NELLA NOSTRA "CASA" IN ANTARTIDE

Seguite lo svolgimento della XXIII Campagna del Programma Nazionale di Ricerche in Antartide. Sapete che quest'anno ci sono stati dei tagli importanti nei finanziamenti della Campagna, per cui i soli progetti scientifici in corso (o appena conclusi) sono il progetto ANDRILL SMS presso la stazione americana McMurdo (concluso a fine novembre) e TaldICE
a Talos Dome, un progetto di perforazione in ghiaccio, iniziato nel 2005-2006. La trincea di perforazione è stata riaperta a metà novembre e l'estrazione delle prime carote dell'anno è in corso. Ovviamente l'impegno dell'Italia nella gestione logistica e scientifica della base italo-francese CONCORDIA a Dome C resta immutato. Il Capo Spedizione, Giuseppe De Rossi, è salito a Dome C il 30 Novembre e ci resterà fino alla fine della campagna estiva, quando poi passerà la staffetta al franco-australiano Jean-François Vanacker, che sarà il Capo Spedizione del Quarto winter-over a Concordia.

SITO: http://www.italiantartide.it/

LE COMMANDANT CHARCOT ET SON "POURQUOI-PAS?"

Un très très beau timbre (un dyptique) représentant le Commandant JB Charcot et son voilier le Pourquoi-Pas? a été émis conjointement par la France et le Groenland, le 12 Novembre 2007. La valeur faciale est de 1,14 €.
Dimensions : Format, Diptyque comprenant 1 timbre de 30 x 36 mm à 0.54 € et 1 timbre de 60 x 36 mm à 0.60 €
L'artiste est Martin Mörck, la technique d'impression: taille douce et offset.

Le Commandant Charcot est un des plus grands explorateurs polaires: il a effectué deux expéditions en Antarctique, en explorant et cartografiant plus de 2.000 Km de côtes inexplorées et 10 voyages au Groenland. Dans une de ces expéditions il a emmené avec soi le jeune Paul-Emile victor, qui est ensuite resté vivre un an au Groeland, auprès d'une famille d'Esquimaux. Jean-Baptiste Charcot, appelé le Gentleman des Pôles par Robert Falcon Scott, a disparu en mer le 16 Septembre 1936, au large des côtes de l'Islande, dans le naufrage du Pourquoi-Pas? Il y eu un seul rescapé - Eugène Gonidec- , qui resta accroché à l'échelle de copée pendant des heures.
La dépouille mortelle du Commandant, ainsi que celle des 23 autres membres de l'équipage, fut retrouvée le lendemain. Eugène Gonidec raconta que le Commandant Charcot, comprenant la destruction inévitable du Pourquoi-Pas ? IV sur les récifs, libéra de sa cage une mouette qui était la mascotte du bord. JB Charcot est enterré à Paris au cimetière Montmartre.
Il reste à tout jamais un des plus grands et des plus aimés des explorateurs du Royaume des Glaces; lui dédier un beau timbre lors de l'Année Polaire Internationale est un joli geste.

La Poste: http://actutimbree.laposte.fr/

THE TAE PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION

He recalls that his passion for the extreme probably began when he first saw the snow, during a school holiday at the Tongariro National Park, at the age of sixteen. He was a young teenager living in the countryside and he had never seen the magic of snow. Since that day, Sir Edmund Hillary has spent a great deal of his life among snows and ice, blizzards and storms, high snowy peaks close to the sky and turbulent rivers flowing down to the sea. In May 1953 he was the first to reach the summit of Mt Everest – with Tenzing Norgay. Thanks to that success another great adventure would keep him among the snows for almost two years, in the coldest, windiest and iciest continent on Earth : the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (TAE), a joint-venture between Great Britain and New Zealand, aimed to cross Antarctica from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea. It was the dream dreamt by Shackleton, forty years earlier. Sir Ed Hillary and Sir Vivian Fuchs were co-leaders in this great expedition, which took place during the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58. Sir Ed Hillary established New Zealand’s Scott Base on Ross Island, then made a long and hazardous journey over the Ross Ice Shelf and across the Transantarctic Mountains, driving small Ferguson tractors, to trace the route for Fuchs and set fuel caches along the way. Thanks to Hillary’s determination expertise and bravery (as well as with the help of the Americans) the performance of the Ross Sea Party was a great success. Hillary therefore decided to push on to the South Pole, where he arrived in January 1958, the first man to reach the Pole by terrestrial transportation.
Fifty years later, during the fourth International Polar year, great memories of the TAE expedition are still hanging around. Scott Base has celebrated its Fiftieth Anniversary, books are being published on the history of New Zealand and Antarctica, photographic exhibitions are being held, talks are being given. But one of the most fantastic records is well kept between the walls in the office of Antarctica New Zealand, at the International Antarctic Centre, in Christchurch. It is the fabulous collection of pictures from the TAE : « There are more then 1300 photos and negatives », says Ursula Ryan, who has looked after the Pictorial Collection since 2005, as part of her role as Information Advisor with Antarctica New Zealand, the NZ Antarctic programme. « Of these 1300 photos of the TAE, 170 are already digitized », she explains. Mrs. Ryan takes me the Archive, where temperature and humidity are kept under control. The TAE photos and negatives are archived one by one, each with its contact print. Most are 6 x 6 negatives. It looks like a treasure. I asked Ursula to pick her favorite TAE photo. On the computer screen she shows the picture of the TAE HUT, the first building of Scott Base, now an Historic monument under the Antarctic Treaty. « I like this photo because we see the TAE Hut, the New Zealand flag flying beside the hut and boxes of materials still lying around », says Ursula Ryan. « The landscape in the background is fantastic, with Mount Discovery peering just over the roof of the Hut. I really like that mountain ». This photograph was published in « Ice Age, Celebrating 50 years of New Zealand in Antarctica », published in June 2007 by Claire Duncan, in conjunction with Antarctica NZ, with contributions of John Claydon, Bill Cranfield, David Harrowfield and Baden Norris. In the same booklet is published a photo of the Hut today.

A selection of the TAE photos can be seen on this website :
http://www.scottbase50years.co.nz

Antarctica New Zealand : http://www.antarcticanz.govt.nz

Lucia Simion and Ursula Ryan

PHOTOS: TAE632, Antarctica NZ Pictorial Collection
E. Barnes, Antarctica NZ Pictorial Collection K250-06/07

CHRISTCHURCH, GATEWAY TO ANTARCTICA

Very few places on Earth are lucky enough to be nicknamed “Gateway to Antarctica”. They can be counted on the fingers of one hand: Hobart in Tasmania; Ushuaia in Argentina; Punta Arenas, overlooking the Straight of Magellan in Chile; Cape Town in South Africa and of course Christchurch, in New Zealand. It is from these locations that intrepid explorers and navigators have set sail to the Great Unknown, in search of the Terra australis incognita and beyond, to the magnetic South Pole and to the geographical South Pole. In those times there were no satellite images to tell you how the path would look like. In Antarctica, no native people could give clues to the explorers, nor help them with their own experience of survival, as with the Eskimos in the Arctic. Among these few “Gateways to the Antarctic”, Christchurch and Hobart are my favorites. I have been in Hobart many times, but I never lived there. I did however spend three months in Christchurch in 2004 and 2005, when I attended the Graduate Certificate in Antarctic Studies (GCAS) organized by Gateway Antarctica, the University of Canterbury and Antarctica New Zealand. So Christchurch is almost home for me. And I am always happy to be back here. I like to visit the historic places where Scott, Shackleton and Sir Edmund Hillary have been – prior to their long journey South to the Big Freeze. I like to have a drink at the Warners Hotel – where Scott used to stay and where a suite is named after him – or pass by Scott’s statue, especially after sunset, when night is coming and the sky is deep blue, glowing with light. Wearing his pale Burberry’s polar clothes, Scott’s statue looks like a ghost: where are his teammates, Lawrence Oates, Henry Birdie Bowers, Dr. Wilson, Edgar Evans? Everything is silent. Memories makes no noise. I think of the statue of Italo-Australian meteorologist Louis Bernacchi, standing on the waterfront in Hobart. Bernacchi (who participated in the first overwintering on the continent with Borchgrevink, at Cape Adare in 1899-1900), is flanked by his dog Joe. He doesn’t look like a ghost, he’s a scientist, an explorer. A few yards away from Scott’s statue (made by his wife Kathleen and offered to the City of Christchurch), stands the elegant building of the Canterbury Museum; it holds quite interesting antarctic memorabilia from several expeditions, including those from the heroic age. Polar clothes, tents, skis, a motorized sledge taken to the Antarctic by Shackleton; a bunch of sennegrass from the Terra Nova Expedition. What is “sennegrass”? Read Scott’s diaries and you will know: it’s a special grass, with very long leaves. Explorers used to stuff it into their boots to absorb sweat. Every evening they took it out from the boots; the sweat instantly freezes up, so they just had to shake it, and the sennegrass was ready to be used again the following day. I guess that it was traditionally used by the Eskimo people. In the Canterbury Museum you will also see canned pemmican — dried meat mixed with fat. There was pemmican for men and “dog pemmican”. Pemmican is almost an antarctic explorer legend, like the Scott tents and the Primus stove (exhibited here).The Canterbury Museum also has a Ferguson tractor (tiny vehicle with which Sir Ed Hillary was able to cross some 2,000 kilometers of Antarctic icefields, glaciers, crevasses and ice shelves, prior to reaching the geographical South Pole, where he waited for Vivian Fuch to arrive on his orange British Transantarctic expedition snowcats (one is on display). Other Antarctic memorabilia include a copy of the Aurora Australis (the book printed in the Antarctic by Shackleton and Frank Wild), hand-written notes by Scott, a medical box, skis, sledges, and polar clothes worn by Richard Byrd. Busts of the explorers peer out here and there, with Byrd and Fuchs being the most fierce-looking ones.In another large area of the Canterbury Museum there is a partially reconstructed science station: Hallett station, a permanent American-New Zealand base which was built at Cape Hallett, Northern Victoria Land, for the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58. Cape Hallett is home to the second largest Adélie penguin rookery in Antarctica (50,000 couples); to build the station, 8,000 penguins had to be removed from their breeding grounds and fences were installed to prevent them from going back “home”. DC3 and Hercules LC-130 used to land at Hallett station during the summer months (which is during the breeding season).Nowadays explorers (scientists and technicians) don’t set sail from nearby Lyttelton, a wonderful natural harbor a few kilometers away from downtown Christchurch, but board US Hercules LC-130s, RNZAF Hercules C-130s and US C-17s from Christchurch airport, side by side with Boeing 747s or Airbus 320s. Still, Christchurch glows with the charm of the heroic age of exploration, and when I sit comfortably onboad a giant C-17, heading south to the Ice, my thoughts go to the intrepid explorers who opened the way to the new age of exploration — science, technology and logistics on the last frontier of our planet.


By Lucia Simion, who also blogs in Italian.

Photos : Lucia Simion

THE NORTH POLE WAS HERE

Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal

Starred Review. Grade 6 Up–This exciting book is certain to fascinate readers. Revkin, a New York Times reporter, relates his journey to the top of the world in the company of scientists studying climate changes. The informative chapters weave together accounts of his experiences and observations with details about the environment, its exploration, and scientific concepts. He recounts ancient perceptions of the far north, the difficulties faced by the first explorers, and the highly publicized early-20th-century race to the pole. He also covers topics such as the movement of the magnetic pole, extracting and studying core samples of ancient rock for geological information, and tactics for surviving extreme conditions. The work of climatologists and oceanographers is introduced, along with a glimpse at the possible effects of global warming. Shortened articles from the New York Times on related subjects appear throughout. The illustrations include full-color photographs of the author's trek, archival reproductions and photos of previous excursions, original diagrams that clarify concepts, and maps. A blend of colorful full-bleed photos with text overlaid and smaller, bordered images makes for a dynamic layout. The wonderfully written narrative will pull youngsters into the book and hold them there willingly until the last page.–Jodi Kearns, University of Akron, OH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From the New York Times website: http://www.nytimes.com/

Andrew Revkin has spent nearly a quarter century covering subjects ranging from Hurricane Katrina and the Asian tsunami to the assault on the Amazon, from the troubled relationship of science and politics to climate change at the North Pole. He has been reporting on the environment for The New York Times since 1995, a job that has taken him to the Arctic three times in three years. In 2003, he became the first Times reporter to file stories and photos from the sea ice around the Pole. He spearheaded a three-part Times series and one-hour documentary in 2005 on the transforming Arctic.

Before joining The Times, Mr. Revkin was a senior editor of Discover, a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, and a senior writer at Science Digest. Mr. Revkin has a biology degree from Brown and a Master's degree in journalism from Columbia. He has taught environmental reporting as an adjunct professor at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism.

He lives in the Hudson River Valley with his wife and two sons. In spare moments, he is a performing songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who often accompanies Pete Seeger at regional shows and plays in a folk-roots band, Uncle Wade.

LINK: please see to the right

COLLOQUE AU SENAT, A PARIS: SPOUTNIK ET L'AUBE DE L'AGE SPATIAL. MARDI 9 OCTOBRE 2007.

CE TEXTE EST EXTRAIT DU SITE DE L'ESA; connectez-vous sur: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM26Z6H07F_France_0.html

50 ans de révolutions spatiales au Sénat le 9 octobre avec l'ESA et le CNES

A l'occasion de l'ouverture de la Fête de la Science et des célébrations du cinquantenaire du lancement de Spoutnik 1, un symposium de haut niveau est organisé au Sénat sur la manière dont l'accès de l'humanité à l'espace a changé le visage de notre civilisation.

Le soir du 4 octobre 1957, au cœur de la steppe kazakhe, sur un site secret qui n'a pas encore été baptisé du nom de Baïkonour - emprunté à un village situé à plus de 350 km de là dans le but de tromper les services secrets occidentaux - l'équipe de Sergueï Korolev prépare le lancement d'un missile R-7 avec une charge utile un peu spéciale. En lieu et place de l’habituelle ogive militaire de plusieurs tonnes, a pris place une petite sphère métallique pourvue de quatre antennes, de deux batteries et d'un émetteur. La trajectoire de ce lancement a elle aussi été modifiée. Plus question de viser un polygone militaire du Kamtchatka ou une région déserte de l'Océan Pacifique. Le passager de ce missile n’est pas prévu pour retomber sur Terre. Du moins pas avant d'avoir effectué de nombreuses orbites autour de la planète.

Le lancement de Spoutnik 1, premier satellite artificiel a été un succès bien au-delà des espérances de ses concepteurs. Ce qui n'était initialement qu'une simple démonstration technologique a ébranlé le monde de la Guerre Froide, et l'affrontement Est-Ouest a pu se cristalliser un temps sur des objectifs pacifiques : placer le premier homme sur orbite, puis le premier homme sur la Lune, effectuer des séjours de plus en plus longs à bord de stations orbitales, mais aussi ramener les premières images de Vénus et de Mars, d'abord depuis l'orbite, puis depuis la surface de ces planètes.

Meteosat a changé la vie des Européens

L’espace omniprésent

En quelques années, les satellites ont envahi le quotidien de l'humanité, révolutionnant la météorologie et les télécommunications. L'espace est devenu enjeu stratégique, technologique, scientifique puis économique.

Les sondes spatiales puis les observatoires en orbite ont révolutionné nos connaissances en astronomie et en astrophysique. Et en repoussant toujours plus loin les limites de l'exploration, en nous livrant les premières clés pour comprendre la question de nos origines, du « Big Bang » à l'émergence de la vie sur notre planète, elles sont paradoxalement venues replacer la vie de l'homme sur Terre au centre de notre perception de l'Univers.

Plus près de nous, les satellites ont apporté une nouvelle vision de la Terre. Scrutée, mesurée, analysée, décryptée, surveillée, celle-ci a commencé à révéler ses forces et ses faiblesses, et les humains ont pu pour la première fois prendre conscience de sa fragilité et de l'ampleur des conséquences de leurs propres activités sur son état de santé. Par la télédétection, il est aussi devenu possible pour la première fois d'évaluer clairement les ressources et d'apprendre à les gérer.

En reliant les hommes par les télécommunications, en montrant que l'environnement se moque des frontières politiques et en amenant les nations à coopérer pour atteindre des objectifs qui les dépassent, l'espace a également changé la perception que l'humanité avait d'elle même, ouvrant de nouveaux champs politiques et socio-économiques, mais aussi philosophiques, culturels ou artistiques.

Partenaire invisible de notre quotidien, instrument de collecte et de divulgation des connaissances, source d'inspiration pour tous et en particulier pour les jeunes générations qui y joueront un rôle toujours plus important, cinquante ans après Spoutnik 1, l'espace est omniprésent dans nos vies.

	Jean-Jacques Dordain

Rencontre au Sénat

Ce sont tous ces différents aspects de ce premier demi-siècle de conquête spatiale qui seront évoqués le 9 octobre au Palais du Luxembourg, lors du symposium intitulé « Fenêtres sur le Cosmos : Spoutnik et l'Aube de l'Âge Spatial », organisé par l'ESA et le CNES sous le haut patronage du Président du Sénat et le patronage de l'Office Parlementaire d'Evaluation des Choix Scientifiques (OPECST).

Aux côtés de personnalités renommées des mondes de la science et de la culture, plusieurs représentants de l'ESA contribueront aux débats, : Jean-Jacques Dordain, directeur général ; David Southwood, directeur du Programme Scientifique ; Marcello Coradini, coordinateur des missions d'exploration du Système Solaire ; ainsi que les astronautes Jean-François Clervoy et Jean-Pierre Haigneré.

Participeront également à l'événement : le Comité International de la Recherche Spatiale (Cospar), l'Agence spatiale italienne (ASI) et le Centre national italien de la Recherche (CNR), le Global Science Forum, l'Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale et l'Institut National de Physique Nucléaire, le Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace du Bourget, le Metropolitan Museum of Arts, Moebius Production, le Centre du Patrimoine Mondial de l'Unesco, l'Organisation de Coopération et de Développement Economiques (OCDE), le World Political Forum, l'Ecole Normale Supérieure, et le Comité Everest-K2.

Les débats seront enregistrés par le service vidéo du Sénat et mis à disposition pendant un an sur le site Internet de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure (http://www.diffusion.ens.fr/).

Les participants au Symposium auront la possibilité de visiter également l’exposition de 80 photos historiques couvrant l'épopée spatiale de Spoutnik à nos jours, organisée par le CNES sur les grilles du Jardin du Luxembourg.

Pour participer au symposium, une réservation est indispensable auprès du Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace (MAE) avant le 3 octobre (voir contact ci-dessous).

Le colloque sera animé par PAOLA ANTOLINI, Anthropologue et Journaliste. Paola a déjà animé de nombreux colloques sur le thème de l'ESPACE.

Ariane 5 et l'obélisque de la Concorde, 33 siècles d'aventure humaine se cotoient à Paris

L’espace célébré à travers la France

L'ESA prendra également part à plusieurs autres événements organisés en France dans le cadre des célébrations du cinquantenaire du lancement de Spoutnik 1.

A Bordeaux, du 30 septembre au 7 octobre, la « Semaine spatiale » avec une exposition à l'Espace Mably et deux journées de colloques sur le thème « 100 ans de Conquête Spatiale, 1957-2007-2057 », les 1er et 2 octobre, à la Cité Mondiale. L'astronaute Jean-François Clervoy de l'ESA et sa consœur Julie Payette du Canada, Etat ayant un Accord de coopération avec l'ESA, participeront aux conférences, ainsi que Bernard Foing, directeur scientifique du programme SMART-1.

A Toulouse, la « Semaine spatiale » sera également célébrée avec, le 4 octobre, inauguration à la Cité de l'Espace de l'exposition « Cosmomania, l'incroyable aventure de l'espace », en partenariat avec l'ESA. Ouverte jusqu'au 6 janvier, cette exposition de 450m2 retracera 50 ans d'aventure spatiale, notamment grâce à des « bulles temporelles » récréant l’atmosphère de l’époque des grandes premières historiques.

Et, toujours en cette date anniversaire du 4 octobre, la Cité de l'Espace accueillera une table ronde des maires de la Communauté des Villes Ariane, qui associe 18 agglomérations et les industriels du spatial qui y sont implantés ainsi que le CNES et l'ESA, et démontre combien le spatial a aussi une influence sur la vie économique et culturelle locale, sur Terre.

Au cours de la semaine seront également organisées des rencontres avec des astronautes du monde entier, dont Jean-François Clervoy et Julie Payette, ainsi que les anciens astronautes de l’ESA Claudie Haigneré et Philippe Perrin.

A Paris, du 26 au 28 octobre, à l'occasion de la Fête des Transports, une maquette au 1/5e d'Ariane 5 sera exposée sur la place de la Concorde, à l'entrée de l'exposition disposée le long de l'Avenue des Champs Elysée. Un stand de l'ESA présentera notamment des vues de la Terre prises depuis la Station spatiale internationale ainsi que des témoignages de ses astronautes au retour de leur mission en orbite terrestre.

Pour vous inscrire au symposium du 9 octobre, veuillez contacter :

Patricia Hingant
Service de la Communication
Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace
Tél. : +33 1 49 92 70 33
Courriel : patricia.hingant @ mae.org

THE MAGIC OF SUNRISE IN ANTARCTICA

A view of Ross Island from Black Island, about 25 miles away (taken July 27, 2007).
The sunrise colors last weeks in Antarctica.

Photo credit: Chad Carpenter/National Science Foundation

IN THE SANTA BARBARA CHANNEL: SHIP KILL BLUE WHALE

Two months ago, in August, I have been whalewatching for Blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) 20 miles offshore Santa Barbara, and I had the chance to see 6 Blue whales in an area less than 1 Km2 wide, between the coast and the Santa Barbara Channel islands. It was quite windy and the sea was rough, but we had the chance to spend one hour with the whales, and it was a great experience. Personally, I have been whalewatching in many places around the world, including Antarctica, and I have never seen so many Blue whales altogether, in a relatively small area. We were onboard the catamaran Condor Express. Among the group of Blue whales there was also a mother and a calf.
Maybe, the Blue whale killed by a large ship was one of the individuals we had the chance to watch last August. That's why this is a very sad news for me. The Blue whale body stranded on the beach is a very sad sight. The Santa Barbara Channel is an extraordinary and "relatively safe" reserve for many species of whales; large ships should therefore pass offshore the area, to avoid accidents like this one. Whales are not aware of shipping lanes!
Blue whales have been under heavy hunting pressure for almost 200 years and were hunted almost to extinction: they now deserve safe heavens where to breed, feed and just swim into the big blue ocean.

L.S.

_______________________________________________________________________

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED BY THE SANTA BARBARA INDEPENDENT.

THE AUTHOR IS BEN PRESTON,
Santa Barbara Independent Assistant Web Editor.

September 20, 2007

By Ben Preston (Contact)

Although blue whales are making a remarkable recovery from the devastation meted out during the peak whaling years of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the endangered species still occasionally runs afoul of human activities. The blue whale found dead in the Santa Barbara Channel on Tuesday, September 11 was confirmed to have been killed by a large vessel traveling through the shipping lanes in the channel.

Researchers from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, working with the Channel Islands Marine and Wildlife Institute (CIMWI) and the County of Ventura Public Works Department, performed a necropsy on the whale, burying under the beach at Faria County Park what remains weren’t kept for research. According to Paul Collins, the Natural History Museum’s curator of vertebrate zoology, relatively minor exterior lacerations were seen initially. However, as the research team peeled back layers of blubber and delved deeper into the carcass of the deceased animal, significant bruising, many broken vertebrae, and a severed spinal cord confirmed that it was killed by a ship. “The abdomen was full of blood from major damage to the organs,” Collins said. “These fresh bleeds were consistent with a ship strike.”

Collins explained that they received a call from a research vessel from Oregon — which was tagging blue whales for tracking purposes — that one was floating in the channel near the northwest end of Santa Rosa Island. A National Geographic film crew was aboard and filmed the sighting, including underwater shots that showed several sharks feeding on the underside of the carcass. “During the necropsy, we measured one shark bite as being 22 inches across,” Collins said.

Although Collins and his team were alerted to the animal’s presence on Tuesday, it took until Wednesday evening to gain the permits required from the National Park Service to land the whale on Santa Rosa Island. By that time, it had washed all the way to Ventura County and onto the beach at Hobson’s County Park. The necropsy indicated that the animal had been dead for almost a week and a half.

Collins’s necropsy team was comprised of himself, Sausalito Marine Mammal Center veterinarian Frances Guillard, CIMWI president Sam Dover, his vice president Greg Cocklin, and the Natural History Museum’s entomologist, Michael Caterino. Collins recalled a dead whale he worked with in 1980 at Hollister Ranch, saying it took nearly a month and a half to remove the skeleton. “Heavy equipment certainly helps,” he said, referring to the machines provided by public works. “We couldn’t have gotten the head off in this amount of time without it.”

The skull and much of the skeleton of the whale — described by Collins as a 72-foot female, approximately three to five years old — were taken to CIMWI’s headquarters, located at the old Vista del Mar School site near Gaviota. For the next year and a half, researchers from the Natural History Museum and CIMWI will study the skeleton and prepare it for display.

“The Vista del Mar isn’t abandoned anymore, like people thought it was,” Dover said. “We’re developing a stranding center up there.” He described the site as ideal for their work because of the available space and its distance from developed areas. There the smell of decaying cetacean parts should not raise protests from neighbors.

As for the significance of the blue whale killed last week, Collins said the incident was both good and bad. “It was good because it indicates an increase in the number of whales out there,” he said, “and bad because we don’t like to see any endangered animals killed.” According to recent studies, the population of blue whales in the Northern Hemisphere is currently between 3,000 and 4,000. Pre-whaling estimates indicate that their numbers were once as high as 350,000 worldwide.

PHOTO CREDIT:

Santa Barbara Natural history museum

LINKS:

http://www.acsonline.org/factpack/bluewhl.htm

http://www.independent.com/news/2007/sep/20/ship-kills-blue-whale/

PENGUIN FACTS

Work in progress

Un petit camp au bout de la Terre

A quoi ressemblait le Pôle Sud géographique il y a un demi-siècle, en 1956? Et ben regardez, voilà le Pôle - 90°S - lors de l'Année Géophysique Internationale. Incroyable, n'est-ce pas? Quarante-six ans auparavant (en Décembre 1911) Roald Amundsen et ses quatre coéquipiers, puis le Capitaine Scott et ses quatre compagnons (un mois plus tard, en Janvier 1912) rejoignaient ce lieux perdu au bout de la terre.
"Great God, this is an awful place!" avait dit Scott en arrivant au Pôle, après un voyage épuisant et surtout après la décevante découverte du pavillon norvégien, qui flottait sur la tente abandonnée par Amundsen.
Aujourd'hui, le Pôle sud accueille la nouvelle base Américaine ultramoderne Amundsen-Scott, nommée d'après les deux explorateurs. Depuis McMurdo, le Pôle peut être rejoint en trois heures de vol, à bord d'un Hercules LC-130, de la US Air Force.

PHOTO CREDIT: US ANTARCTIC PHOTO LIBRARY-NSF

FIFTHY YEARS AGO IN ANTARCTICA

FIFTHY YEARS AGO IN ANTARCTICA, the key word was already "collaboration"!

Photograph by: Dave Grisez, National Science Foundation
US Antarctic Photo Library

Date Taken: January 1957

The ship in the foreground is the HMNZS ENDEAVOR, which brought construction materials for the first New Zealand Scott Base as well as supplies for the overland crossing to South Pole in which the Hillary team was to lay depot supplies for Dr. Vivian Fuchs' overland team, crossing the continent from the other direction. The ship in the background is the U.S.N.S. GREENVILLE VICTORY. The ships were moored three miles from Ross Island.

TOURISM IN THE POLAR REGIONS

BOOK: TOURISM IN THE POLAR REGIONS

Author: UNEP and The International Ecotourism Society (TIES)

From the Publisher's website:

Tourism is a growing activity in the Polar Regions. In the Arctic, tourism is already an important component of the economies of the north. In the Antarctic, the number of tourists landing on continental Antarctica continues to rise sharply. There are serious concerns that tourism is promoting environmental degradation in the Polar Regions (especially in the Arctic) by putting extra pressures on land, wildlife, water and other basic necessities, and on transportation facilities.
This publication explains issues and impacts of relevance to polar tourism and provides a selection of good practices for various stakeholders. The publication builds on UNEP-UNWTO 12 principles on sustainable tourism development. The trends and patterns of tourism in Polar Regions are summarised and agenda of policy implication is identified. The publication addresses the main challenges related with the following impacts of tourism in the Polar Regions: Land management; Biodiversity conservation; Cultural Heritage and Climate change.

Publisher: UNEP, June 2007

Website: UNEP, Publications (see on the right)

PHOTO CREDIT: Lucia Simion (chiedere prima di utilizzare, grazie).