The frozen continent: Ice melts frostiness

In a 5-part series starting today, SIMON COLLINS looks at life on the ice, starting with New Zealand's relationship with the United States at the end of the Earth.


Inside the Crary Laboratory at McMurdo Station, an Alaskan scientist watches a live video from the summit of Mt Erebus.

Beside the big video screen, another monitor shows a series of lines that occasionally jump slightly.

Each jump marks a "tremor" from the mountain. Amazingly, the tremors behave like music, producing up to 28 harmonics or multiples of each fundamental wave. They can go on for hours, but do not seem to be linked with either earthquakes or unusual volcanic activity.

When the Herald visited last year, American scientists were monitoring the volcano from a hut at the 3794m summit.

Ten automated seismic stations round the mountain were supervised from the Crary Lab, a 4320sq m, US$50 million ($76 million) complex that cascades down the slope towards McMurdo Sound.

And that is just one of the 141 projects in the annual US$236 million ($358 million) US Antarctic Programme.

Even though legally it has no more status than anyone else, the US dominates Antarctica. The Stars and Stripes flies over a new US$150 million ($228 million) American base under construction at the South Pole, and a convoy of US bulldozers is blazing a land trail between McMurdo and the Pole this summer.

Altogether, the 1388 beds at McMurdo, the Pole and another US base at Palmer on the Antarctic Peninsula make up 30 per cent of all beds on the continent.

By an accident of geography, New Zealand is integrally involved in the US programme. We sit above the point in Antarctica where open sea penetrates the furthest south, providing the best route to the Pole, as it has done since the days of Amundsen and Scott.

When Sir Edmund Hillary set up New Zealand's Scott Base in 1956-57, he initially planned it at Butter Point, on the Antarctic mainland across McMurdo Sound from the US outpost.

But the ice near the mainland was too heavy for his ship to get there, so he chose a site just 3km over a hill from McMurdo Station.

Today, the two bases form effectively a single complex. As you come in from the airfield, you see New Zealand's atmospheric research station at Arrival Heights up on your left, a similar US facility above McMurdo Station in the centre, and the road to Scott Base winding over the hill to the right.

Apart from a handful of staff who travel to Palmer Station from South America, virtually all Americans go to Antarctica through Christchurch, staying a total of 31,000 bed-nights in the city and contributing, with other Antarctic activities, more than $100 million a year to the Canterbury economy.

New Zealand pays the US landing fees in Christchurch and provides a Hercules to transport both New Zealanders and Americans to and from McMurdo.

In return, the US provides the McMurdo airfield and Starlifter and Hercules aircraft, again carrying people from both countries.

The US also carries supplies for both bases on a ship from Lyttelton to McMurdo in late summer.

New Zealand provides 12 staff who stay at McMurdo to help unload the vessel.

Each summer, the two countries divvy up the areas around the two bases and put out thousands of flags to mark safe routes across the ice.

They run a joint helicopter service from McMurdo to both countries' field camps. Nelson-based Helicopters NZ provides a chopper for the general pool, and the US provides the rest.

The US briefly reconsidered these arrangements when New Zealand banned nuclear ships from its harbours in 1987. But in the end they stayed in Christchurch.

Even when New Zealand declined to follow the US into war in Iraq last year, in Antarctica the two nations remained "very, very, very good friends".

"We do have moments, like any relationship," says Scott Base manager Julian Tangaere. "But nothing serious."

He says it is "unfortunate" that the US moved its Antarctic-bound Coast Guard icebreakers to Hobart in 1987, even though they carry people and materials for New Zealand.

"They are conventionally powered, but I guess there are sensitivities," he says.

"We get to a certain level in the US system and the answer comes back, 'No'."

When the Herald reported in November that the convoy setting off from McMurdo to find a trail to the Pole was surveying a "highway", the head of the US Antarctic Programme in Washington complained to Antarctica NZ boss Lou Sanson.

But on the ice itself, politics seem irrelevant. In such a harsh environment so far from home, most people naturally work and play together.

Science is, in any case, international. In November, US zoologist Michael Lesser was at Scott Base with Otago's Miles Lamare.

Canadian-born Australian Kathryn Wheatley was studying seals in collaboration with another Otago scientist, Lloyd Davis. Brisbane-based New Zealander Craig Franklin was working with Canterbury fish expert Bill Davison, and Norway-based Belgian Angelique Prick was studying rock weathering with Canterbury's Christine Elliott.

Conversely, Auckland University biologist Clive Evans was at McMurdo last month studying "antifreeze" in fish with US scientist Art De Vries.

New Zealanders such as Shaun Norman, a mountain guide who has climbed Mt Cook 39 times, and Peter Braddock, another mountaineer married to an American geologist, have spent years looking after US researchers in the field.

Land Information NZ (Linz) and the US Geological Survey are jointly mapping the Ross Sea region.

"With any new map that comes out, if there are features to be named, the US will name half and New Zealand will name the other half," says Graeme Blick, of Linz.

From Scott Base, New Zealanders gravitate across the hill to "Mac Town" for medical care, haircuts, icecreams or bowling, as well as for bars, parties and social nights.

Americans return the favour for "American night" at the Scott Base bar on Thursdays or to ski at the New Zealanders' makeshift slope.

The two bases share the Chapel of the Snows at McMurdo, jointly staffed by Wing Chaplain Norman Williams of the California Air National Guard, a Protestant, and a priest supplied on a monthly rotation by the Catholic Diocese of Christchurch.

Father Yvan Sergy, a Swiss-born priest from Gisborne who filled the Catholic slot in November, said that about a quarter of his 20- to 25-strong flock at Sunday mass came from Scott Base.

"That's pretty much what we have in New Zealand as a percentage of the population," he said.

In Antarctic terms, New Zealand is, in fact, a middle-sized country. The 86 beds at Scott Base put us 12th out of the 26 countries with bases on the continent.

But our finances are, inevitably, limited. We spend just $11.5 million a year in Antarctica, 2 per cent of our public science budget.

The Australian Antarctic Division spends just over $70 million.

Without the US, New Zealand could never afford to run an airfield. Even a supply ship would stretch us.

As Dr Evans puts it: "New Zealand can't be without them."

And at least in Antarctica, the Americans are still happy to be friends with us.

TOMORROW: Cleaning up the mess on the ice