(upbeat music) - Welcome everybody, and thank you for joining us this evening for Science Pub BING, which is a monthly lecture series exploring the exciting scientific world around us.

I'm Nancy Coddington, Director of Science Content for WSKG Public Media.

I'm one of the co-founders of Science Pub and your host for this evening.

I would like to introduce the other co-founder of Science Pub, Kristine Kieswer, she will be behind the scenes this evening fielding your questions from the chat and the Q&A section.

So, please do have lots of questions for Kristine, she's ready, ready to grab those.

We also have our science intern, Julia Diana, and she is joining us from Binghamton University.

And Julia will be live-tweeting this event, you can follow that conversation on Twitter using the #WSKGSciPub.

So, tonight's talk is an exciting one, and as we are moving into the warmth of the area, some of us are thinking about that one, the cold comes back (laughs).

Tonight's talk is Antarctica to the Adirondacks: The Ice Lady's Amazing Journey.

And tonight, we are going to hear from our guest, Michele Cross, as she turned her love of science into a lifelong adventure.

After a seven-week research expedition to Antarctica, this special education teacher was selected to work with NASA scientists studying ice and snow in the Adirondacks of New York State.

At Corning-Painted Post High School she has developed a science course for struggling readers and writers, and continues sharing her knowledge with fishermen and science enthusiasts around Keuka Lake area of upstate New York.

Michele Cross teaches a collaborative hands-on class called Life, Literature, and Science at the Poles.

She's a passionate educator for 34 years, and you can otherwise find her hiking, cycling, kayaking, snowshoeing, and simply enjoying the outdoors.

Throughout winter, The Ice Lady, as she has known collects frozen samples and teaches the local community what her findings reveal.

With retirement approaching, she hopes to add actual ice fishing to her list of outdoor activities.

Welcome Michele, we are so glad to have you with us this evening and sharing your expertise with us.

Welcome.

- Thank you.

I will let each of you know that today was my last day with students, I am retiring at the end of this school year, which will be next week.

So, if I get a little emotional, just I will get myself back together.

So, I've been running a little bit high today 'cause this really, I just love teaching, it's one of my greatest passions and certainly is one of my greatest loves.

But let me share with you one of my other great loves and passions, and that is snow ice, cold Antarctica, and honestly ice cream.

And I'm sure there are friends of mine that are wondering why I didn't put any slides of me with two ice creams in my hands tonight.

So, how did I end up loving snow, and cold, and ice?

Well, going back to 2009, I was selected to go to Antarctica with a small research team that had developed an underwater robot named SCINI.

And this was a third, it was the third year of a grant.

And the organization that had won the grant, it's an organization called PolarTREC, and their mission is to pair up K-12 teachers with researchers in the Arctic and Antarctic.

And they have since been funded over, and over, and over again, and to date.

And we actually do have PolarTREC teachers up in the Arctic right now.

Last year of course was put on hold because of the pandemic, but there have been over 200 teachers from around the United States who have done hands-on science, best professional development program in the world, but they have done hands-on science with researchers in both the Arctic and the Antarctic.

So, I was selected in 2009 to go to Antarctica.

And there is no easy way to get there, there's one of two ways; you're either gonna go by ship or you're going to fly.

So, I left Elmira, New York and flew and ended up in Christchurch, New Zealand.

And you can see, you can see that that is a military transport plane.

And this is the inside of our very comfy ride, a C-17 Globemaster, incredible piece of machinery, certainly was never designed for comfort.

I have a whole new respect for our military that travels in this particular aircraft with all sorts of equipment, but that's the inside.

And this was the first glimpse of the continent, I was the first person to be allowed up on the flight deck that season, that field season, and this was the expanse that I saw.

And it is unlike any expanse you could ever imagine, it really is.

So here I am, I've arrived.

And I think we have a poll, a polling question right now.

So Nancy, can you go ahead and run that?

So, when we landed, how thick was our ice runway for our C-17?

10 feet, 15 feet, 20 feet thick, 25 feet thick, what do you think?

I mean, that is a huge military transport plane, and we were loaded with equipment and personnel.

- I would say the thicker the better.

This is an anonymous poll, so please go ahead and pop your answer in, no one will know what you are choosing, but it's fun just to participate.

Give you just a few more seconds to find that button to go ahead and participate in our poll question.

How thick was the ice runway that our C-17 landed on in November of 2009?

For me, I would want, I'd want it to be 50 (laughs).

(Michele laughing) And we've got almost everybody's voted, I'm gonna go ahead and end that poll and I'm gonna share everyone's results.

Okay, there we go.

- Wow.

So, those of you that were in the 10 feet category, you would be correct.

- Wow.

- So, if we have any teachers or students out there, that is the distance from your floor to most likely your ceiling.

That was, that's as thick as our ice runway was, we landed on the ice shelf.

So 10 feet thick, there was flex that did happen of course when that landed, but that's, it was 10 feet thick.

That was it, surprising.

And Nancy, I have a quick question, I'm seeing the poll on my screen is that?

- You can just X that out.

- [Michele] Can I X out of that?

Oh, okay.

- Yeah, if you can for everybody.

- All right, great.

So, got a little worried.

We were coming in, you have to have perfect conditions because there's no depth perception with that white.

Everything has to be perfect, there cannot be anything, not a gust of wind blowing, a little bit of anything across that ice.

And we started to circle, I'm like, "Oh no, we're gonna spend five more hours going back to Christchurch, and we're gonna get back at 10, and we're gonna get the knock again at 3:00 AM and do this all over again."

But what ended up happening was there was a call that went out to the fire station, there's a trash can on the runway.

And that is code for there is a living critter out on our runway, and could you please come and encourage it to go to another location?

So in this case, our trash can on the runway was a penguin, so we had to circle until our trashcan went to another location.

Now, McMurdo Station was where we were based out of, and it is the largest of the three American stations on the continent.

Of course you have South Pole Station, and then you have Palmer Station along the coast, which is the smallest.

And these are just some of the sites around the base, this is kind looking up, this is part of the Erebus, Mount Erebus Glacial Tongue.

Mount Erebus is the world's southern-most active volcano, and she was active pretty much every day.

This was the view after a three day storm, it was absolutely incredible.

We were kind of locked down and this is the hut on Hut Point, it was one of Robert F. Scott's, it was his first hut and it was a prefab, but it was so windy and gusty that they actually slept on the ship in Winter Quarters Bay.

So, a little bit of trivia for ya.

Now, this is our team.

Up top was our primary investigator, my scientist Dr. Stacy Kim, next to her is Bob Zuck.

And Bob Zuck was the brainchild behind our underwater robot, everybody said that it couldn't be done and he absolutely proved them wrong.

Up top next to him is David McPike, David was our network engineering guy.

Down here of course is me.

And Isabel and Francois, they're both a young engineering couple, she is an electrical engineer and he is a mechanical engineer.

So that was, we have a very, very, very small team.

Of course I was the teacher on the project.

And then most importantly, we have our robot SCINI, and you can see SCINI looks probably quite a bit different than any robot that you've ever seen.

So what I wanna do, I'm gonna come onto this, but SCINI, what does SCINI stand for?

Well, it stands for Submersible Capable of under Ice Navigation and Imaging.

And SCINI was designed specifically to complete science missions under the ice in Antarctica.

Now, there was another project going on in 2009 when we were down there, and that was NASA's AUV called Endurance.

And ours is an ROV, and I'm wondering if there's anybody in the audience that knows like what is an ROV, what's an AUV?

What do you think the difference is between an ROV and an AUV?

- [Kristine] Oh, good questions.

So, if you know those answers please go ahead and answer in the chat.

So can you repeat those questions for us, Michele?

- Sure, so what is an ROV?

What does ROV stand for?

What does AUV stand for?

And then what do you think the difference is between an ROV and an AUV?

And that would probably be for people that know what an ROV is, and they think they know what an AUV is.

- [Kristine] And we've got a couple of people saying, Well, remote operated vehicle- - [Michele] Okay.

- [Kristine] are ROV, so is that our right answer?

- Remotely operated vehicle.

Yup, so an ROV is controlled and in our case it was controlled from above the ice.

And you can see there is a tether, we had about 1,100 feet of tether, and that's kind of where all the communication went back and forth between our ROV and then the the laptops that were up top and then what the pilot was using to control our ROV.

Now, any idea what an AUV is?

- [Kristine] So, Lyla says that an AUV operates by itself rather than connecting.

- Good, so an AUV is an autonomous underwater vehicle, and this is a picture of Endurance.

Now, I'll just give you a size reference.

Now, this was not in Antarctica as you can see by the building, but this believe it or not, Endurance was designed, and was tested, and continued, I believe was tested after our 2009 field season.

I think they were down there again, but the hope is someday that this will go and land on Europa and drill through what they believe is a frozen ocean, and then deploy other AUVs into that body of water.

So, it's quite the vision and I really am hoping that I see it in my lifetime, but the size of this is about the size of a Punch Bug, a VW Beetle.

And you can see how it is being lowered here.

Now, in theory yes, you are able to deploy it and it's not connected to anything, but what I will tell you that they were under a little bit of a...

They were restricted in Lake Bonney, the National Science Foundation wanted it tethered in case something happened.

But in theory, you would program how it's going to, you know, the transects is going to do, how's it going to to do its mission, in this case under the ice.

And it would be autonomous, so that is the correct answer.

So, what makes our robot unique?

Well, I think you could see the difference right off the bat.

I mean, this is not the size of a VW, this is the size of a third grader, maybe about four feet long, about 35 to 40 pounds, so it's very easily moved by one person so it's able to be transported.

You can see our case, it fits right in a case.

Our AUV that was down there, when it's in the states has its own garage, that's how big it is.

So that's kind of one, a couple of things that make it different, just size, and portability, and weight.

So you can imagine then it doesn't cost quite as much to get that thing around.

The other thing that makes ours different is we actually hand drilled the holes in the ice to put our robot down into, along with our navigational equipment, so we used three foot drill bits that were eight inches.

And we would just add strings, and believe it or not, we actually hand drilled, it took us over two hours.

Hand drilled through 24 feet of the hardest ice in the world.

Blue ice is the hardest, all of the gases have been compressed out of it, it is incredibly difficult and challenging.

So, you can not hand drill a hole for our AUV, drill rigs would need to be brought in, so again, that adds logistical costs.

But that's how we drilled our own holes for our robot.

- [Kristine] Michele, we have a quick question.

- [Michele] Sure.

- [Kristine] So, how deep can the SCINI go under the ice?

- So, SCINI was on it's its third year of development, and there was 1,100 feet of wire or cable attached, and we did have her out the full length.

So- - [Kristine] Wow.

- If we had had longer, she would have been going deeper, so that's quite a distance.

I mean, imagine being on a football field and you are pulling cable, you know, it's the equivalent of going down, back, down, back, down, back, pretty much, that's a lot of cable and tether.

- [Kristine] That is that's- - So, that's a great question.

(Kristine laughing) So, you can see our robot has a downward facing camera with LED lights, and this is the forward camera.

Forward camera is for our pilot, and then the downward camera was so that Stacy could see what was going on on the ocean floor because she is a benthic ecologist, so she's interested in the communities on the ocean floor and how those communities interact with one another, so that's why both cameras.

And you can see, you're probably like, "Is that PVC pipe?"

It's PVC pipe, it's six inch PVC pipe off the shelf.

And that's the great thing about SCINI is everything is off the shelf, the parts are all off the shelves.

You have your..

These actually came out of a helicopter kit, so you have thrusters.

We had, they were on the side, you had a main one in the back, but these were just geared by our engineers to work with our robots.

I mean, again off the shelf, helicopter hobby kit basically.

And here's SCINI in sections controlled by PS game controller, which is really unique and different, wireless, I had never had one in my hands until Antarctica and I got to fly her.

So when we would put SCINI in the water and turn her on, she could take 17 images per second, which by the time we were done we had millions upon millions of individual images that we could pull out the video.

But the great thing about SCINI is, if she breaks in the field, she can be easily and quickly fixed because of the off the shelf parts, so we didn't lose downtime.

And that's way different from NASA's Endurance, and there was a little bit of, oh fun.

Anybody that says that scientists don't know how to have fun, they don't know scientists.

So, we referred to Endurance as Fatty, that was about 8.7 million.

The parts for our SCINI was about $15,000, and they've said that SCINI stood for Serious Cash Infusion Needed Immediately.

So, there was some back and forth going on.

- That's great.

(Michele laughing) We have a question from Garrett, "Is SCINI durable or easy to break?"

- SCINI is extremely durable.

The PVC pipe, the six inch, and again, you gotta understand too, everything was tested to make sure that it could withstand pressures.

And they knew that she could withstand pressures down to 1,100 feet, which is why we had the cable.

I'm gonna talk a little bit about Bob a little bit later on, but he had developed what I call a SCINI on steroids, much beefier and could go much, much deeper.

So, that was something that came about after our 2009 field season.

So, that's a great question.

Very durable, we didn't lose any time because of issues.

- That's great, and so, how long did it take to build?

- You mean from the time it was a concept?

Like from conceptualization?

I'm not sure that I know the exact answer to that because I came in during the third year, but it was a work in progress.

And I do know that that after about a year's worth of work in demoing, they had one to take in 2007 and then they worked on continuing to develop it.

2008, they went with another one, continued to develop, and then 2009, I went.

So, it continued to be a work in progress, but once Bob had the concept and he started working with engineers, I think within a year, a year-and-a-half, they were ready to go that first time.

And so like with any science projects, there were goals.

Goals are always a good thing, I tell my students it's important to have goals, you know, you don't have to have a lot, but you know, have something that you're working towards.

So, what were the engineering goals?

What were the engineers hoping to deal with our field season?

Well, this was a new camera setup, this whole bottom camera and then the forward camera.

And so, the hope was is that they would both work and Stacy could get her transects or her video of what was on the ocean floor in the different locations.

And you can see that those, they worked very well, so that's number one, was to test a new camera setup, it was a success.

The other one was to test software, new software that made SCINI easier to fly.

There I am at the end of the day, and if you noticed by face is red.

Yes, you need to wear sunscreen in Antarctica.

This was a very cloudy day, there was a storm moving in, there was not a bit of sunshine around, I forgot to put my sunscreen on one time, and I didn't forget again.

You gotta remember, that the ozone hole is actually over Antarctica, and that provides a tremendous amount of protection for us.

So, they tested the software, that was a success as well.

There was a new navigational system that was also to be tested our field season, it was a wireless Southstar Navigational System.

And what you see down here is actually a transducer.

A transponder is different from a transducer because a transponder actually communicates, they can communicate back and forth like you and I can have a conversation back and forth.

A transducer just sends information one way, so we would drill navigational holes and we would put these transducers down.

And this is what would come up on the computer screen, so what we could do then ideally we needed three holes to put our three transducers down and we could triangulate.

There were a couple of times where we could only drill two because of the ice, the ice was very challenging in the field.

But this way we can at least know is SCINI over on this side?

Is SCINI over on that side?

So, that was also as a success, it was a great system.

SCINI as a robot, as an ROV, there were goals for that as well.

Number one was to locate new research sites and have us get to them with minimal costs and minimal difficulties from a logistical standpoint, that was an extreme, that was a success, absolutely.

We went to numerous locations.

The other, another goal was to create initial maps of the sea floor areas in the places that we went.

Antarctica is one of the last places to have the sea floor mapped.

And when we were there, NASA was finishing up doing a mapping of a particular area of a portion of the continent.

And it just blew my mind in 2009, like land, every part of land had not been mapped, but it had not been mapped, there was an area about the size of New York State.

So, there was software that was designed to do that, and I'm gonna show you some pictures of that in a little bit.

And then the other big goal was... And for the person that asked the question about the tether, how deep could she go?

So up until SCINI, you were limited as to how deep you could go to see what was under the ice in Antarctica based on how deep a scuba diver could go, and that's about 100 to 110 feet, that's the limit.

So again, Stacey was always wondering what's beyond that?

And Bob was like, "I can make something."

"No, you can't."

Oh yes, he did.

So, we had a robot beyond that 100 feet and I'm telling you, you're gonna be absolutely amazed at what was there.

I mean, nobody knew, it was 2009 and nobody knew what was beyond the limits of scuba divers in Antarctica.

So, these were some of our locations that we deployed from, the McMurdo Ice Shelf, this was our field location, and you can see the sea ice crack.

This, like I told you, that blue ice is the toughest ice in the world.

It was, and it was deep, I mean, we were lucky to find, I think we ranged between about 18 feet and 24 feet every single time.

Cape Evans, an inaccessible island area was near Ross Island, which is where McMurdo Station is at.

We did deploy off of the sea ice edge the very last time we deployed her, that was an incredible experience.

And then right before I got there, this is an iceberg graveyard of sorts, and in these, they're locked in there, they're frozen in, and then the wind just ablates them.

And so, they did some time, they spent some time out at the Bay of Sails.

Now, the maps- - [Nancy] Well, I have a quick question for you- - Go ahead, sure.

- that's linked to this about the blue ice.

So, is blue ice found in other parts of the world?

- Yes.

That's a simple answer.

So, you will see it like if anybody goes to the Adirondacks in the winter.

I'm thinking of them because I know routinely when I go up in the winter, I will see it.

You know, you'll see cliffs and you'll see the runoff that's frozen, and it's frozen, and frozen.

And you will see blue ice like you will see that blue tint.

You're probably not gonna see like at Keuka lake or one of our Finger Lakes because it's not gonna freeze.

It's not gonna be able to freeze long enough to compress everything out.

But yes, other places in the world.

That's a great question.

It's just miserable to drill through, I can tell you that.

And I became an expert driller when I was down there, it was one of my jobs.

So, this believe it or not, I know this is like this is the initial like makings of the sea floor map in a certain area, yes it is.

So, there is a very expensive software that we can take all this data, we can throw it into and it will map out the bottom in this particular location.

And your blue colors are your shallower depths all the way to your red, which are your deepest.

So, believe it or not, for every individual dot there is an image associated with it for every single one.

For instance, and now I'm not saying that this is exactly the image, but just to give you an idea we could bring it up and boom, you know, you've got a brittle star associated here, you've got this image associated here.

So, there's an image associated with every single point on this particular mapping software.

Now, we worked around the base, but we did spend two weeks out in the field, and this was my first time camping.

Kind of a believer in going big or going home, and I guess I went big, but if you notice there's no snow or ice here because less than 2% of Antarctica is not covered in snow and ice, it's known as the Dry Valleys and they get very little to no snow.

So, the dot that you see here is where we established our base camp.

And every day we would man haul our equipment out onto the ice, we would cross this pressure ridge, I fell down through it the first day we were there.

And we would go out and I think we were out well over a mile, a mile-and-a-half from our base camp, but this was kind of special because like I said less than 2% is covered in snow and ice.

I'm sorry, is not covered in snow and ice.

So, this was our base camp.

I don't know if you can see that, but that's actually a person, so if you wanna get an idea of scale, I mean, we were very minute in the scheme of things, but this was where we we based, we had our tents and we man hauled our stuff out onto the ice.

This was the first time and only time I did not have a roommate, so this was my tent for the time we were there.

We had a little bit of problem with the wind, and as a result, the helos do not fly beyond about 65, 70 mile an hour winds.

And so as a result, they were able to get us in with our survival bags.

You have to have one survival bag for every two people at 76 pounds worth, it's everything you need to survive for a week-ish to 10 days if you need to.

So, we had our survival bags, we had our community tent, we had our snack boxes, we had all of our science equipment, but we did not have... And we had everybody's sleep kit except for mine, and they could not bring the third flight in.

So, here we are all sleeping together.

This is me covered in, I've got my parka on me and poor Bob gave me his sleeping bag and everybody else gave him their fleece inserts, so this is our little Bobarito.

He took one for the team 'cause otherwise I did not have a sleeping bag and those bags are rated to 50 below.

So, by the time we were bundled up in there the winds were easily over 76, 80 miles an hour sustained like sustained, not gusts, gusts were higher.

So, this was our community tent that we spent, we had spent three days in there until the weather.

We had great weather, but then they didn't, and it was so we were living on chocolate and potato sticks and double-stuffed Oreo and anything else that we'd stuffed in our survival bags and our emergency bags.

We did break into the survival bags, but that was our community tent and that's where we had our meals.

And then we had our individual tents once they were delivered.

So as you can see, we had quite a bit of science equipment, about a thousand pounds worth that it was broken up between two sledges.

So we man hauled everything, like you put a harness over you and you're going.

Now, this is nice and smooth, but then there are ice hummocks and some of them are 10, 12 feet high, and you gotta be real careful about pulling equipment.

You do not have the harness on you because it's really easy once momentum takes over, it's real easy to break a leg and it is not easy getting medical care once you're out in the field.

- Michele, how about how much does that weigh when you're pulling that?

- So, that particular sledge was probably close to about 800, 900 pounds.

And usually there were about, there were, it was easier with five of us, but it worked with three.

And then we had a smaller what we called the banana slide and that one, I just hauled around myself.

But yeah, there was quite a bit of equipment.

So, this is me, this was actually closer to base.

There are all sorts of challenges when you're working out there, you will never hear me complain about wind and cold ever again, you won't.

We worked out on the ice for 12, 14, 15 hours a day and seven days a week.

I mean, we worked seven days a week.

So we were, this was not out in the field, you can see the difference, look at the difference, I mean, this is ice.

And this is if I remember right was about nine feet worth of ice that we drove through, but the current under the ice was so fast that we deployed SCINI, and then when we wanted to bring her back up through the ice hole, the current would take her away much like if you were fishing and your lure got caught in the current.

And so, I was out there and Francois, who's one of our pilots was like, "Michele, pull up now, pull up now," so he was trying to maneuver it under the hole and I had to pull up hoping that I pulled it up through the hole at the right time.

Well, after about 15 minutes we got her back up and I'll tell you I was a little worried 'cause Bob wasn't with us, and I did not.

It's one thing to lose a lure, how am I gonna explain we lost your robot?

We couldn't get it out of the ice hole.

So, there are challenges.

It was a beautiful day, but we weren't expecting that degree of a current under the ice there.

Best work views in the world, this is Mount Discovery right here in the distance if any of you have read any of the explorers books.

And again, you can see this beautiful blue ice and the ice crack.

And just so you know, we did find ice that was 18, 19, 20, you know, up to 24 feet, but we were easily overall on a hundred plus feet of ice so it was a challenging area in that regard.

Now, the number one question is well, did you see penguins?

Did you see seals?

No polar bears, they're up north, but the answer is yes, and I was a little disappointed because I hadn't seen...

I saw tons of seals, but I hadn't seen penguins until the last day when we were at the sea ice edge.

And this is an Adelie penguin and they're about 18 to 24 inches tall.

And the way that I described them is they're like little ADHD kids on speed, they're very entertaining, you cannot get any work done because all you wanna do is watch them.

They're very curious because you have to understand that they don't have any natural predators on the ice.

So, literally I did not have a fancy camera, I had a little Canon point and shoot in 2009, I think it was a 12 megapixel.

I had four of them come running up behind me, I had just gotten done scooping out, you've gotta keep the holes cleared because it freezes back up pretty quickly.

So, I had just gotten done clearing all of our holes for the transducers and I hear, "Michele turn around," I turn around and there are four Adelie penguins just running after me, so I sat down and they came literally right up to me, I couldn't zoom out with my little tiny camera fast enough.

So, I was more than thrilled that I got, well, a couple of them almost jumped in my lap, I'll just say that.

And then we did have one emperor penguin that spent the day with us and he was calling for a mate, and at one point we could hear a call come back, but he wasn't the healthiest.

He's, when they are...

When they're eating well, their poop is pink because of the krill shrimp-like, so when you have sunlight, you'll have krill.

If you have krill, you have penguins, and if you have penguins, you have orcas.

There were no leopard seals around us and, he just, he was excreting bile, it was pretty clear.

He did leave at the end of the day and went off into you know, when he just looked at us and turned and kind of slid off into the ocean, the sea there.

But he stayed with us all day and we had about, I don't know, 16 to 20 Adelie penguins kind of hanging out on the pack ice as the pack ice started to come in.

And then, Weddell seals, they are the biggest sea slugs (laughs) you'll ever see.

This was the very first day I was there after I'd arrived.

We were at a dive hut and I heard and I knew enough not to put my face over the hole because the first thing they do when they come out of that hole is they expel this greasy yellow, thick mucus, we call it lung butter, and it coats the inside of their lungs because they can dive 1,000 feet, 1,500 feet, 2,000 feet, and so it keeps them from getting crushed, so they'll expel it.

One of my teammates caught a face full of this so I just learned by that story and I did not put my face over the dive hole.

And this was a young Weddell seal out at Evans Wall, Cape Evans was the Scott expedition where he was beaten by Amundsen by three weeks, it was the push to the south pole.

And then this little guy, he was, you can see, he still has his baby coat and he was starting to lose it.

What you don't see in this picture is just behind him was the top part of his mother's head, and we did not expect to find any of them there because the ice was thick and it wasn't near anything.

And she was deceased and there he was, and he, you know, yawned and did all sorts of things.

And we, it looks like I'm not as close as it looks again, I zoomed in as much as I could.

That's just it, we are guests there, and anything that we do that changes their behavior.

We're too close, we're in the wrong, we must move away and touching them as a no-no.

You wanna get a one-way trip back home quickly, that'll do it.

And again, you know, coated in snow a little sugar cookie here.

So, lots of Weddell seals, like I said, no leopard seals.

Now, what did SCINI see?

And we did have the very first images of what was under the ice in Antarctica that was beyond scuba depth limits.

So, other countries have since developed their own ROVs and images of (indistinct).

Australia put out some very similar ones a couple of summers ago, but this is a sea cucumber.

And this of course is this was one of my favorites, this is a crinoid, it's a type of starfish.

And this is a vase sponge, and these vase sponge down there can grow to be large enough to be able to accommodate a six foot male scuba diver fit inside of one of those.

I mean, they can grow to be that large.

And sea spiders, I love these.

We had a touch tank right outside of our lab, and every morning I go in and I put my hand in the 28.7 degree water, and cause they were kind of like my pets.

And the sea spiders, they can be as big as like a nine inch dinner plate, they're just, I know some of you are probably cringing out there, but they really were just beautiful, they're delicate.

And gosh, you're like how do they survive?

And up here, this is a nudibranch, it's a sea slug basically.

This is an Odontaster sea star, I think you're pretty familiar with that.

Another little nudibranch down here.

And this is an Antarctic anemone, and these are feather duster worms, and of course this is another type of sponge.

And you're probably already seeing like wow, there's all sorts of colors under the ice in Antarctica, and that's true, all of the colors and all of the life are actually under the ice in that 28.7 degree water, which is a very stable ecosystem.

It's not on top of the ice, it's very stark, very black and white, blue sky if there's blue sky, us in our red parkas, and that's about it.

Now, these things, oh, these are nemertean worms, and we do have them along the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and they only grow to be about one to three centimeters, but down there, they can grow to be six feet long.

And look at the purples and they're feeding on a sponge.

I mean, that's why there it's kind of like a feeding frenzy here, and of course you can see everybody's come in.

When sponges are dying, they secrete a chemical like a chem trail and that's what everything follows, they'll come in and they'll feed.

Another type of sponge, it's pink, look at all these different types of sponges.

Feather duster worms, you know, another type of sponge, sea anemone, purples, pinks, you know, oranges, greens.

This is a basket star sponge, and here is your view from the forward camera so this is what the pilot would see when the pilot is navigating SCINI.

And you can see, this is actually a skeleton of a sponge, this sponge is pretty close to dead, if not dead.

And you have this sea star feeding.

So again, when this starts to happen, chemicals are released and it's like that bread crumb trail that other living things will come so that they can feed.

Polychaete sponges, believe it or not, these are sponges they kind of look like fuzzy yellow caterpillars.

Another type of sponge, canal has a spiky look to it.

Another type of sponge, look at all the bivalves on the bottom of this location, you've got a different type of sea spider, your Odontaster sea stars.

Crinoids over the opening of your vase sponge here, and all they're doing is filtering the water for food, they're not hurting the sponge.

And again, this is an octopus.

And if anybody's noticed, I don't know if anybody's asked what are the two red lights?

Well, the two red lights on the front, it's on the front of SCINI and they are lasers and they give you a size reference.

So whenever you see those two lights in an image it signifies 10 centimeters, so you can see that this octopus is smaller than that.

So 10 centimeters for me is about the base of my palm from here to here, that's about 10 centimeters.

So if you keep that in mind, it's about three, and I think it's about three and a quarter inches, it kinda gives a size reference to some of these things.

And this is a brittle star here, but when I had stayed back one day and for 14 hours I went through about 80,000 images or was it a hundred?

I don't know, it was a lot.

I literally worked for 14 hours, I took one break and I pulled out some of the best.

And when Stacy got to look at this she realized was an unidentified species of sea anemone.

But the problem is is you can't identify something until you can bring it to the surface, get your hands on it and do what you need to do.

And SCINI did not have a grasping mechanism that season, she did get one the following season though.

This one, this cracked me up, I don't know whether they were wrestling or it kinda reminds me of like sea star wrestling.

They were having a moment I guess, and you can see like these tiny little these are brittle stars and those are super tiny.

Here's your 10 centimeter reference and tons of bivalves on the floor.

Now, from Antarctica we're gonna transition here, so, I mean, that really was kind of the experience of a lifetime.

I needed to get my passport, I mean, it really hadn't been out of the country, you knew that was my first time camping, a lot of firsts for me.

But once you kind of get a taste of that you're always kind of looking for that next fix.

And there was a time I spent a week up in Canada in 2012 for the International Polar Year, they brought a bunch of teachers up, there was an application process and we worked together to develop Polar Educators International and kind of network.

And that was wonderful, and then just to be able to be a part of and meet, you know, scientists and glaciologists from around the world and just pretty incredible time.

Well, then I was looking for another ice fix and I applied for NASA's History of Winter in 2014, and there were 18 of us selected that year from across the country.

And so, we spent a week up in Lake Placid in February and this at the time had been a longitudinal study looking at kind of ice-in ice-out data on cascades, Narrow Lake looking at freeze events on those.

And then there were still pits kept in different locations that there were thermochrons that would you would know when you had snowfall, that they came and stayed rather than we got snow that melts.

And then you can, what you can do, and I'll get into this a little bit, but you can really tell the history of winter by the snow pack in a snow pit.

I mean, it's really quite fascinating, It tells a story, It tells a story of a winter as does ice.

And what you see here is a cross section, this is Mirror Lake, and you can see kind of the ice, the gas bubbles kind of getting squeezed.

Believe it or not, these are different freeze events, this is one freeze event, this really is another one here, you got another one, here's one.

So, these are different freeze events, and down here not as much, so when you kind of look at it, I'll keep it simple, if you're looking and you see a freeze event and there aren't any bubbles or anything like stretched, that means that it was a very slow freeze, you stayed below freezing and it froze.

When you kind of have a medium freeze event, you know, it's a little it's not quite as long in duration, but it's not so long that it kind of compresses the air bubbles out of it.

And then when you have those ice bubbles that are there that's a fast freeze event, and there have been times on Keuka Lake where I've gone, I've pulled something up, I've gone back the next day and you can see all the ice bubbles frozen in because I was out there and it's 20 below, it was supposed to get down to like 35 below that night, and so those bubbles get trapped in there.

This is a cross section of ice of a thin, this is a thin ice cross section.

And you can take polarizing filter paper, put it at a 90 degree angle, and you can actually look at the crystal structure so you can tell that this particular body of water did it, were there are there a lot of small crystals, which maybe it means that it was a night where it was snowing, so you have snowflakes, and each of those snowflakes becomes a nucleation site for that ice crystal, or does it look like there's bigger crystals?

And again, you can tell a lot by that, that's a whole other probably show or conversation, but again, just beautiful.

And again, it tells a story, the formation of the ice.

So, snowflakes was part of this.

Snowflakes during a storm can tell the story of the storm, it tells you can learn a lot by the type of snowflakes that you see coming down at each part of the storm.

All I use is the jewelers loupe, Amazon.

It's just 10 times, I use a 10 magnification, I use my iPhone.

And back then I didn't have the iPhone that I have now, and I'm out there and I'm looking at snowflakes, they taught us how to do this in like classes, so like what are the factors that go into your snowflakes being formed?

Well, believe it or not, your perfect snowflakes that we all like, those beautiful ones, you're really limited because the two things that come into play here are humidity and temperature.

So, when you start, I love it when I start to see the temperature getting around 32, 33, 34, I'm outside because I know that what starts as plates up in the atmosphere, they're gonna grow and you get these beautiful dendritic, these fern-like patterns, but it's not great for skiers or snowshoers 'cause it's a heavy, wet stuff.

And then if it gets too humid and the temperature a little bit higher, it clumps together.

And then the other sweet spot, and this is a little harder outside is kind of in your about 15, 10 degrees, I'd say really between about 15 and 10, 5 degrees you're gonna have this happen if you have humidity in the upper atmosphere, it'll kind of grow up there and then it'll come down, they're gonna be tinier though.

So, you can buy little loupes that have like millimeters so you can kind of if you're interested in the size, but it's just really low tech.

I do have a setup that I do plan on, I bought everything, but now I wanted to wait to retirement so I had the time and I'm gonna have the time, so hopefully I'll go a little bit higher tech.

And then this is simply from the jeweler's loupe in my iPhone, that's it.

So, you know, if you get outside and watch it, you know you can tell if warmer air comes in during a snow storm you're gonna see that in the snowflakes.

If colder air comes behind, you're gonna see that in the type of snowflakes that fall later.

Now, I promised I was gonna get back to Bob because we always hear at least here as a teacher in New York State and students here, there's only one pathway to success and that's to go to college, and that's a crock.

So, we worked a lot of hours together and I learned an awful lot about Bob.

At the age of 15, Bob became a member of Aspen Colorado Search and Rescue Team, and he was part of that for many, many years.

There's a book out called "The Falling Season" that he is in.

And it was a particularly difficult season, there were not a lot of rescues, but there were a lot of recoveries.

So, we were talking and he was telling me he has a learning disability, he's ADHD, and it didn't really go so well in high school.

I'm just gonna leave it at that, he was failed.

And he is a high school dropout, he has no GED, he has no high school diploma, he has no college, and yet, he is the brainchild behind something that scientists said could never be done.

And so that was stirring around in me all this time because I'm a special ed teacher, I deal with students who I know are incredibly brilliant, but they just can't express it the way the society expects them to express it.

So it's just like what can I do?

What can I do?

This isn't right, and even David, believe it or not, David, our network engineer guy, he was a high school dropout.

School didn't work for him, he did go on and get his GED and he was working on his associates, but it didn't, this didn't, this pathway did not fit them, they did not fit this pathway.

So, I'm super proud of Bob because the very next field season and the one after that, he began working with another team of scientists.

And like I said he designed a SCINI that was kind of beefier and could go deeper, it could withstand the pressure.

And remember I told you that when you turn SCINI on 17 image images per second from the time she turned on till she's turned off, and that means turn around above the ice, you lower her down through, she's piloted, you bring her back up.

And when they were bringing SCINI back up they noticed these sea anemones on the underside of the Ross Ice Shelf.

Like that's where they were attached, nobody knew, look at them, nobody knew that they get attached under an ice shelf, all the sea anemones are on the ocean floor, this was a happy discovery, like an accidental discovery.

And the project was Andrew, this was the scientist, but Bob's creation is responsible for discovering and identifying a previously undiscovered species.

Right here, this anemone that lives on the underside of the ice shelf, so I'm just super, super proud of him.

And so eventually when we were coming into combining high schools, I was talking about I wanna develop a class for struggling readers and writers.

I think it's important, I want it to be one that's engaging, I want it to be where they work together as a team, where they problem solve because there's an awful lot of intelligence and creativity and ingenuity, and just a tremendous amount of potential that I know is untapped because we keep trying to fit square pegs in round holes instead of trying to tap into that person's strengths and then put them on that pathway.

So that's where Life, Literature and Science at The Poles came from, I pitched it, it was fast tracked, and I developed it, and it ran, and it was all designed to be different than what they were used to.

So, just some of the favorite activities that the kids have done penguinmatch.com, I would give them patterns and kazoos, and you'd be amazed at the number of kids that don't know how to use a kazoo, so that's hysterical in and of itself.

And they would have to use a kazoo to make the pattern and find their penguin and match without talking because that's how penguins find their mates.

We held many years we did our own Antarctic Treaty Conferences where they used the main parts of the treaties and they each represented their country.

And there were applications before them, and based on the treaties, they had to decide whether that proposal was accepted or rejected.

So there was a lot that went into this, a lot of engagement, a lot of thought, and we always, always celebrated with a cake, but that was another, you know, multi, it was probably a week, week-and-a-half.

I was very fortunate the district was super supportive, they let me take my very first polar science class down to Penn State for their Polar Science Day.

And we spent the day down there and here they are, they're flying an ROV in the pool there.

They had a blast, it was just great to watch their faces all day.

We've been out digging snow pits and gathering data, believe it or not with a snow pit, and I'll just tell you, you can maybe stick this in your mind for next winter, but take an area that has not been, you know, you haven't had a snow shoveled onto it, or plowed up on it, but you can actually, you can actually with your finger or with a credit card if you'd rather not use your finger, you can start from the bottom and go up and you can feel the different layers, those are your different snow events, and there are different temperatures with those.

A lot of kids were really surprised to discover that it's actually quite warm at the base of that snow pit.

So gathering data, working together, they're outside, we did our own ice thin sections.

And I know I'm watching the time here, we had to do it the teacher way though, I didn't have the equipment we had at Lake Placid.

One of the favorite ones was the bucket head drill, I had to do this when I did my happy camper, my field survival training before I could leave the base, where you simulate whiteout conditions.

This was our superintendent up until last year, Mike and I started our careers together, he's since retired, I had him come over, they were given 60, 70 meters of climbing rope.

I identified the benches as their J hut, Mr. Janowski had left to go whatever.

And it was whiteout conditions, and you had to find him using the rope, while Mr. Janowski died twice.

The moral of the story is if you're on whiteout conditions, it's probably not gonna end well, so this was always a favorite.

This was a blast, this is my all guy class.

And I was being observed this day., Mr. Harrington died twice too, one of our APs, but we got hit with a snow storm in the middle of all this, and so it was cold, "You said to bring my gloves, I didn't, my hands are cold."

"Well, I guess you should've listened."

But again, the kids, they talk about it, and we had a snow day the next day so it was kind of fun.

That led to Keuka Lake, so I do do an ice study on Keuka Lake, specifically Indian Pines because that is the one end that generally does freeze.

Although I have been shut out twice in the last seven years, things are changing, climate is changing.

This happened to be the year that Keuka froze from the north end to the south end, it was phenomenal, the ice was fantastic.

And so, what I do by the way, you can see a quick freeze here.

So this was an eight inch ice fishing hole, that was drilled the day before and it got well below freezing the next night and boom, those gases were trapped.

So, what I do is I take very methodical measurements, I pull up the ice to look at, you know, what kind of ice are we talking about here?

Like right here you have, this is water ice, and then this is snow ice on top, but if you look closely, this was a freeze event, it was a long one 'cause there's no bubbles.

This one, you can see the bubbles getting stretched out in it.

And another one here, pretty good ice.

This, I always say take time to slow down and look around, this was a snowflake that actually got frozen in the lake ice this year, right here.

It was incredible.

So, I have my big blue ice saw, it was the best Christmas present I ever got.

And I did lose my science drill bit, I have not replaced it 'cause it's about $300, so I am using a four-inch regular ice fishing auger.

I've got a measuring tool from Kovacs, I have my little sledge, I drag everything out, but it's been a nice outreach to the Keuka Lake community.

And I think they're beginning to realize that that ice fishermen actually do know what they're doing, and they're not idiots for being out there.

You know, like here, you're like, "Wow, there's all this water out on the ice."

Yeah, it was about 76 degrees that day.

The problem is that if you saw water and then all of a sudden it's gone that's when you've got a problem, so this is actually fine.

And that kind of ties, this is how I've kind of come full circle here, but this never would have got going without PolarTREC, I could never thank them enough, the confidence that this gave me both personally and professionally, it's just priceless.

Best professional development I've ever gone to, Lake Placid is number two, those are pretty big shoes to fill.

And on that note, this is the Mrs. Cross you're not wired quite right picture 'cause I'm laying out on Keuka Lake at the end of the day.

So, questions?

- We have a lot of them.

Wonderful presentation, thank you so much.

I wanna take us back to actually when you were getting ready to land in Antarctica.

We have several questions about, you know, how do you know first how deep the ice is, right before you even start to land?

How do they know that?

And why do you need not have any cross winds happening when you go to land?

- Okay, so the first question, there are men and women, that's their job, they measure the thickness and the flex.

The ice flexes, and I think if I'm remembering correctly and it's been a while, I believe the day that we landed the ice so that 10 feet advice actually flexed about 12 to 15 inches worth.

So, when you start to get thinner and you get more flex, so that was a temporary, that was a seasonal landing strip, and it no longer exists because of climate change.

So what would happen is about the beginning of December when the ice would start to thin out and it would start to flex more, and you've got somebody out there, that's what they're doing, they're measuring that, and they're keeping track of it.

They would move the lines, the gas lines and everything, they move all the equipment out to the permanent ice strip that was about 40 minutes away.

Well, it wasn't, it really wasn't more than a handful of years after I was there that the temporary seasonal ice strip was no more because it just couldn't sustain it, and you could not have fuel lines rupture, it would be a catastrophe that I can't even, I don't think anybody could wrap their head around.

And another interesting bit of information with changing climate, the permanent ice strip, that actually had to be moved further away too out on the shelf.

So now, there's just the one, the one ice strip, so it's somebody's job to measure thickness and flex.

And then the other question had to do with... Refresh my memory here.

- The wind blowing or animals on the ice.

- Oh, yeah.

Okay, so it's hard to kind of wrap your head around it here, but when you have a backdrop of white there's no depth perception, so like I could look out from my lab window and I'd be like oh, those mountains, the Transantarctic Mountains don't look very far away.

Well, they were far away there, there's no depth perception so the pilots, they've, everything has to be perfect, there cannot be, you can't have like you know, snow dancing across that runway because there's not depth perception like we know it.

So, if it's not perfect or if there's like a little bit of a foggy type, like an inversion that rolls in, you're not landing, you're going back, and they've got to be able to see that runway perfectly.

And by the way, and I know I forgot, I did forget that.

Anybody have a guess as to how long it took before that C-17 stops?

- [Nancy] Great question.

Anybody wanna answer in the chat?

- I'll give you a hint, it's between a half a mile and five miles, what do you think?

- That's how long that plane is running down the ice- - [Michele] 'Cause we're- - before (indistinct) - Yeah, we're not hitting the brakes 'cause we're on ice, so how long before that thing comes to stop?

Gotta remember, it's size, it has equipment and people.

I mean, we even had to weigh ourselves before we got on there.

4.5 miles, that's a great.

3.5, 4, okay.

It took about two to three- - [Nancy] Two to three?

- Two to three miles depending on how much it was, you know, how weighted down it was.

Yeah, so little story.

When we were ready to leave Christchurch, the New Zealand Army, we go through there, and the first thing that the gentlemen says to me, the young man says to me is, "Ma'am, could you please step on the scale?"

In his nice New Zealand accent, and I'm like, "Excuse me (laughs)?"

'Cause my extreme cold weather gear, which you're required to be in when you fly anywhere, you know, when we were in a helicopter and being heloed to our site, you gotta be in it, 15 pounds worth of equipment on top of everything else.

So, but they have to account for every bit of weight.

Any other?

- [Nancy] (indistinct).

- Yeah.

(Nancy laughing) So, two to three miles is about how long it takes for that thing to slow down enough to stop.

- Okay, great.

Elizabeth wanted to know what was your first feeling when you were on the ice?

Were you scared?

- I think there was a little bit of that.

I was super excited, I was like, "Holy cow, I can't believe I'm here."

And it was about seven degrees the day that we landed, so it was a beautiful day, blue sky, seven degrees Fahrenheit by the way.

I was nervous, I was anxious, I was excited, I think it was everything rolled into one like I can't even believe that I'm standing here.

- Yeah, I bet that felt really, really surreal.

We have a question about the ArcMap is the location... Where there any references to other geographic locations on that map?

- Which map?

You mean the software that was mapping the sea floor?

- [Nancy] Yes.

- So that is a screen capture that I pulled just to kind of show you how that worked, but all of that information was part of all of the hard drives that went back.

So there were, so if you're asking like do I know that particular location come from the bay?

Or did that information come from the Bay of Sails?

Did it come from a tent in Inaccessible Island?

I don't know, but I do know that that was all contained within that.

I just merely brought that so that you could see how that sort of worked and what it looked like.

- Great, thank you.

Talking a little bit about drilling the hole for the robot, how far down did you drill those holes?

And how far was it between the ice and before you actually hit that water in the ocean?

- So, the thickest ice was 24 feet, and that took like forever.

And it took four of us like I said about two and a half hours just constantly, and one of my jobs was they would stop, they would pull out the pins, I would quickly put the other drill bit in 'cause they were three foot strings, and I would throw the pin back in and you gotta do it quickly because the drill bits will freeze in the ice and then that's not good, you're not getting them back.

And then you gotta put flags up saying that, "Oops, we made an oops," and you don't wanna do that 'cause it's a pristine environment.

So, the thinnest that we drilled through was nine feet nine, that was the thinnest ice I was on, so it's a little different back here.

And then the thickest was 24, but on average I would say we were routinely drilling between 12 and 18 feet.

- That's a lot to hand drilling.

- It is.

(Nancy laughing) Like I said, I'm an expert, you could blindfold me and I can tell you what kind of ice about when I'm gonna break through, I can tell you all that.

- That's impressive.

(Michele laughing) Does SCINI run out of battery?

- Does SCINI run out of battery?

- [Nancy] Yes.

- No, SCINI.

That's a great question, SCINI actually runs on a small Honda generator, fossil fuel, but that field season we ran her on solar power for one of our 14 hour days, it was the first time anything like that had run on solar.

- [Nancy] That's really neat.

- Yeah.

- Okay, we have lots of questions about, you know, what kind of clothing did you wear so that you did not freeze to death?

(Michele laughing) - So, three layers, you have a base layer.

And I knew that merino wool is what you wanna have and there's different weights of merino wool.

The great thing about merino wool, I'll just put a plug, number one, it's a natural fiber, it will cool, it will also cool you, but it will keep you warm, it's a wonderful fiber, it's worth the money.

You know, a lighter weight for summer obviously or like a mid-weight, it depends.

So I'm gonna preface all this by saying your number one goal is you don't wanna dress so that when you're working you get sweaty, that you will get hypothermic, so I used merino wool.

The other great thing about it and I can attest to it 'cause I stayed in the same base layer for two weeks, it doesn't smell, it doesn't pick up odors.

So, I had merino wool, those were mine, then I had my next layer I had on these fleece-lined firehose pants from Duluth Trading, those things were fantastic.

Then I had a fleece on up top, then I had Arctic bibs that were issued to me on the outside, and then I had my big red parka.

And then you can never have too many socks, so usually my socks were in a couple of layers, and then if you saw the big white boots, they're called bunny boots, they've worked for the military for years, but the problem is your feet sweat and your feet sweat, they don't breathe, but they keep you warm once you're warm.

So I would use like a Polypro liner or a sock liner, and then I would use like a thicker, like mountaineering sock.

And I went through, oh gosh, probably six to eight pairs of gloves a day because of working with the water, you know, you're pulling up the tether, you're drilling holes, you're doing this, you're doing that.

neck gaiter, balaclava when it was cold.

And then I had a really nice handmade wool hat that had a fleece lining and then as it got warmer, and by warmer, I mean it got to be 20 degrees, some of that stuff would come off.

I remember one day I wished I was in shorts and a t-shirt and I think it was like 28 degrees 'cause I was just too hot (laughs).

- That actually takes us to one of our next questions, what were the temperature ranges that you experienced?

- So, the temperature range is the coldest that I was in, and I had an easy compared to some of the people that I did my trainings with when they went out to the deep field.

The coldest was probably about 25, 30 below, and that was during my field survival training.

I did get hypothermic on that, I learned a valuable lesson, you don't eat when you're hungry because if you wait to eat until you're hungry, you've waited too long and it's not about the energy level, it's about staying warm.

So, that's why I love this part of it that I had Cadbury chocolate, the good stuff, New Zealand made, and I had a system to my pockets for my parka.

You know, I had my pee bottle in one pocket, I had my chocolates in another, I had my camera, my blah, blah, blah.

But you were expected to snack on high fat foods, so in the field, I was probably eating 6,000-7,000 calories a day and I lost weight, and I actually had to make like a little rope out of something because my pants were falling down, so it was a great weight loss program.

- Eating Cadbury eggs and losing weight, I (indistinct)- - Well, Cadbury chocolate.

Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, you can eat as much chocolate as you want.

So coldest was about 25, 30, warmest without the wind 'cause it was a particularly windy field season, which now is the norm, again climate is changing.

Well, probably the warmest was like maybe 33, 34 degrees Fahrenheit, so that was about the range.

But the winds, the winds were really, they were tough, that's why I'll never complain about winds here, they were tough.

- 'Cause they drop that, the temperature for your skin dramatically.

- Yes.

- Kind of switching things to what you actually found in the ocean, did you find any photosynthetic or organisms that did photosynthesis?

- So it wasn't our project, but I can answer that.

We have this idea that plants have to have sunlight for photosynthesis to happen and other research teams have found that's not the case.

So, it's kind of opened up, I mean, they have organisms they found under a hundred feet of ice and there, it's done with chemicals and again, it wasn't our project, but that's a great question.

And no, they're finding that they don't need sunlight for photosynthesis.

- That's really important.

I have a... Wow, you have a lot of questions here so I'm just trying to get through some of these first, some of them are a little duplicative.

Rebecca has a great question, and I think we're also going follow up with whatever your answer is on Facebook to share this out.

Is there a book title, fiction or non, that you would recommend for its description of Antarctica or the human experience there?

- I would recommend "Terra Incognita", that's the first one I would recommend.

Boy, there's so many, and I have, I do have quite an extensive polar library and now, I'm gonna have time to read all of them, but "Terra Incognita" for sure.

If you have not read about, I would read "Mawson's Will", I would read Shackleton's, oh, you gotta read Shackleton's, there are plenty out there that they're there, you know?

'Cause they remember during that golden age, they journaled, but those two stand out.

Believe it or not, one of my absolute favorites there is a book of love letters, it was released by Mawson's family oh, I think right before I left.

But Mawson was engaged, he was engaged before he left, and you gotta understand that, you know, they didn't have, it was letters like letters.

And so when the ship would go down, the letter would go down, and then all these months would go by and there'd be nothing, so there is a book that they're love letters to one another.

You can find that on Amazon.

I can, I don't know if somehow we can get that information out, I wanna say it's the everlasting... Ah, I'm blanking on the title 'cause I have so many, but it's a wonderful, wonderful book and it kind of gives you a little bit different perspective.

You know, you've got, you have, you know, his fiance back home and then he's exploring, and it was just for the time the letters were kind of...

I don't know, they were kind of, they were wonderful.

- We can follow up on our Science Pub Facebook page with other suggestions from Michele- - Okay, yeah.

- after the event as well.

And I think we're just gonna wrap up tonight with can you tell us what your favorite thing was about your trip to Antarctica?

- My favorite thing?

Well, other than having all the Cadbury chocolate I wanted to eat.

And then I got spoiled because I realized we don't really have good chocolate in this country.

(Michele and Nancy laughing) My favorite thing, you know what it?

It absolutely has to be it was so humbling to be watching SCINI doing transects and seeing life that no other person had seen ever, and we were the first to see it, that was very humbling.

We were the first.

- That is humbling and it's amazing to be on the edge of scientific discoveries like that, it's really, really phenomenal.

Thank you so much, Michele, thank you everybody with all of your questions.

To find out more information about PolarTREC and Michele Cross' journey there is a link that I popped into the chat.

So, thank you so much, this was really, really fascinating.

Our next Science Pub is going to begin in the fall in September, we are taking the summer off.

So, do please keep an eye out for the topics and that fall lineup.

You can watch past Science Pubs through the WSKG app on-demand and on WSKG's website.

So, be sure to like our Facebook page, Science Pub BING for future event dates and science updates.

I wanna thank Michele Cross for your time and expertise this evening, it was really fascinating talk and you were clearly passionate about what you have done and working with your students.

Congratulations on your retirement, and I'm excited to know what's going to be the next chapter for you coming up.

(Michele laughing) 'Cause I know you're not gonna be sitting idle (laughs).

Kristine Kieswer, I wanna thank you so much for fielding all of our questions this evening, Julia Diana for live tweeting, Alyssa Micha for being our director and producer for this evening.

And thank you for attending tonight's Science Pub.

I'm your host, Nancy Coddington.

Thank you, and have a good night.

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