So last week my normal routine of a schedule was interrupted by a boondoggle (which is the nickname for fun, morale boosting trips we get to go on sometimes). I started my normal workday and as I was about to sit down and eat breakfast during my 8:00 break, my supervisor rushed up to me and said, "have you been dive tending before?" Me: "no" Her: "Do you want to?" Me: "Uh, duh!"
So she gave me a sack lunch and said I had ten minutes to get all my stuff together and hustle down to the dive shop to meet the divers I would be working with. So I ran upstairs and threw on my ECW gear (refresher, ECW = extreme cold weather) and found the dive shop. I and a person from the Janitor team (also on a boondoggle) piled into the back of a Piston Bully (toaster on track wheels...see photo) with all the dive gear. We would be going to Turtle Rock, a really cool dive site at the base of Mt. Erebus (the huge volcano that is the main landmark in the area...also in the photos) which was about an hour Piston Bully ride away. Now Piston Bullies are pretty much little mobile sleep machines...which the gentle rocking, loud white noise and toasty warm environment (much like the womb
I imagine) and I fell asleep for most of the hour ride out and back to the dive site. We got out to the site, which pretty much consists of a tiny dive hut over a hole drilled in the ice. Apparently the hole that was there had frozen up a little too much, so we had to wait around for a heavy equipment operator to come out and drill a new hole (they also have to drill new holes when seals start 
to use the dive holes and end up barfing up all their fish bones in the hole making the whole hut stink). Luckily that gave us time to wander around since right around the dive hut was a huge Weddell seal colony that had just pupped...basically there were dozens of adorable baby seals lounging around with their moms and we got to walk around and take pictures of them. We did have to be careful because there were tons of cracks in the ice (which is why the seals hang out there in the first place) that were hidden by the snow so we had to test out the ice with each step we took before we put all our weight on it...this would be quite important later when my Jano (what people call Janitors around here) companion stepped without testing and ended up waist deep in snow with her feet dangling over a deep crevasse. Could have been a really dangerous situation but luckily the crevasse was thin so she couldn't have fallen down past where she was. The drill showed up and they drilled a good size hole in the ice and then just dragged the dive hut (which was on skis) over the new hole. Then the divers got all geared up in their dry suits (wearing about three fleece layers underneath the dry suit). 
The divers I was with turned out to be underwater filmographers...in fact, if you have seen the Werner Herzog documentary about Antarctica, the underwater footage in that was taken by the guy I dive tended for. It was really cool because that guy, Henry Kaiser was doing the science lecture that night so I was able to see some of the footage he took while we were out there later that night. While the divers were in the water, a team of seal researchers happened to stop by while doing their census on the seal colony there. They let us come out with them for a little while to get a closer look at the seal pups and ask some questions. We got to hang around one seal pup in particular that was sooooo cute, rolling around trying to get a better look at us since they are super curious. Apparently the brown splotching in its fur was its poop though...they tend to roll around in their own feces...not quite so cute. It was also interesting to see all the old umbilical cords and placenta lying around the ice from the seal births. One of the girls I was with wanted a picture of her poking the placenta with a "stick" that she picked up
...but then she realized that we are in Antarctica and thus there are not sticks lying around on the ground and that the "stick" she picked up was in fact a dried piece of umbilical cord...she needless to say had a little gross out moment.Anyway, that was my adventure for the week and it was so nice to go into a day thinking I would be working and then
have something exciting like that to do instead...here's hoping for more adventures to come....oh ya, and I got to do some fishing
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