Littering is no longer permitted in Antarctica, so stray objects in the field are rare and tend to be decades old. The rare can is still of concern however, as aging metals disperse particles into the ecosystem. Their impact is particularly worrisome in sensitive biological environments such as the Dry Valleys where this can was found.

This week I’m posting more metal vessels to the blog’s Waste Stream Reclamation category where I catalog the discards I collected in Antarctica for use in my artwork.
Like many of my favorite finds, today’s item and the next two owe their transformed beauty to the continent’s punishing environment where they languished for decades.
This is an exceptionally tortured trio of cans, thoroughly stripped of labels by the
elements, rendering them Antarctica’s brand alone.

Pictured is an ocean organism I imagine marine biologists finding in the icy depths some day. But in addition to continually discovering many new sea floor communities, scientists are also studying ways in which known ones are changing. One such effort is ICE AGED (Investigating Change in Ecology in Antarctica by Gizmologists, Educators and Divers), run by the Benthic Ecology Lab at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, the folks behind SCINI mentioned a couple blog posts ago.

The ICE AGED team has returned to an Antarctic experiment site established in the 1960s, a time considered as the dawn of Antarctic benthic research. Comparing original data with the present state of marine life on abandoned equipment is presenting researchers with a unique opportunity to assess nearly five decades of changes in the local ecosystem. One of those researchers is Paul Dayton, now a 71-year-old professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who will be revisiting the very cages and floats he secured to the seafloor as a youth. Here’s wishing Paul and the team success in their research under the ice, and perhaps the discovery of a new organism or two in the process. Read their journals here.

I’ve been working more fabric into the sketchbook for texture, new color, and to maintain the project’s use of found material. It also works to reference the ubiquity of flags (and shreds thereof) in Antarctica.

The shapes here allude to the discovery of many new sea life species each year. There are more discoveries to come as 99% of the Antarctic seafloor remains to be explored.

This Long View sketchbook page takes Antarctic diving as its theme. At coastal bases around the continent, diving plays a role in underwater scientific research, construction, salvage work, and environmental cleanup.

In McMurdo Sound, science divers have been finding new sea life species for decades. They’re now also studying long term ecological change in seafloor communities by deploying remotely operated vehicles beneath the frozen ocean surface.

One such vehicle is SCINI run by the Benthic Ecology Lab at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. My friend Henry Kaiser, pictured in the sketchbook and photos above, documents the underwater robot in a short but stunning video found here.

Divers at the University of British Columbia recently launched a similar probe to study the accelerated shrinkage of Antarctic ice shelves. Their craft, named UBC-Gavia, navigates unchartered ocean environments to collect data necessary to studying the dynamic between sea water and glacier tongues. Read more about the project here.

Antarctic divers are a hard-working bunch who deal with extreme and challenging conditions. But the rewards are extraordinary. One is clearly scientific discovery. Another is creative inspiration, as Henry aptly demonstrates in this video. Enjoy.

This is the studio in October light as photographed by Lili Ong. I’m working on more
pieces for my Antarctic research station series at the moment. The next couple will
focus on Chinese bases, inspired by our summer visit to Shanghai’s Polar Research
Institute of China.

This vessel is one of my favorite Antarctic discards for its shape, color, material and texture. It’s also among the most mysterious. Any labels and markings are long gone, leaving only a threaded opening as a clue to its past life. I’ll venture to guess that it
was a fuel bottle, a standard piece of equipment past and present for use with liquid-
fuel stoves or motorized apparatus in the field.

This decades-old item was found at Marble Point by camp manager “Crunch” Noring
who’s contributed many other exquisite items to this project. Thank you once again sir!

This artfully rusted Cadbury tin was found and donated to the Long View Project by
Rae Spain, camp manager at Lake Hoare in Antarctica’s Dry Valleys. No identifying
marks remain apart from the script logo on the lid, but the artifact’s shape and size suggest it to be a can of Bourne-Vita, Cadbury’s malted drink product introduced
in 1948.

I consider it something of a companion piece to Sifta Sam, as both are Dry Valleys
discards made in England circa 1940s-50s. I’ll speculate that they both belonged
to the same research party, perhaps an early incarnation of the British Antarctic
Survey which has been the UK’s national Antarctic operator for over 60 years.

Intriguing also is the container’s hidden contents which rolls around with a dull thud.
I was briefly tempted to break the tape between lid and can to reveal the mystery,
but thoughts of encountering a congealed malt (or is it mold?) ball made me
reconsider. At least for now.

This week I resume posting the items I collected in Antarctica for use in my artwork.
All these found and donated objects are grouped under the “Waste Stream Reclama-
tion” category in the blog’s sidebar.

Today’s item is a weathered Sifta table salt container courtesy of “Crunch” Noring,
the Marble Point camp manager. Found underfoot at his Dry Valleys camp, this dis-
card is a remnant of the pre-Code of Conduct era when littering was common in
Antarctica. The packaging design suggests that the container dates from the 1940s,
when Sifta Salt and the fabulous Sifta Sam character (click the old salt for a close-
up!) were brand names of Palmer Mann and Co. Ltd. of Sandbach, Cheshire, UK.

The company is long defunct and very little information about it exists online, but
image reference indicates that the deteriorated area below Sifta Sam once read
“Jolly Good Salt.” This container is certainly the most delicate item in my collection
of discards. Its flaking label — or what’s left of it — appears to be just barely
hanging on.

When I traveled with my family to China and Mongolia this summer, I didn’t expect
the trip to figure into this blog. Antarctic-related encounters seemed unlikely, outside
of conjuring cold thoughts to battle the unrelenting heat.

But on arriving at Mongolia’s vast western steppes, the region’s grandeur triggered a profound sense of Antarctic déjà vu. The lack of ice and snow hardly mattered; there
were endless landscapes, diverse ecosystems, undisturbed environments, a sparse
human population, protected area designations, and science teams in the field. It was inspiring, and when it came time to leave for China, I resolved to find an Antarctic encounter of sorts there too.

Fortuitously, our itinerary included Shanghai, home to the Polar Research Institute of China. The thought of visiting China’s main polar research center was alluring. So was
the notion of gaining admission to an actual Communist government agency in the PRC.
It felt rather subversive, and a bit off-limits. Wouldn’t they suspect us as spies? Surely we’d be turned away. So when my wife Lili, who speaks Mandarin, successfully arranged
an appointment with the Institute, we were euphoric despite the fact that we had no
idea of what there was to see there.

The Institute is a hulking edifice in Shanghai’s Pudong district. We passed through the
complex’s security gate and into the lobby; no IDs checked. A staffer with a fittingly
icy demeanor led us to an exhibition room devoid of visitors, waved us in, and said
she’d be back in an hour. Photography was OK. Spies were clearly not a concern.

The exhibition showcases all manners of Chinese polar research and achievements.
There are dioramas, maps, models, charts, and a plethora of informational signage,
all in Chinese. I was grateful to have read up on China’s polar programs beforehand,
and Lili was grateful to be spared from having to translate all the text.

The gallery’s centerpiece is a large relief map showing China’s three polar research
stations in Antarctica: Great Wall Station on King George Island off the Antarctic
Peninsula, Zhongshan Station on the eastern Antarctic coast, and Kunlun Station
situated 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) above sea level at Dome Argus, the highest
point of the expansive East Antarctic ice sheet.

China is a relative newcomer to the Antarctic research community. Its polar scientific program only began in 1981 and the Polar Research Institute was founded in 1989.
Today China commands a noteworthy presence on the Ice and participates in several international projects at any given time.

A significant one is the U.S.-led Antarctic Gamburstev Province (AGAP) project, which
last year verified the existence of a rugged mountain range buried more than four
kilometers (2.5 miles) under the giant East Antarctic Ice Sheet.

China itself led an international team of scientists in 2008 in setting up a robotic observatory, PLATO (PLATeau Observatory) at Dome A that runs a variety of exper-
iments. Each of the last two winters, the instrumentation operated without a human within 600 miles for more than 200 days. Deemed a successful prototype for future
robotic observatories, the team is building two new PLATOs this year. One will be
deployed to the Japanese Antarctic station of Dome Fuji and the other is a higher-end addition to Dome A that supports a new suite of instruments. The National Science Foundation, which manages the U.S. Antarctic Program, supports the program by
providing Iridium satellite communications as well as funding several first-light site-
testing instruments.

These current endeavors, however, are absent from this exhibition whose static
displays limit it to broad overviews of polar research and past accomplishments.

Introducing new media would really bring the content to life and up to date.
I imagine a wall monitor featuring live broadcasts and breaking news from Ant-
arctica for example. Real-time updates would convey the excitement, pace, and
immediacy of science on the Ice and enhance the visitor experience immensely.

After an hour, the icy staffer re-appeared, ushered us back to the lobby, and showed
us the door.

I’ll admit I was hoping for a little something more from the visit; perhaps a tour or
a glimpse of a scientist. But I can’t complain; we’d found our Antarctic encounter,
inside a Communist government building no less.

Besides, there’s more: Back in central Shanghai on the Pudong end of the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel, we came across yet another Antarctic exhibition: the “Polar
Experience Museum” which isn’t so much a museum as an exhibition space with
distinct similarities to the Institute’s. This attraction, presumably a satellite of
the Institute, is pictured in these last three photos.

For those needing to scratch an Antarctic itch in Shanghai, the Polar Experience
Museum will probably suffice. It’s more centrally located than the Institute exhibit,
better lit, and populated by visitors.

If you do seek out the Polar Research Institute of China though, note that it’s soon to
be renamed the Chinese Polar Research Center. Its present location is 451 Jinqiao Road, Pudong, Shanghai 200136. Call ahead for an appointment at +86-21-5871-2101 or
fax +86-21-5871-1663.