Close encounters
Marine biologist may witness Antarctic iceberg crash
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By CAROLYN HANDY Staff Writer - Published: January 16, 2005
McMURDO STATION, Antarctica — An iceberg about the size of Long Island is poised to hit the Drygalski Ice Tongue — and the son of Ludlow resident Ralph Pace is about 80 miles away, working on marine research at McMurdo Station.
"Doug has gone through so many different things down there, he takes this as something that goes with the territory," Ralph Pace said. "(The iceberg) is a substantial piece of real estate … It may not just hit once. Depending on the direction it hits, it could strike three or four times."
Pace said the huge iceberg was scheduled to reach the tongue sometime yesteday, but because of the time difference that puts his son "a good 12 to 16 hours ahead of us," he is not sure if it will be "McMurdo Time or Eastern Time."
A U.S. Coast Guard cutter has recently cut an 80-mile path into the McMurdo research station, Ralph Pace said, so ships can come in with supplies.
"I hope he is intelligent enough not to stand there when it's about to hit," Pace said.
The iceberg is decades old and is called B-15A. It broke off from B-15, which is about the size of Texas.
B-15A could break up into smaller icebergs or bounce out to sea and head north into the Pacific Ocean.
Pace said this is his son's fourth tour of duty in Antarctica and his second year running a laboratory there. He last saw him in August before he left for the Southern Hemisphere. Pace expects him to return by the end of February.
"In many respects, it's probably colder in Vermont than it is in Antarctica," Pace said.
Now, it is summertime there and the temperature could go as high as 39 degrees, he said.
Life at McMurdo is similar to living on a college campus or a northern mining town, Doug Pace said in an e-mail correspondence. Everyone lives in dormitories and gets their food at the main cafeteria, creating a college-like social environment.
He said the constant sunshine was difficult to get accustomed to and the last sunset was in mid-October.
"The sun is always up and when it's not cloudy it's always shining on us," he wrote. "It's pretty strange. The sun basically is traveling in a big circle around the sky. For the most part, you do get used to it. But on some nights when sleep is difficult, the sun being up makes it even more difficult. The rooms have good shades, so most of the light is filtered out, but it still gets through the cracks. It does have a way of making me work longer into the night."
"The summer here is probably similar to winter in Vermont," Pace said. "But the big difference is the geography. Vermont is a beautiful state that is covered with trees and gently rolling mountains. The terrain in Antarctica is dominated by two colors: white and dark brown."
Doug Pace said the white comes from the snow and ice that dominates the sea ice and much of the land, and the dark brown is from volcanic rock that makes up most of the visible land.
"There are no trees, except for fossilized trees that are probably 40 million years old and represent a time when Antarctica had a climate that was very similar to Vermont — this is when Antarctica was still attached to South America and hadn't drifted southward to its current location," he said.
Going for a drive is unlike a drive in the United States.
"Most of the roads are on sea ice, so you're basically driving on the frozen ocean anywhere you go," he said. "Obviously the roads aren't paved so you have to follow flags that mark the road. When bad weather comes in, you need to follow these flags to be sure you don't get yourself lost and drive into a huge ice crack. And if the weather gets really bad, you simply have to stop and wait for visibility to return."
Most of the roads are not on land, but on glaciers.
"The weirdest thing about driving on roads down here is the realization that, no matter how long you drive, the road you are on will not join up with a larger road which in turns joins up with an even larger road and take you someplace different," he said. "The roads in Antarctica are all dead-ends, they cannot take you very far from where you are. It's this feeling of isolation that is rather exhilarating."
Pace said the scientists do not have a set routine, but generally start working between 7 and 9 a.m. and work until about 7 p.m.
"It is an incredible opportunity to get to come to Antarctica and do science so everyone tries to get the most they can out of that opportunity," he said.
Typically, the National Science Foundation funds a three-year grant for an Antarctic project but only two years of field time. The proposed research projects are highly ambitious, because researchers must compete with many other top biologists, he said.
The long workweek in McMurdo is "quite easy," he said, because the town provides everything he needs. His commute to work is a one-minute walk from his dormitory. For lunch, he walks another minute to the cafeteria.
"Time spent in the states driving, shopping and cooking is all put to time in the lab running experiments, or better still being in the field collecting animals," he said.
His typical day might include assisting with diving operations on the sea ice to collect animals, culturing the animals, running experiments on the animals and analyzing the results of the experiments.
"Going out on the sea ice to collect animals is the most exciting part of the job," he said. "We will drive out on the sea ice and go to a dive hut. The dive huts are placed over the dive holes to offer the divers some protection from the elements."
Sometimes they see seals and penguins when on the ice, he said. Pace said he enjoys going to the sea ice edge where there is a lot of wildlife like seals, killer whales, and penguins.
"That's when life is really good and it's great to be in Antarctica," he said. "Penguins are my favorite animal to encounter. It's a rare opportunity to interact with an animal that is probably as interested in you as you are in it. They walk right up to you and look you over. They really have a lot of personality and their presence just has a way of inducing happiness."
Doug Pace is studying echinoderms, a type of marine animal that includes sea urchins, sea stars, brittle stars and crinoids. He is studying the Antarctic echinoderms because they have found ways to cope with the two unique features of the environment.
"It is the coldest marine environment on Earth with seawater temperatures just above their freezing point," he said. "The waters contain very little nutrients for most of the year and experience only a brief intense period of productivity in the early summer where there is a huge algal bloom."
His research group considers the synthesis and degradation of RNA (ribonucleic acid) in the animals, he said.
Doug Pace, 32, grew up in Massachusetts and New Jersey and his father retired to Vermont where his parents and brother now live.
During family vacations at Bar Harbor, Maine, he recalls playing on the beach at about age 7 with his brothers and seeing starfish and jellyfish everywhere.
"Looking at the ocean and wondering what … else could be in it completely filled up my imagination," he said.
Doug received his doctorate in marine biology in 2002 from the University of Southern California.
According to his father, Doug's only complaint about Ludlow is that it doesn't have an ocean.
So far, Doug has spent about 20 months, total, in Antarctica. During mid-August, when it's still winter there, it's extremely cold, he said, with temperatures from 50 to 80 below zero Centigrade.
"When it's that cold, it is very difficult to work and you really need to take the time to look after yourself and those around you to make sure no one gets hurt," he said. "The process of taking your gloves off for only a moment (a necessity sometimes to get enough dexterity to do something) can set you back significantly and potentially induce frostbite if the person is not careful."
As a marine biologist, he simply is trying to better understand how life works, he said.
"It's a real privilege to have job that I am whole-heartedly interested in doing," he said. "Being a scientist doesn't necessarily pay very well, but it pays enough and the life-experience rewards that I've gotten out of it so far have certainly helped to make the low pay a worthy burden to handle."
Contact Carolyn Handy at carolyn.handy@rutlandherald.com.
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