December 13, 2010... McMurdo: More Trainings and Briefings

Today's day was really hectic. We had an environment conservation briefing. Antarctica is a protected place and to conserve its natural habitat (yes! there are abundant species living in the sea) all countries have a treaty to take back what they bring here. Basically, Antarctica belongs to no one and that's why, you cannot take anything out from this place and you cannot bring anything that might contaminate the surroundings here. They ask you to dust off your shoes, camping gears, throw all the fruits, veggies that might get any fly or insects. Even whatever waste is produced here is supposed to be shipped back to your own country to dispose off. So, here at McMurdo, they carefully separate all the waste, package it and send it back to USA to dispose off.

After this briefing, we had to go and meet several people to arrange our field camping gear, food, science instruments for project, Iridium and HF communication equipment. We sort of got started on this, checked items on our list, requested stuff we might need so that they can arrange by the time we are back from our happy campers course or snow school day after. Although this was a lot to do in a day, the whole process is made a lot simpler by organizing things before hand. People here work over many seasons and thus are trained to take care of these things efficiently.

In the afternoon, we had a 2 hour course on altitude sickness. So, there are some interesting facts. When we are going to be at the South Pole the physical altitude is 9300 ft. But, with thinner air, less oxygen and thus lower pressure, altitude felt by the human body is around 11000 ft. We will be higher up at around 13000 ft pressure altitude at our remote work site. That means, the body tries to work hard to get more oxygen to the brain and the blood. In other words, it tries to ''acclimatize" by increasing respiration, heart rate, red blood cell production, pulmonary artery pressure and also diuresis (urinary output).

If the body is not well rested and hydrated at high altitudes, altitude sickness may occur at varying levels. There is something called as Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) which is more common with symptoms like headache (or even mild brain swelling), fatigue, nausea etc. Severe AMS or High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE) may even cause loss of muscular coordination, severe headache (severe brain swelling), decreased mental status and even death sometimes! Well, they say if you have a big head a smaller brain, you are less susceptible to HACE.. Jokes apart, this is a big deal here as it is very difficult to carry out any emergency rescue operation on a short notice because of the harsh weather conditions. The more serious version of altitude sickness may cause leakage of fluids in lungs and the only way out is an emergency evacuation to a lower altitude. Well, so we learnt about all this how to prevent it by taking it easy for the first couple of days. It takes a month to get acclimatized in these extreme conditions. But, we come on a time limited mission and get only a couple of days to 'feel better'. So, I will have to remember drinking loads of fluids to avoid following condition.. :D