Palmer Links

1968-69 aerial photo
Palmer Station and the R/V Hero from the air, taken late in the 1968-69 season after the
exterior skin of GWR has been installed. (US Navy photo by Bill Curtsinger, from the
Antarctic Journal, July/August 1969.) Presumably he took it from the Edisto's helicopter.

First, a few newer sites and blogs from 2019 and 2018 (updated October 2019):
blue square bullet paragraph marker Kim Bernard
a professor at Oregon State University (OSU), has been leading a team studying the diet of juvenile krill, interestingly titled "the omnivore's dilemma." This link is to her 2019 winter blog, but there are tabs with reference to her previous work in Antarctic waters and at Palmer.
blue square bullet paragraph marker Kirsten Steinke
is a member of Kim Bernard's research team who also wintered in 2019. This is her blog which describes their krill research project and also plunges into what they were doing in their spare time.
blue square bullet paragraph marker RUCOOL
is the "Rutgers Center for Ocean Observing Leadership group. Their Antarctic projects began in the 2010-11 season--water sampling and measurements of properties such as acidification and CO2 absorption...using Zodiacs, larger vessels, and most interestingly, their gliders! Not all of the activities described on this site involve their Antarctic involvement...but check out the blog links!
blue square bullet paragraph marker Jake Grondin
was a 2018 winterover from Northeastern University, from Bill Detrich's lab. He's got some great descriptions and photos of their science project as well as of what they do when they don't work!
blue square bullet paragraph marker Kevin Moore
was the 2018 winter systems administrator, and he's lived in Boulder for longer than I have! This is his first time in Antarctica, and he's been covering everything with lots of details and photos, in a blog he calls "Antarctica? Seriously."
blue square bullet paragraph marker Maggie and Chuck Amsler
led one of their largest lab groups to spend one of their longest times at Palmer, between February and May 2018, studying shallow water algae and invertebrates. Many many great blog posts! Under the "Expeditions" tab are links to blogs from their 2013, 2010, and 2007 ventures. Earlier, there was UAB in Antarctica 2004. Maggie's 2 March 2004 diary entry on the Arthur Harbor glacier calving to create what would later be named Amsler Island is of particular interest.
2017 and older sites/links; roughly from newer to older...
blue square bullet paragraph marker The Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS)
a component of the College of William & Mary, has periodically conducted research at Palmer as part of the LTER network; this page and its links describe some of their research programs. Note that Kim Bernard, a professor at Oregon State University who wintered at Palmer Station in 2019, was part of a 2012-13 VIMS research team.
blue square bullet paragraph marker Drew Spacht
from Erie, PA, ws working at Palmer between December 2016 and April 2017 as part of the latest studies on how the Antarctic midge survives the Antarctic winter. This link is to a March goerie.com news article. The project also has this outreach blog (archive site) with a few December and January preparatory posts.
blue square bullet paragraph marker Becky Ball
from Arizona State University, made her most recent trip to the Antarctic Peninsula in 2015-16 as principal investigator on a "polar soils" (to keep it simple) project. Much of their work was aboard the LMG,, but they did spend time at Palmer Station and also visited Elephant Island, including the site of Shackleton's stay there 100 years ago. On earlier ventures she spent time at Rothera, as well as in the Dry Valleys.
blue square bullet paragraph marker Palmer science sitreps between 1990 and the present day are on this section of the LTER site.
Here is the new LTER home page; the site has seen major upgrades in recent years. There is lots of content.
blue square bullet paragraph markerPaula Dell
is a science teacher from Chicago who visited Palmer in April-June 2011 as a part of the PolarTREC program. She was a member of a project studying the biology of Antarctic fishes...the principal investigators of which are Kristin O'Brien and the late Bruce Sidell. Paula has an extensive blog with photos covering the science activities on station and aboard the L.M. Gould, as well as glimpses of other science projects and station life.
blue square bullet paragraph markerPat Betteley
is an Ohio educator who joined the Miami University (Ohio) 2010-11 project studying flies. Yes...the wingless fly belgica antarctica that can be found on the Antarctic Peninsula. She put together this interesting blog. They headed north on the LMG on 4 February 2011.
blue square bullet paragraph marker Ian Robbins
spent time at Palmer Station in January/February 2011 with the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo marine science group...they operated "Autonomous Underwater Vehicles" (AUV) known as REMUS (Remote Environmental Monitoring Unit). The more recent blog pages describe 2011 and 2012 deployments to Palau.
blue square bullet paragraph marker Fen Montaigne
the author of the 2010 book Fraser's Penguins, blogged occasionally here. And here's another of his web sites about the book.
blue square bullet paragraph marker Speaking of penguins...The Ocean Bytes blog
by folks at the University of Delaware, has miscellaneous geeky stuff, research vessel information, space shuttle launch coverage, but if you go back far enough (or select the "Antarctica" tagged posts) there are...videos of the penguin research...coverage of the AUV mentioned above, and video documentation of one of the new crevasses that are restricting glacier access.
blue square bullet paragraph marker Keith Reimink
was the 2010 w/o cook...one of several 2009 (or earlier) Polies to venture to the Peninsula side of the continent. Lots of pictures of the trip, the station, food...
blue square bullet paragraph marker Neal Scheibe
was the science tech at Pole for 2006 and 2007...I assumed I'd meet him at Pole for the 2008 winter, but for 2008 through 2012 he wintered at Palmer Station (we did eventually meet...in Denver (!) This blog runs up through his 2014 Pole winter. He's now working mostly as a science coordinator out of NSF's Arlington office, but he has gotten back to the ice more recently. He's got a great blog style, and did I mention that he's tall?
blue square bullet paragraph marker travelinwiththerev
happens to be Craig Bell, one of the UT types I met when I first got to Pole in February 2008. He left at the end of the summer, but worked in Denver, and was at Palmer for the first part of the 2009 winter. As of early 2013 he and his wife Renee Ricketts Schweitzer were still working for PAE at the American embassy in Moscow...in 2014 Craig wintered at Palmer. He and Renee now live in an amazing house in a rural area west of Oklahoma City...but Craig travels frequently around the world with his job supporting US Embassies.
blue square bullet paragraph markervagabumming
is really Will Brubaker, a friend and good guy who was one of my fellow 2008 Pole winterovers. He was at Palmer for more of the 2009 winter, scroll back on this blog for good stuff and photos. Since then he's married Cate, and they've spent time in Taiwan, Peru, the sandpit, Panama, doing a drive through Central and South America...and now they're in Hilo, Hawaii. The vagabumming blog is gone, but here's their blog about their pan-American travels!
blue square bullet paragraph markerAmber Bates
was the winter 2008 lab tech, she stayed around until April 2009. She had some excellent photos around station...and of her subsequent travels until she ended up on Kwaj with David in October 2010. Alas, gone.
blue square bullet paragraph marker Seren Thompson
was around for the 2007-08 summer. Several great things to recommend on his blog--a great collection of aerial photographs taken by aircraft from the HMS Endurance...and a visit to one of those little known field sites that I too did get to see once--Copacabana. Oh, the older portion of his blog is here.
blue square bullet paragraph markerDan Grossman
A WBUR Boston Public Radio reporter visited Palmer in the 2002-03 summer. This site features many photo galleries, journal entries, videos, and an excellent narrated virtual tour.
blue square bullet paragraph marker Bill Wechter
This is an archive of his Hero Ship Tours page from when he had that vessel docked in Newport, Oregon in the mid-2000s.
blue square bullet paragraph marker HERO!
My Hero pages are here.
blue square bullet paragraph marker The Bosun's Watch!
(archive site) was a UK site devoted to commercial fishing trawlers, but this page on the Hero is based on her trawling heritage. Excellent small pictures of Hero in the Antarctic (and aground in Umpqua harbor...)!
blue square bullet paragraph marker Allen Cull (archive site)
wintered in 1979, and in addition to his photo collection he's amassed the entire year's sitreps as well as the PSBWFPWL (well, see the web site!) Great historical stuff!
blue square bullet paragraph marker Dave Gallas
a longtime friend who wintered at Palmer in 1989...in 2005-07 he was working in Baghdad, and since then at Bagram Air Base in Kabul. He published some of his old diaries. Of special interest is his detailed on-the-spot account of the Bahia Paraiso debacle.
blue square bullet paragraph markerNatalie Harr
is a first-grade teacher from Portage County in northeastern Ohio. In 2011-12 she was the latest educator to join Dr. Richard Lee's team from Miami University (Ohio) on his project to study the largest entirely terrestrial animal in the Antarctic--the wingless midge (!) This link includes team diaries from later (2016 and 2017) and earlier trips in 2004-05 (Luke Sandro), 2005-06 (Marianne Kaput and Giancarlo Lopez-Martinez) and other info can also be found here.
blue square bullet paragraph marker2018-19 USAP Science Summary
, from the USAP web site, with links to previous years and research vessel projects. There is also a link to the older editions, back to 2000-01. And here is the USAP marine science home page.
blue square bullet paragraph marker R/V Polar Duke farewell tribute
with detailed history, sea stories, photos and more.
blue square bullet paragraph marker John Lohr
was the radio officer on Hero from 1974-78; this is his page (with many pictures) describing his job and how he got it. He also had a slide show and commentary on Hero and a voyage to South Georgia. Alas, the slides are no longer available online.
blue square bullet paragraph marker The Stanford VLF group
has been listening to whistlers from Clean Air since 1978. This page includes graphics, detailed links to data, and trip reports from students who have been down on the annual maintenance visits over the last few years, back to 1998...alas, the trip reports seem to have disappeared.
blue square bullet paragraph marker Boating maps...
That clickable map from Marc Pomeroy. Of course, with the new RHIBs the boating limits have been significantly expanded since he created this.
blue square bullet paragraph markerCaptain Nathaniel B. Palmer's historic house
in Stonington, Connecticut, was visited in 2007 by Maggie Amsler and members of her research team. You can visit as well.