatcher of the base: “Pistenbully 37 Department Base Thru Ice Runway.Direction Hutton Cliffs with Four Souls On Board ", (" Pistenbully 37 leaves the base on the ice rink in the direction of Hutton's cliffs with four souls on board ").After a static silence, a female voice responds: "Roger, Pistenbully 37. Safe Travels" ("copied, pistebully 37. Good trip").
Everything around us is brilliant.The sunlight is multiplied on white surfaces and only with dark lenses I can distinguish the blue flash from the surface that supports us.On the right you can see the coast of Ross island almost completely covered by the ice and crowned by Mount Erebus, the most southern active volcano on the planet.On the left, the flat and white surface that extends to what is guessed as the contour of some mountains almost completely covered with ice, the Royal Society mountain range.Up, the sky is clear, although its blue color appears soft by a faint mist.Below, a couple of meters of ice and the sea.
The seabed in the McMurdo Strait is rich like that of a tropical coral reef, but instead of hard corals here, large and delicate sponges flourish.There are also sea stars, hedgehogs and anemones, some of which can be caressed in one of the tanks that act as "pet zoo" in one of the laboratories of the base.There are tiny crustaceans, a transparent miniature version of a shrimp, known as Kril's generic name, whose larvasubmarine on the outskirts of the base.There are sea spiders, fish with an antifreeze protein in its blood, penguins, seals and whales.And there are worms that keep the secret of genetic adaptation to the rapid changes that this ecosystem is experiencing.
It was a story that Adam had told us on the eve of one of the many flights canceled to McMurdo.Polystaging worms have relatively simple genetic information if compared to more complex animals, such as humans.Thanks to that we know that not all genetic information is expressed in the worm, but there are certain portions that are suppressed and others that manifest depending on external factors, such as temperature or chemical compounds to which it is exposed, something that theBiologists call epigenetics.That means that an individual is not exclusively the product of their genes, but also of the surrounding environment.As the sea surface temperature increases, due to the effect of global warming produced by the excessive use of fossil fuels, these worms are a living indicator of changes in ecosystems produced by human activity.
After almost an hour following the footprints left by other vehicles on the surface of the frozen sea, an almost perfect rectangle of ice appears in the distance that through my lenses looks in blue aquamarine.It is a tabular iceberg captured by sea ice.As we approach, its straight walls seem to grow to reach the size of a building, but before reaching it we take a detour to the right, in the direction of the cliffs covered by the glacier that flows from the top of the island of Ross.
After a few minutes of travel appears in front of us a great rock that emerges from the frozen sea.Behind her there is an ice crest on the flat surface, as if an immense creature was about to emerge.When we approach, the crest is revealed as a series of segments that have the appearance of broken bottles attached with cement at the top of my country's walls, but these are two or three times higher than a person and are made of amilky glass with turquoise blue flashes.Along with some gaps certain dark spots are distinguished: the trail of the seals or the penguins that emerge from the sea through the cracks.
In the distance and front, the orange -painted cabin is perceived.It is a wooden structure that resembles a load container with a single window framed inside blue curtains.The ice surface keeps the bullying trail that dragged it from the base and the machine with an immense mechanical drill with which for hours other people worked to open a hole in the ice slab of a couple of meters thick.In the background, the glacier gets up immense by shadowing on the cabin.In its lower part, the black walls of the cliff molded by the weight of the ice are seen.
The two pistensbully stay at a short march of the cabin, in an area marked with green flags tied to thin bamboo posts.Around the cabin, a perimeter of red flags indicates the area where we can walk without danger.In the direction of the glacier, a group of black flags indicates the threat of the hidden cracks under the surface.
We begin to download the equipment, including the two refrigerators to keep the samples and a white bucket where I temporarily put the bags with lunch.At the end I give a hand with the compressed air tanks to the crew of the other vehicle.Within the cabin, while Annemarie, the second girl of the worms, reviews the valves and tanks, I help Adam to dress.He is already ready in his pants, his jacket and his polar gloves Fleece (polar lining), but he needs help with the top of his diving suit, which forms an insulating camera that covers him between his neck and his feet.On the opposite side of the cabin the two British cameramen are already wrapped in their costumes and check the valves and tanks.The American marine biologist adjusts the mask that makes me think of a superheroine with the powers of a orca.The German volcanologist seems to fight against one of her's suit closures.
After adjusting the stabilizer vest on Adam's shoulders, I help you put the regulators at your fingertips. Then he adjusted with the palm of the hand the hermetic rubber closure that joins his three fingertips with his suit. Annemarie leaves the cabin to look for the forgotten ballast belt on the floor of the Pistenbully and while the door of the cabin closes, she listens to the splashes of the water that indicate the immersion of the first of the divers. But instead of continuing to give me the instructions of her, I listen to Adam's alarmed voice that indicates the hole in the middle of the cabin where a three fingertips stirred agitatedly on the surface. Stephanie and I are the only ones who do not have kilos of equipment on top and in a blinking I find myself grabbing a hood covered with rubber and neoprene and finding with all my strength. One of the closures in the German volcanologist's suit was not closed and his suit was filling with water while he descended through the aluminum steps of the string ladder that goes from the floor of the cabin to the sea.
The German volcanologist is clinging to my forearm. He apparently manages to stand on the ladder and rises enough to get the head out of the water, spit the nozzle and shout asking for help. One of the cameramen, released from his flotation vest, appears on the hole, firmly grabs the top of the oxygen tank and with a firm pull helps emerge to the immense body on the water. After a few moments that seem eternal, the second cameraman grabs the volcanologist of almost two meters tall by the flotation vest and with a firm pull he manages to get it out of the water to the waist. The wooden floor is soaked with the sea water flooded before Annemarie's astonished gaze, which has just crossed the door. Camarographers help out of the suit to the man who throws and throws curses that everyone knows that they are aimed at his own carelessness. Still pale slowly reinstate and will get rid of its wet clothes in front of the stove that heats the cabin.
With the controlled emergency, everyone returns to their trade.There is no time to lose if they expect to complete the two dives they have prepared for today.After an additional check, the other four divers descend down the stairs to the waters that seem to have a light blue tone when looking towards the walls of the ice hole.First, one of the camaragraphs, to whom we send the dark aluminum assembly with the camera and the lights using a rope;Then, the second cameraman, who would later let me appear on a small screen to the hidden landscape.Then the marine biologist.And finally, Adam disappears in the water giving me the signal that everything is fine with his thumb up.
I am sitting next to the hole waiting for the divers to return.A pull on Manila's rope tells me that I have to pull it to bring the samples to the surface.The girls of the worms appear behind me just before the bucket emerges with the brown mud in which I do not distinguish any creature, but where they hope to find the subject of investigation that will keep them occupied during the following decades.
The rope and bucket are the perfect metaphor of the investigation, a thread of Ariadna that we continue to get out of a maze of darkness.In frozen waters under my feet, three humans see the bottom of the sea flourished by sea urchins, translucent anemones that seem to dance in the current, huge yellow sponges that open like fans and an infinite constellation of sea stars on the brown bedthat extends to where the eye can see.But those were not the stars that I came to look for in the confine of the world.
The rope that I follow to get out of my labyrinth is tied to a balloon that leads to a telescope at an altitude three times greater than the one that reaches a commercial flight to see the light that fails to reach the surface of the planet.The majority of the last forty days had passed by assembling and testing that telescope along with my teammates.I had traveled with my fingers each of the joints I had designed to hold it.He had stroked the polyester and aluminum panels that were going to protect him from the sun.I had admired him so many times that he appeared to me and spoke to me in my dreams.But today I was the assistant in worm fishing at the Antarctica Sea.
Now that the telescope was almost ready, only the sea could contain the anxiety that overwhelmed me.Therefore, I convinced the divers to let me accompany them.Only the hidden sea could release my mind from the anticipation of the flight, from expectations, from unaccoiled paths.Upon contemplating the waters I found my way back, not physically, as the seals and whales had done, but mentally, to the origin.
