All-women team off to Antarctica
AN ALL-women team of scientists from Rhodes University is set to make South African polar research history when they sail off to Antarctica at the end of the month.
The three microbiologists, headed up by Dr Gwynneth Matcher, will work around the South African National Antarctic Expedition IV (Sanae) base and Troll station at Jutulsessen.
According to Matcher, an all-female team is an anomaly on research expeditions to the Antarctica base, which was opened in 1997.
“That does not happen,” she said. “It’s not deliberate, it has just worked out that way.”
Nicknamed the “White Desert” by researchers, the flat landscape may have lots of snow and ice but it is still incredibly dry as it has no water.
It is also extremely windswept and can reach -89°C during the winter.
Although the team is going during the summer, it is still icy cold with temperatures well below freezing – despite the hole in the ozone layer being directly above Antarctica.
During the summer months there is 24 hours of sunlight, which allows the researchers to work long hours, but they have to regularly slap on large amounts of high-factor sunblock to prevent getting fried by the extreme solar radiation.
Matcher has teamed up with PhD students Karin Staebe and Sunet van Aswegen to research Antarctic microbial ecology.
Her team are the only microbiologists working in the area during the almost month-long expedition and will study the bacteria living in isolated meltwater ponds and in the soils on exposed mountain peaks that stick out the icy land mass.
“In the areas we are studying you won’t find any animals,” she said.
“You will occasionally find migratory birds that nest inland such as skuas and storm petrels, and that’s it.”
The team will use sequencing to look at the DNA of these microbes.
A second team of four Rhodes researchers, headed by Professor Ian Meiklejohn, includes three women.
Despite several South African universities sending teams of scientists and students to conduct polar research again this Christmas, Rhodes University spokesperson Catherine Deiner said the largest contingent came from Grahamstown this year.
Prof Meiklejohn’s team from the geography department will conduct research into what geomorphological (rock) features support the growth of lichen and whether or not they play a role in rock weathering.
Three MSc students – Jenna Knox, Tebogo Masebe and Nicola Wilmot – will work with Meiklejohn.
Although Masebe was introduced to the uniqueness of Antarctica and the research done there during her firstyear studies, she admitted the thought of going there had not appealed to her at first.
However, her love for geography grew and she realised it was too good a research opportunity to turn down. Besides preparing herself, she also had to warm her parents up to the idea.
Masebe will look in minute detail at how changes in atmospheric weather affected ground temperature.
The research will help give scientists a better understanding of what is going on in Antarctica in terms of climate change, as the area is considered an early warning system for the rest of the world.