What exactly is South Africa doing in its new, state-of-the-art Antarctic research base? Lesley Cowling reports
PICTURES of Antarctica show a pristine wonderland: stunning white snow and poster- blue seas, penguins in their zoot suits, the wildest cleanest place on earth.
But it’s also the coldest, windiest place on earth. In winter there’s no light, in summer there’s no dark, and humans could not survive in this wasteland of ice and snow long without modern technology.
Its inhospitable nature has kept it pure. Now more and more nations have set up camp on the ice. They’re there to do research, they say, in the world’s largest natural laboratory.
And to prove it, the nations with bases in Antarctica are signatories to a treaty that declares the continent a natural reserve devoted to peace and science. There is a prohibition on mining in the area and rules for environmental protection of the continent have been established.
South Africa’s involvement in the Antarctic dates back to 1959, when Norway decided to vacate its base in Queen Maud Land and give it to South Africa. South Africa also became one of the original signatories to the Antarctic Treaty at that time.
Norway’s base was built on an ice shelf and, as the years passed, it began to sink into the ice. So when the South Africans began planning a new base, they decided to site it on rock, 160km inland from the coast. An added bonus was the view: the old base looked onto an expanse of snow and ice, but from the new base – unromantically dubbed Sanae 4 – you can see a range of polar mountains.
The new base looks from a distance like three linked train carriages on a bridge, perched up on stilts. It cost more than R30-million, and was specially designed for Antarctic conditions. The rounded ends and smoothed shape decrease wind resistance and the walls are made of fibreglass to increase insulation from the cold. The stilts allow snow to blow past the building instead of collecting against it and burying it.
All this effort was to make life easier for the teams of scientists, researchers and support staff that spend summer or winter periods there.
Richard Skinner, who co-ordinates the scientific projects in Antarctica, says the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, which is responsible for the Antarctic programme, does not conduct research itself. Instead, they make funds of between R2-million and R3-million available for university or other institutions to conduct research there.
The application process is quite rigorous: research proposals are vetted by international and local peers, then a national task group decides which projects should be supported.
A chosen few get to board the SAAgulhas in November and go to Antarctica for the few summer months, gathering things like rocks or setting up equipment to collect more arcane data, before heading back to do the real analysis in university labs in more temperate climes.
A few very hardy souls do what’s called “overwintering” – staying for the dark, freezing Antarctic winter. Four physicists will be doing that this year, working on the research projects that have been designed for the dark months. At least one of these involves looking at the moving cloud of colours that are the South Pole’s equivalent of Northern lights, also known as the aurora. The wintering team from Potchefstroom and Natal universities will also measure magnetic fields, radar, cosmic rays and radio waves.
This is not just about science. Skinner says South Africa needs a presence in Antarctica, because “we need to remain party to future decisions about the continent”. A number of states have laid territorial claims to Antarctica. South Africa is not one of them. But that does not mean letting someone else camp in the backyard.