US and NZ in Antarctica

The relationship between New Zealand and the United States when it comes to Antarctica is as co-operative and helpful as one can get. While McMurdo and Scott Base are run separately, there is a huge amount of assistance and co-operation between the NZ and US Antarctic teams.

One major area is transport. We flew on a US Hercules. They provide most of the transport to Antarctica for us. But the RNZAF also flies Hercules down, and sometimes US staff will ride on these.

The US provides overall air traffic control and co-ordination and maintains the three landing fields.

New Zealand built and constructed three wind turbines a few years ago, to reduce the use of generators. The wind farm now provides 30% of the total energy to both McMurdo and Scott Base.

McMurdo has the port where once a year an icebreaker will come in, followed by a fuel ship and a cargo ship. It costs around $2.50 a kg to ship gear to Antarctica and $16 a kg to fly it, so the port is a huge cost saving.

You can see McMurdo here. It has around 1,100 people in summer and 90 in winter. Unlike Scott Base which has all major buildings joined up, McMurdo has no linkages. This means that if the weather hits condition one, staff may be stranded in the building they were  in. It also means you constantly need to change clothing to go to another building.

I much prefer the way Scott Base has been constructed.

McMurdo looks a lot like an old mining town. There are huge piles of dirt, fuel tanks and timber yards everywhere.

This is one of the most popular places in McMurdo – the second hand exchange shop. A huge amount of gear here that people donate when leaving for others to use. Some people even get their own gear back a few years later by chance!

And of course they have lots of communications stations.

New Zealand would not be able to achieve a lot of what it does, without the relationship with the United States. Antarctica NZ works with the National Science Foundation’ US Antarctic Programme and the RNZAF works with US Air Force. But the relationship is deeper than institutional.

You often get staff transfer between different bases in Antarctica – some Scott Base staff have worked at McMurdo, the Australian base and the Italian base (they have the best coffee).

An example of the helpful nature of the US team is from one of the science teams I was at Scott Base with. Their GPS unit (cost around $250) wasn’t working, so McMurdo lent them a $30,000 GPS unit they had for their field work.