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http://www.stalbansreview.co.uk/news/9540274.Polar_exploration_book_expected_to_fetch___20_000_at_auction/

Polar exploration book by Apsley Cherry-Garrard expected to fetch £20,000 at auction
5:09pm Sunday 19th February 2012 in

A rare first edition copy of the most famous book about Polar exploration written by a wealthy Wheathampstead explorer and signed and presented to Scott of the Antarctic’s widow, is set to fetch between £15,000 and £20,000 at an auction.

Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who inherited Damer Park at Gustard Wood above Wheathampstead, accompanied Scott of the Antarctic on his final ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic in 1910-1912.

Mr Cherry-Garrard, whose similarly-named father, Major General Apsley Cherry-Garrard was High Sheriff of Hertfordshire in 1901, was the expedition’s assistant zoologist. He also edited the expedition’s periodical, the South Polar Times.

In the 1948 film, Scott of the Antarctic, starring John Mills and James Roberston Justice, Cherry-Garrard was played by actor Barry Letts.

Scott led a party of five(not including Cherry-Garrard, who remained behind at the base camp) to the South Pole, which they reached on January 17,1912,only to discover that the Norwegian Roald Amundsen had got there first (in December 11).

Scott and his men died on the gruelling return journey. Their bodies were found eight months later by a search party, including Cherry-Garrard.

To mark the centenary of Scott’s death, on or around March 29,1912, the copy of Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s book, The Worst Journey In The World, is to be auctioned at Bonhams in London on March 30,when it is expected to sell for between £15,000 and £20,000.

The book was published in 1922 and was a gift from Cherry-Garrard to Scott of the Antarctic’s widow, Kathleen, who remarried that year. It is signed: “Inscribed to Mrs Hilton Young, with very grateful thanks from Cherry.”

Auctioneers Bonhams say: “It is particularly valuable because it contains her hand-written and often forthright comments on Cherry-Garrard’s account of the Scott expedition.

“Kathleen Scott was highly protective of her husband’s reputation and of his leadership of the expedition which ended, not only in failure to become the first men to reach the South Pole, but in the death of Scott and four of his immediate companions: Wilson,Evans,Oates and Bowers.”

One statement in the book proved from Kathleen Scott an emphatic pencilled margin note: “Rots!” Bonhams say: “Cherry-Garrard’s book is widely regarded as one of the greatest of all adventure stories but it is also admired as a lasting testament to man’s capacity for sacrifice and ability to endure great hardship.”

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography said: “In 1947,income tax demands and ill health obliged him(Cherry-Garrard) to sell Lamer (at Wheathampstead) which was demolished and he moved into a London flat.”

Cherry-Garrard was seventy three when he died at the Berkeley Hotel, Piccadilly, London,on May 18,1959.In his will he left nearly half a million pounds,or £481,158 six shillings and eightpence to be precise.

He is buried in the north west corner of St Helen’s churchyard at Wheathampstead and there is a commemorative bronze statue of him inside the church.

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http://www.penguin-news.com/index.php?option=com_flexicontent&view=items&id=260:argentina-claims-falklands-rig-in-argentine-waters

Argentina claims Falklands rig in Argentine waters
CreatedSunday, 19 February 2012

ARGENTINE newspaper Ambito Financiero has claimed exploration rig Leiv Eiriksson, contracted by two oil companies to drill to the south of the Falkland Islands, “was found, on Thursday, exploring in Argentine waters”, according to ‘irrefutable’ satellite images.

mercopress.com reported that oil industry sources downplayed the news and said that oil rig deployment in the Islands’ waters is quite different from what is published from Buenos Aires: “We are quite used to Argentine misinformation and imagination.” Furthermore, “there is a lot of artistic licence put into that (satellite) image – reality is quite different.”

Ambito reports that the rig along with Toisa Intrepid and the multipurpose Toisa Sonat, “at the end of last month were located very close to the 200 miles from the Argentine continental shelf, which caused alarm among (Argentine) authorities.” Later a third Norwegian flagged salvage vessel, Ocean Prince joined the group.

It added that in recent days both the Leiv Eiriksson and its accompanying vessels violated the borders of Argentina’s Economic Exclusion Zone, EEZ, having advanced between 8 to 10 nautical miles beyond the pre-determined limits, to 190 miles off the Argentine coast, based on images from the Mompesat satellite monitoring system to which Ambito had access.

The article went on, “The oil rig and companion ships spent over 90 hours in that location exploring or carrying out exploratory tasks, which led to speculation that the company is considering a third well, located within Argentine territorial waters.”

Ambito said irrefutable satellite images showed that on Wednesday the platform was located at the coordinates -53°59’54’7 south -58°76’51’1 west. However, by midday yesterday (Thursday) it had retreated and briefly sailed toward the Islands before dropping anchor at 53°35’44’63 south and 58°45’55’13 west. According to sources with access to the Mompesat satellite monitoring system, the positioning of the platform was brought to the attention of the authorities.

Ambito continued: “in recent months we detected that they were on the point of violating our economic exclusion zone and for this reason we have been constantly monitoring” said a source.

Meanwhile, added Mercopress, sources linked to the Argentine Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed that this, “is not the first time that an oil rig violates the zone limits, although it is the first time that this has happened since the diplomatic conflict bubbled to the surface in January.”

According to those sources, “the Ocean Guardian, exploring to the north of the archipelago since 2010 is (was) also positioned within Argentina’s continental shelf.”

Mercopress says however, that the article also partly explains a possible cause for the different interpretation of the limits of the adjoining EEZs: “For the Argentine state, according to the presentation by COPLA (National Committee for the Exterior Limit of the Continental Shelf) to the United Nations, the continental shelf of a bordering state includes the sea bed and sub-marine layers which extend beyond its territorial sea and across the length of the natural extension of its territory to the outer border of the continental margin, or to a distance of 200 miles counted from the base lines from which the borders of the territorial sea are measured, when the outer border of the continental margin does not reach the same distance.”

However, this position conflicts with the United Kingdom, who, taking the “bordering state” to be the Falklands/Malvinas Islands, consider a large part of the waters around the Islands to be their EEZ.

Ambito said the Argentine Foreign Affairs minister has sent notes of discouragement to the companies involved: to oil companies as well as the accompanying ships and support vessels. But also admits frustration at the lack of echo from the different complaints the Argentine government has sent out, and admits a fundamental problem: “It is the ‘kelper’ (Falklands’) government which awards the exploration licenses and therefore the complaint should be addressed to them, but doing so would in some way acknowledge sovereignty which contradicts the basic (sovereignty) claim.”

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http://earthsky.org/biodiversity/which-bird-migrates-the-farthest

Which bird migrates the farthest?

Over its lifetime of about 25 years, an Arctic Tern can fly a million kilometers – nearly three times the distance from the Earth to the moon.

The Arctic Tern breeds on the shores of the Arctic Ocean in northern hemisphere summer. And it feeds over the oceans of the southern hemisphere half a year later – in southern hemisphere summer. So, like many birds, this bird flies great distances every year to maintain its life of endless summertime.

North American Arctic Terns fly about 40,000 kilometers – or 24,000 miles – each year. That’s a distance about equal to the distance around the Earth.

An Arctic Tern can live for 25 years, so in its life-long quest for summer it can fly a million kilometers – nearly three times the distance from the Earth to the moon.

By the way, there are about 120 migratory bird species with populations in the United States and south of the equator. Most of these species cross the equator during migration. For example, the Red Knot flies from New England to far southern South America.

An Arctic Tern in Finland. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Other birds stay in one hemisphere, but go farther. For example, the Wandering Albatross spends most of its life aloft, circling the world over the oceans of the southern hemisphere. It stops only to breed on storm-swept islands near Antarctica.

A Wandering Albatross might fly 30,000 kilometers – that’s 18,000 miles – between breedings.

So while the Arctic Tern flies farthest of all birds, there are other bird species that come in a close second!

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http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=39919

Satellites Track Health of Seal, Penguin Populations in Antarctica
• Source: The Antarctic Sun
• Posted Saturday, February 18, 2012

A satellite image shows chinstrap penguin colonies at Baily Head, Deception Island, in 2003. The white patches are the colonies. Researchers are using high-resolution imagery shot from satellites to find, count and assess the population health of penguin and seal colonies around the Antarctic. Photo Credit: (c)DigitalGlobe Inc.; Image provided by National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Commercial Imagery Program

Peter Rejcek, Antarctic Sun Editor: Penguins from outer space. Sounds like the title of some new B-movie science fiction film starring Vin Diesel. But polar researchers are increasingly using high-resolution imagery shot from orbiting satellites to find, count and assess the population health of penguin and seal colonies around the Antarctic.

“The satellite imagery is the most important advancement in my field since satellite tagging. I think it’s an absolute game-changer,” said Heather Lynch, an assistant professor at Stony Brook University involved in a long-term census survey of brushtail and crested penguins around the Antarctic Peninsula.

“Suddenly, we know what we don’t know,” Lynch explained. “We can look through the imagery and find colonies that we never knew existed, and look at population changes at colonies that were either inaccessible because of their location or they were impossible to census because of their size.”

Lynch is an active user and advisory member of the Polar Geospatial Center (PGC), based at the University of Minnesota. PGC has access, through the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, to commercial satellite imagery with half-meter resolution — about the breadth of a man’s shoulders. The National Science Foundation-funded center provides high-resolution imagery and maps for U.S. Antarctic Program research and operations.

The main point of contact for all those users is Michelle LaRue, a research fellow at PGC whose interest in wildlife ecology has segued nicely with the remote sensing work. She has collaborated closely with Antarctic researchers involved in studying the polar region’s most iconic animals, including Weddell seals and emperor penguins.

LaRue was the lead author on a paper published last year in the journal Polar Biology that argued that satellite imagery is a reliable way to assess seal abundance and population trends. She counted seals in pictures in collaboration with a research group from Montana State University (MSU) that conducts an annual population census of Weddell seals in McMurdo Sound around an area called Erebus Bay.

“The counts are highly correlated, which basically means what we’re seeing in the satellite images is representative of what’s on the ground at the same general time,” said LaRue, who is working on a PhD in conservation biology at the University of Minnesota.

Robert Garrott, principal investigator for the MSU team, along with Jay Rotella, also a professor in MSU’s Ecology Department, said the collaboration is beneficial to both sides.

“We can ground truth and help refine Michelle’s algorithms and her ability to actually count seals on the ice,” he said. In turn, the satellite technology and associated methodology will help the project expand beyond Erebus Bay without chartering an expensive research vessel.

“We can start asking questions about seal population and ecology over larger spatial scales without all the logistic support,” Garrott said.

Lynch is certainly a believer in the technology. She and colleagues have a paper in press with Polar Biology outlining their methodology to use satellites to survey colonies of Adelie, chinstrap and gentoo penguins around the Antarctic Peninsula. The latter species is thriving as the Antarctic Peninsula region warms, while the other two are in steep decline. The paper also includes work on a crested penguin known as a macaroni, with a prominent yellow crest that looks like long, wild eyebrows.

Detailed counts of the penguins around the peninsula are inherently more difficult than the seal census. The large, dark bodies of the Weddell seals stand out starkly on the white sea ice. The terrain on the islands around the peninsula, on the other hand, is generally dark and snow-free in the summer months where the birds breed and raise their young.

A combination of extensive fieldwork and familiarity with each species’ ecology helped with interpretation of the satellite pictures, according to Lynch, a co-principal investigator on the Antarctic Site Inventory program, which was started nearly 20 years ago by Ron Naveen, head of the nonprofit science and education organization Oceanites Inc.

“The remote sensing stuff is pretty incredible,” Naveen said. “We’re not quite putting our on-the-ground work out of business, which I’m happy about because I really enjoy doing it, but it’s really an amazing supplement to what we’ve been up to for many years.”

The imagery is also a valuable tool to the group’s fieldwork, which spans more than 140 locations around the Antarctic Peninsula. “We were able to find penguins that were not on maps previously,” Lynch noted. “It’s going to make the time we spend in the field much more efficient.”

Satellites have been around for more than 50 years, beginning with the launch of Sputnik I by the former Soviet Union in 1957. But it’s probably only been within the last five years or so that pictures from space have been good enough for this sort of ecological research.

In fact, one of the first papers published on the topic was in 2007 in Polar Biology, about estimating relative abundance of emperor penguin colonies in the Ross Sea.

Paul Ponganis, a medical doctor and marine biologist at the University of California-San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, was a co-author on that paper, along with Gerald Kooyman, an emeritus professor at Scripps. Kooyman had gotten an exploratory grant from NSF in 2000 to test the feasibility of using satellite pictures to census emperor penguin colonies.

Ponganis said there are still a number of hurdles to overcome before satellites replace the aerial surveys that he and colleagues have conducted at seven emperor penguin colonies around the Ross Sea for the last 20 years or so.

For instance, it’s still difficult to differentiate shadows from the black back of an emperor. Emperors stand vertically on the ice where they breed, not horizontally like a seal, which also causes some challenges. And the world’s largest penguin also tends to congregate in tight huddles.

Still, Ponganis is optimistic. “I think that will be the future — the satellite,” he said.

Lynch agreed that there are still obstacles associated with the imagery, particularly around the Antarctic Peninsula, where clouds often obscure the region, making 90 percent of the imagery unusable. Weekly shots of Zavodovski Island in the South Sandwich Islands over a five-month period produced only one cloud-free scene.

But she boldly predicts that in five to 10 years scientists will be able to monitor every penguin colony in the Antarctic, from a handful of birds to groups that are a million strong.

“I think it’s going to completely change the way we do penguin science in the Antarctic,” she said.

Indeed, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) made headlines in 2009 when it announced researchers had used satellite images to detect the light brown stain of emperor penguin guano on the sea ice. The imagery came from the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA), which seamlessly stitched together satellite photos of Antarctica acquired between 1999 and 2004.

The BAS study found 38 colonies from the guano stains, four more than were thought to exist. Ten were new colonies, while six previously known colonies either had disappeared or could not be found. A half-dozen colonies had relocated more than 10 kilometers away from their last-known position.

Such data are key to wildlife conservation issues, LaRue said.

Currently, emperor penguins are a species of “least concern,” according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). But some scientists have argued environmental changes and human impact from activities like industrial fishing are causing problems. A paper in 2009 published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicted emperors could be on the brink of extinction by the end of the century.

“There are lots of locations where there have never been counts, so the current estimate based on all of those sporadic, insufficient data is not that great,” LaRue noted. “By being able to do this, we can actually see every single colony we know about and have a little bit better estimate of how many there are. You can’t tell if they’re going up and down if you don’t know how many there are.

“That’s the conservation issue: We don’t really know how many there are, so how can you say if they’re doing fine or not?” she added.

Such is the case of a chinstrap colony on Deception Island in the South Shetland Islands. A single satellite image from January 2003 compared to one from January 2010 shows dramatic changes are under way, according to Lynch.

“You can see in the imagery how a penguin colony collapses,” she said. “You look at those two images and there’s absolutely no question that there’s something serious, seriously wrong going on with the chinstraps.

“It’s concerning and scientifically exciting to be able to document those kinds of changes,” Lynch added. “Moving forward, we’ll be able to put together some amazing timelines.”

NSF-funded research in this article: Paul Morin, University of Minnesota, Award No. 1043681; Robert Garrott, Jay Rotella, and Donald Siniff, Montana State University, Award No. 0635739; William Fagan and Heather Lynch, University of Maryland College Park, Award No. 0739515; Ron Naveen, Oceanites Inc., Award No. 0739430; Paul Ponganis, University of California-San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Award No. 0944220.

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Impromptu antarctic adventurer in the gun
By John Weekes
6:27 AM Sunday Feb 19, 2012

Busby Noble, the impromptu crewmate on Norwegian adventurer Jarle Andhoy’s illicit trip to Antarctica, faces two grillings when he returns – from authorities and his girlfriend of 20 years, T.P. Teiho.

And Teiho already has harsh words for entrepreneur Gareth Morgan for saying he hoped Andhoy’s boat Nilaya sank in the icy Southern Ocean.

“I hope he sinks, she said. “What a thing to say.”

Andhoy arrived in New Zealand on January 2, failing to declare a previous deportation from Canada. This attracted the attention of Immigration NZ, which planned to kick him out but Nilaya set sail, with Noble on board, before papers could be served.

Noble told Teiho in a satellite phone call he was learning how to sail and had seen a few seals, but she has not heard from him since. “I just hope he is okay,” she said, adding that on his return “I’ll give him a hiding for starters, then ban him from any boat and tell him to stay on the ground.”

In messages from the satellite phone, Noble says he never planned things this way, “but now that I’m out in the cool, clear breeze I think I’m doing myself a world of good.” And in a phone call last Sunday, Noble said he knew all the men on the ill-fated Berserk II voyage last year.

He dismissed the idea he’d be in trouble for sailing to New Zealand’s Ross Dependency without a passport or official clearance, though he could face a $100,000 fine. “I didn’t realise I needed a passport to visit New Zealand.”

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February 16, 2012
COLONIALISM AND THE FALKLAND ISLANDS
Posted by Jon Michaud

Lauren Collins writes from London that the British are in an uproar over remarks that Sean Penn made about the deployment of Prince William to the Falkland Islands. “The world today is not going to tolerate any ludicrous and archaic commitment to colonialist ideology,” Penn said, during a meeting on Monday with Argentina’s president, Cristina Kirchner. The furor, involving an Oscar-winning actor, seems like a perfectly timed sidebar to the many backward glances at the Thatcher years prompted by the Oscar-nominated film “The Iron Lady.”

In the spring of 1982, Mollie Panter-Downes wrote a trio of Letters from London, reporting on “the dreamlike weirdness” of the war pursued by Thatcher after Argentina invaded (or reclaimed, as Penn would no doubt argue) the Falkland Islands. In one dispatch, Panter-Downes noted that the military censorship of reporting from the far-flung hostilities had resulted in the feeling among Britons that “not since the Crimean War has there been so little photographic recording of a British expedition.”

While Panter-Downes focussed mainly on the British reaction to the war, Jane Kramer published a Letter from Paris in June of that same year that more directly addressed the complex questions of colonialism that have been revived by Penn’s comments. Kramer related how her Portuguese concierge, Mme Gonçalves, viewed the war. Formerly an inhabitant of Angola, Mme Gonçalves had fled that country after it gained independence, and was, Kramer wrote, “interested in colonial claims and attachments and betrayals.” For Mme Gonçalves, the point of the present conflict was less about the legitimacy of Argentina’s claims to the islands than “whether the Falkland shepherds would be killed or would have to start wandering,” as she and her husband had been forced to do. Kramer then notes that, among her neighbors, there were some who considered the Falklands to be French:

The first Falkland colonists were French whalers who sailed from Saint-Malo with a charter from Louis XV that guaranteed their rights to the islands and to the waters around them. The old general who lives in the wing across the courtyard told Mme Gonçalves that just the other day someone had actually claimed Les Malouines (as they are called here) for France in a letter to Le Monde.
From this local perspective, Kramer broadened the discussion to the arena of international relations. The Falklands war happened to coincide with a G7 summit, hosted by François Mitterand at Versailles and the action in the South Atlantic made for some uncomfortable moments among the assembled leaders:

Like England, France owns little pieces of the world here and there—from rhetorically respectable overseas departments like Réunion in the Indian Ocean, to the archipelago of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, off Québec, with six thousand people. America, of course, has had territories of its own in the South Pacific since the Second World War… At Versailles this month the Americans were mainly uneasy over the possibility that small questions of hegemony, like the Falkland question, would end up raising bigger questions of prerogative.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/backissues/2012/02/the-falklands-and-colonialism.html#ixzz1ma6HZGjA

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http://en.mercopress.com/2012/02/16/falkland-islanders-have-the-right-to-choose-their-future
MercoPress
Montevideo, February 16th 2012 – 22:12 UTC

Thursday, February 16th 2012 – 20:00 UTC
Falkland Islanders have the right to choose their future
By Dr. Barry Elsby – The Falkland Islands are home to a thriving community. In the face of escalating rhetoric, that community must have the right to determine its own future, argues Dr Barry Elsby MLA
Dr Barry Elsby is a member of the Legislative Assembly of the Falkland Islands

“Give peace a chance,” said Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the President of Argentina, earlier this month when she announced that her government would be lodging a formal complaint to the UN regarding the ‘militarization’ of the Falkland Islands. For the people of the Islands, the desire for peace has been a constant. This latest rhetoric, supposedly to extend an olive branch, appears somewhat insincere given Argentina’s continued moves aimed at economically strangling and politically isolating the Islands.
Global interest in the Islands in recent months follows more than a year of increasingly aggressive actions from Argentina in the form of economic sanctions and trade blockades. The Argentine-led move by Mercosur members to close their ports to Falkland-flagged vessels is just one example of the continual litany of bullying tactics deployed by Argentina.
While we in the Islands have grown well accustomed to political rhetoric from Buenos Aires over the years, these latest moves have seen everyday life made that bit harder, with the selection of food on the shelves changing, and becoming more expensive, as we have had to find new suppliers for everyday goods. But, we Falkland Islanders are resourceful people and will not be defeated by political and economic bullying. We remain resolute in our desire to maintain neighbourly relations with all our South American neighbours, including Argentina, for mutual benefit. During the 1990s, significant progress had been made in our relationship with Argentina; agreements had been reached on conservation of fish stocks and on oil exploration but Argentina unilaterally withdrew from these, something we deeply regret.
With the eyes of the world on the South Atlantic in recent weeks, one unified message continues to come from those that live in the Islands; that is our right to self-determination. The people of the Falkland Islands remain a British Overseas Territory by choice. It is our constitutional right and a fundamental freedom enshrined in the UN Charter. This right to self-determination is a value that is protected and promoted by democratic powers the world over; the Falkland Islands are no different. We are happy to talk, but our sovereignty remains non-negotiable.
Despite adversity, we are upbeat about our future, drawing on the strength of nine generations of Islanders, and those who have chosen to make the Falkland Islands their home. The Falkland Islands economy is diverse, prosperous, and is self-sufficient in all areas other than defence, for which it receives a relatively small contribution from the UK – less than 0.5% of the total UK defence budget. The Islands are home to a thriving community, one of the world’s best managed fisheries – with fishing activity generating approximately 60% of the Islands revenues – and an ever developing tourism sector which sees some 60,000 visitors to our Islands each year.
As the thirtieth anniversary of the 1982 conflict approaches, the people of the Falklands are focusing on looking forward to a positive and prosperous future – one that is driven and shaped by the Islanders themselves.

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http://news.discovery.com/earth/safeguarding-antarcticas-buried-lakes-120216.html

SAFEGUARDING ANTARCTICA’S BURIED LAKES

Analysis by Sarah Simpson
Thu Feb 16, 2012 05:45 AM ET

Hundreds of mysterious bodies of fresh water are trapped deep inside Antarctica’s massive ice sheets. Polar scientists have been clamoring to explore these buried lakes for years, knowing that they may hold secrets to the origins of life and past climate change. The drilling technique the Russians used to breach Lake Vostok on Feb. 5, however has many concerned about contamination.

ANALYSIS: Lake Vostok Geyser Opens ‘Small Window’ for Russians

Biologists and engineers with the British Antarctic Survey are taking a more cautious approach. Martin J. Siegert of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and his colleagues have a plan to sample a small subglacial Lake in West Antarctica — using planetary protection protocols. They spell out the details in a report in Reviews of Geophysics.

In preparation for drilling, set to begin in November, engineers with the British Antarctic Survey completed in January a grueling overland journey to deliver drilling equipment to the designated site at the base of the Ellsworth Mountains (above) in West Antarctica. The target: subglacial Lake Ellsworth, which lies 3.1 kilometers of solid ice.

The high-tech instruments the team has designed and built to take water and sediments samples comply to the same space-industry cleanliness specs expected for the Martian rovers. Getting the probes through all that ice will take a mighty long hole, and that process needs to be “clean” as well.

To avoid contaminating while drilling, the team will use pressurized hot water, rather than a metal drill bit. And by using (and recycling) melted glacier ice as the drilling fluid, they avoid the possibility of introducing foreign substances to the lake. (Traditional drilling fluids, such as those the Russian team used to reach subglacial Lake Vostok, contain hydrocarbons.)

ANALYSIS: They Did It! Russians Expose Lake Vostok Secrets

The melted water will enter the 3.4-kilometer-long drill hose at high pressure and flow down to a nozzle that jets hot water to melt the ice. Gravity will guide the nozzle and hose as they are lowered, and the water will follow the melted hole, which has a slightly greater diameter than the hose itself, back to the surface.

The drilling team will take special precautions to empty the bore hole of water before they send their probes into the lake. But just in case, all drill water will pass through a five-stage filtration system to remove suspended solid particles, including bacteria and viruses, before being treated with ultra-violet light to kill anything that passes the filter.

These careful steps are just the tip of the iceberg. You should see the protocol for preventing contamination of the collected water and sediments samples as they make their 16,000-kilometer journey back to labs in the U.K.

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Corinthian II available for charter from winter 2013

Corinthian II, which has been chartered to New York-based Travel Dynamics International for eight years, will be redelivered in March 2013 and is due to sail for Copenhagen’s Albatros Travel for the following summer.

The vessel’s manager, International Shipping Partners, said Albatros Travel has options for subsequent summer seasons. The 116-passenger Corinthian II is available for winter charters starting in October 2013.

Also offered for sale or charter by Miami-based ISP are the 800-passenger cruise ship Gemini, the 200-passenger Sea Voyager and the 1,000-passenger ferry Scotia Prince.

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Facelift for Hapag-Lloyd’s website

The Hapag-Lloyd Cruises website, at www.hl-cruises.com, has undergone a major facelift. The homepage now reveals new user-friendly tools, as well as a redesigned visual appearance, presenting clear information for passengers, potential cruisers, media and travel agents.

As part of the relaunch the company is introducing its new family brand ‘Hapag-Lloyd Cruises – Great moments. Truly exclusive’ online. Large-scale images of the worldwide destinations visited by the line dominate the new homepage, showcasing various cruise themes and voyages offered.

A separate agents section also appears in the new design.

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