Mese: Marzo 2022

Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) has completed a massive resupply of Macquarie Island research station following two weeks of intense efforts by RSV Nuyina and station teams.

AAD Strategic Infrastructure Manager Adrian Young said good weather had been the helping hand needed get the job done. 350 tonnes of cargo has been delivered to renovate the station.

Macquarie Island Station (WAP AUS-Ø8) is 74 years old. Buildings will be modified, some decommissioned while field huts will be fixed up. Getting supplies onto the Island is a tricky task.

The overall renovation will include:

-Consolidating the station area and reducing the total number of buildings on the island from the existing 48 buildings

-Renovating core buildings in the station to ensure ongoing year-round operation of station and field-based research activities

-Decommissioning older redundant buildings

-Refurbishing three of the six field huts

-Assessing ways of protecting the station from ocean inundation

-Removing asbestos from all buildings.

More cargo, including new fuel tanks, will need to be delivered in the years ahead. A new Team of expeditioners now has the keys to the Station.

Read more at: Macquarie Island research station modernisation – Australian Antarctic Program (antarctica.gov.au)

The scientific projects have completed their tasks, and the equipment from Spain used by researchers who have come from that Country, to whom we offer our cooperation in terms of accommodation and use of facilities, given its volume and weight, must return to their country by sea transport.

For this reason, the Oceanographic vessel “Hesperides” belonging to the Spanish Navy, has come to collect this scientific equipments on the eve of returning to their Country.
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Thanks to Instituto Antarctico Uruguayo for sharing images of the operation in conjunction with the staff of the Artigas Antarctic Scientific Base (WAP URY-Ø1)

This scientific station, is one of the Argentinean transient Bases on the white continent. Its name is in honor of Benjamín Matienzo, a pioneer of Argentine aviation. In 2009 it became the only Argentine base to have been inhabited exclusively by women.

Base  T.Te Benjamin Matienzo  (WAP ARG-Ø1) is located at 64° 58’ South and 60° 08’ West, in the Larsen Nunatak, belonging to the Foca group, on the eastern side of the Peninsula on the Weddell Sea, 186 km southwest of Marambio Base (WAP ARG-21), from where all personnel and cargo transfers are currently made.

The area where the Base is located, was immersed in the Larsen “A” Ice Shelf, completely disintegrated in 1995. Since then, with annual variations, wide sea surfaces with debris and floating icebergs have been exposed.  The facilities of the Base occupy a discontinuous strip of about 300 meters in length, at the eastern and narrower end of the nunatak. It was inaugurated on March 15, 1961, located on the old San Antonio Refuge. 

It was the first Antarctic detachment created jointly between the Argentinean  Army and the Air Force, becoming totally dependent on the latter in 1964, with the new name of Teniente Matienzo Air Base, maintaining an endowment of two single-engine Beaver aircraft, operating from the glacier adjacent to the nunatak.

Various scientific activities and historical events of international significance were developed at Matienzo. Extensive meteorological and climatological observation programmes were carried out; the glaciological status of the Matienzo-Esperanza route and the coastal channel between Robertson Island to the South was studied; topographic and aerophotographic surveys of the Larsen Ice Shelf were carried out as well.

Pic to the Left,  shows an old  QSL of LU1ZAB  dated 1961, the year of the inauguration of Matienzo Base (TNX LU2YH)

In 1965, two Argentine Gamma Centauro rockets, of national manufacture, were launched along with two balloons probes from Matienzo for X-ray measurement. They moved to the place by means of a transport plane piloted by Commander Mario Luis Olezza. That operation, placed Argentina not only among the small number of countries that built rockets in the 1960s for scientific research, but also carried out launches from Antarctica.

In addition, that same year the Matienzo Base constituted the first stop and the fulcrum of Operation South, the first Argentine Transpolar Flight. Four years later, it was also the base of operations for the creation of the Marambio Base.

In 1972,  Matienzo was deactivated as a permanent station and since then it was reopened during most of the summer campaigns to perform tasks of flight support, maintenance of facilities, refueling, meteorological observation and support for scientific activity.

In Matienzo,  there is an Antarctic Museum, that has been restored in 2018 and exhibits objects, Antarctic accessories and photographs that recall the history of the base.

In the Antarctic Summer Campaign 2008/2009, Matienzo’s staff was made up entirely of women from the Air Force, constituting a historical fact in Antarctica.

The last reopening of Matienzo was during the  2018 Antarctic Summer Campaign, being operated by a group of ten people, including military and civilians of the Air Force, fulfilling various tasks of maintenance of the facilities and preservation of the environment.

LU1ZAB  on air …

After more than 10 years of being inactive, LU1ZAB Matienzo  Ham radio Station was activated, which even provided services, as in the old days, for private communications between crew members and their families.
Pic aside  and below shows a couple of the last QSLs of LU1ZAB  dated  1970 & 1996 (TNX I1UP & I1HYW )

LU1ZAB service, was used as a bridge to make the first radio contacts, later expanded through the phone-patch service, linking  the radio equipment with the telephone line, through the Marambio Base.

Thus, the service focuses on the use of radio, in HF bands,  historically provided by amateur radio stations could be used directly by those who carry out tasks in Antarctica, as was done so many times in the past.

LU1ZAB amateur radio station’s set up,   had several antennas, which allowed testing capabilities and performance, one of the essential functions of this alternative communication service.

The Icebreaker SA Agulhas II left Cape Town on 5 February, but the search with a mini-submarine began on the 17th, already in the Weddell Sea. In the final stretch of the expedition (on Friday they announced that they could not stay more than six days in the area), it has worked!

More than a century after its sinking, a scientific expedition “Endurance22” has found the remains of the shipwreck of the Antarctic Explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922), the “Endurance”.

The ship was crushed by sea-ice and sank in 1915, forcing Shackleton and his men to make an astonishing escape on foot and in small boats.

Video of the remains show Endurance to be in remarkable condition, even though it has been sitting in 3km (10,000ft) of water for over a century, it looks just like it did on the November day it went down.

A team of adventurers, marine archaeologists and technicians located the wreck at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, east of the Antarctic Peninsula, using undersea drones. Battling sea ice and freezing temperatures, the team had been searching for more than two weeks in a 150-square-mile area around where the ship went down in 1915. The lost vessel was found at the weekend at the bottom of the Weddell Sea. Scientists have filmed the greatest ever undiscovered shipwrecks 107 years after it sank.

Mensun Bound, the expedition’s exploration director and a marine archaeologist who has discovered many shipwrecks, said that Endurance was the finest he had ever seen. It is upright, clear of the seabed and “in a brilliant state of preservation,” he said.

Pic on the Left shows as the stern of Endurance looked in dry dock in 1914 before departure to Antarctica

Under the terms of the Antarctic Treaty, the six-decade-old pact intended to protect the region, the wreck is considered a historical monument. The submersibles did not touch it; the images and scans will be used as the basis for educational materials and museum exhibits. A documentary is planned, as well.

The Weddell Sea still remains far icier than other Antarctic waters, though in recent years ice conditions have been lighter than usual. That was the situation this year, and it helped the expedition reach the search site more easily and remain there safely. The icebreaker, Agulhas II, left the search area on Tuesday for the 11-day voyage back to Cape Town.

In addition to the expedition Team, several ice researchers were on board, including Stefanie Arndt of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany.

Below are some link to see about Endurance and its founding in the Antarctic Weddel Sea:
Thanks and credit to: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60662541

and to: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/09/climate/endurance-wreck-found-shackleton.html?fbclid=IwAR03NXFgZoHIllyZ4XxmYlisFM25BKpqAkuqwd4R5zQoIVukZL9y2SXIJQ4

and to: https://endurance22.org/expedition-blog

Pics on the links above, are from Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust / National Geographic