On October 1st, the first day of our government shutting down I departed for my third field season in Antarctica. I was all set to help anchor the primary productivity sector of the LTER out of Palmer Station. We arrived at Palmer on the evening of October 8th and were greeted by the station manager who laid out the orientation schedule for the next day. We woke up the next morning excited to start our field season but something wasn't right, all our orientation meetings had been cancelled and instead there was an All Hands Meeting at 9am in the Palmer Station Lounge. This wasn't looking good... We all gathered in the lounge fully filling it and received the bad news; Palmer Station would be moving into caretaker status and all but a select handful of essential personnel would be heading back home. The National Science Foundation (NSF) wasn't getting their funding therefore the Antarctic Support Contract (ASC) didn't have theirs and we would be unable to have our research field season. I don't think anything could of been more depressing to hear at that moment. Here is a link to one of the first articles about this whole situation.
In the days that followed we worked on prepping station for the shut down. Scientists have had to sort through cargo and decide on what needs to be shipped back to the warehouse in Chile, or worse all the way back home. Some things can remain staged in the event we attempt to salvage the field season. The worst however, is watching many of these wonderful people find out that they have been terminated. While my research position is soft money I am lucky enough to be going home to a full time job with benefits. Many of my fellow Antarctic comrades are finding out that they are terminated for the season. It is a sad situation for the loss of science this year as well as for the many of us that make personal sacrifices to come here year after year.
Lets hope our government has some better news for us going forward.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
