Antarctic work to start early

Press, 20 August 1979, Page 7

Antarctic work to start early

New Zealand’s Antarctic programme will start six weeks early this year. The first fly-in is scheduled for August 27. There would be fewer people going to Scott Base this year, because of “curbs on Government expenditure,” said the information officer in the Antarctic division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (Mr K. O. Clegg). Only 143 people would undergo an intensive training course at the Lake Tekapo Military Camp during this week, compared with 167 last year. Also training at Tekapo, with Scott Base’s summer workers, would be three helicopter pilots and an engineer, who would work with the planned West German expedition to northern Victoria Land, Mr Clegg said. This was the first time that R.N.Z.A.F. helicopters would not be used at Tekapo. Helicopters New Zealand, Ltd, had won a three-year contract worth about $1 million to New Zealand to work with the West Germans in Antarctica, Mr Clegg said. Although only one Llama helicopter would be used at Tekapo, the company would send two Hughes 500 helicopters to the Antarctic. West Germany was the latest signatory to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty and planned to build a permanent base on the continent, Mr Clegg said. The first aircraft to fly to McMurdo Station would be four Hercules which would carry American and New Zealand workers and fresh supplies for men who had been Wintering over at Scott Base and McMurdo Sound.

In spite of the economic situation, all the continuous scientific studies were being maintained, Mr Clegg said. The main project for the year would be the McMurdo Sound drilling programme. Eight of the 14 summer workers

who would go down on the first flight of the season were involved in this. Initiated by the Antarctic and Geophysics divisions of the D.S.I.R. and Victoria University, the object was to drill from a specially formed sea-ice platform, through 2m of ice, down through 180 m of water, and into the seabed to a depth of 1300 m. From samples, it was hope to obtain a record of early glacial history and uplift of the Tran s-Antarctic Mountains. With information gained from earlier international drilling projects, it was hoped to piece together a picture of the ice sub-structure, Mr Clegg said. Further attempts would be made to obtain fumarolic gas samples from the inner crater floor of Mount Erebus by an international team of New Zealand, French, and American scientists. Canterbury University’s zoology department would continue studies of the marine ecosystem under the permanent cover of the Ross Ice Shelf, and Auckland University would conduct experiments involving adaptation to the cold, and respiratory adaptation, in Antarctic fish.