Central West

Central west antarctic camp.

Sara, the author, wanted to get out to Seismic Man's camp for New Year's Eve. He was working in a remote site called Central West Antarctica, this was a place so notoriously difficult to access the its acronym had been enlongated to Continually Waiting for Airplanes. She had said goodbye so many times that the people on base laughed when she came back. The camp had no generators, but a lot of snowmobiles. There were dive holes where they used a bright yellow machine that looked like a lawnmower. I went down into the seabed, below the ice, and took pictures that the group depended on for their research, they were studying the release of glacier debris into the marine environment. She said "It was like being in an extra in Star Wars" because she saw many strange creatures like a jellyfish with long, undulating strings threaded with tiny lights and shrimpy crustaceans circling a very tall sponge.