I feel the need to post here and clear up a few things. I found the site while looking material for a joke safety presentation at our work center. I
work at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Any admins out there feel free to check the IP.
A) Polies are not people that go to the ice. Polies are specifically people working at the South Pole station. They're very odd people that
generally smell funny since they only get to shower once a week due to the lack of fresh water down there.
B) There are 3 main stations here. McMurdo, Palmer, and Amundsen Scott South Pole Station. Palmer is very high in latitude and is home to mostly
marine research since it's not completely frozen over all the time. They study Orcas and birds and fish. You get there by flying from the US to
Chile and getting on a boat. McMurdo is mostly a supply center, but also a hub for sea ice research. We setup everything needed to supply not only
the south pole station, but remote research stations like AGAP and WAIS where people are living in small huts and tents. We some volcanic research
(Mt. Erebus), some climate research via the Long Range Ballon project, and various marine research projects. The South Pole does a lot of climate
research as well as astronomy due to the clear air, lack of light pollution and 24hr darkness.
C) Raytheon runs the operation through Raytheon Polar Services Company. The jobs are all on www.rayjobs.com. It's mostly boring work. Pay is ok.
Why do people come back. There's a lot of fun people down here that go through college dorm life once a year. We have a lot of fun doing what we
do.
D) You do fill out a lot of paperwork and go through a lot of medical checks to get here, but there's nothing in our contracts about being hush hush.
Most of the paperwork is medical background stuff and there's a criminal background check. You don't sign you life away. We don't sign anything
stating we can't talk about we do down here. They actually encourage us to talk about our experience. There have been several film crews down here
following scientists around and documenting the work we do on the support side of things.
E) There's tons of pictures of the station and the work we do down here. You can find most people that work down here on MySpace and Facebook.
There's lot of Flickr accounts. There's also the official stuff.
www.usap.gov...
