Neither snow nor ice can stop MSC

By Bridget Morris

Navy stevedores enjoy a balmy summer day at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, prior to off-loading MV Green Wave.

Antarctica: National Geographic calls it the closest environment on earth to outer space — a land of harsh extremes. The continent is covered in ice two miles thick, yet it is also the world's driest continent. Even summer temperatures rarely creep above freezing. The water currents surrounding Antarctica are some of the most unpredictable in the world, and some of the world's fiercest squalls are born there. Just in case that's not enough, the channels are filled with floating ice and icebergs.

These are just a few of the challenges the crews of Military Sealift Command-chartered ships MV Green Wave and MV Gus W. Darnell faced as they headed south in late January — summer in Antarctica — to re-supply remote McMurdo Station during the annual Operation Deep Freeze. The station belongs to the National Science Foundation and is the largest settlement on Antarctica with a summer population of about 1,100 scientists and support personnel. The station is accessible by ship only during a brief window in the summer months and by plane only five months of the year. During those five months, 30 percent of all flights are cancelled due to weather conditions, according to Capt. Pete Stalkus, the master of cargo ship MV Green Wave.

"Green Wave and Darnell carried the supplies for what it takes to operate an isolated polar community of about 1,100 for a year," said Capt. Stalkus, who has made the annual trek to McMurdo for nearly 20 years. "FedEx doesn't operate there, and even with the consideration of air support by military aircraft, polar re-supply is so costly that economics calls for everything possible to be supplied by ship."

Tanker MV Gus W. Darnell loaded fuel cargo Jan. 4-7 in Brisbane, Australia. Darnell then departed Brisbane and rendezvoused with two Coast Guard icebreakers, USCG Polar Sea and USCG Polar Star, Jan. 15.

MV Gus W. Darnell sits at the ice pier -- a pier literally made of ice at McMurdo Station, Antarctica.

Normally, an icebreaker leads both the tanker and the cargo ship the last 30 miles to McMurdo Station to create a channel through the frozen ice. An icebreaker escort may also be necessary during the previous 400 miles while the ships transit the Ross Sea, which has varying concentrations of sea ice. This year the ice was thicker than normal, so two icebreakers were required.

"Icebergs are ever present from 60 south latitude to McMurdo, a distance of more than 1,000 miles," said Capt. Stalkus. "The ice escort through the fast ice channel (a completely frozen over channel) is a syncopated dance of unusual proportions where the icebreaker allows the supply ship to tuck in 50 to 100 feet astern in it's quick water (wake). Both vessels are operating at 50 to 80 percent power and often making only two to four knots over the ground."

Capt. Stalkus explained that if the ships were any farther apart from each other, the supply vessel would become mired in the ice and come to a dead stop.

"As it was this year, both the breaker and the MSC supply vessel were stopped dead on numerous occasions," said Capt. Stalkus. "Given the physics of force equals mass times acceleration and the vagaries of ice, this is a far more risky venture than any pair of F-16s flying in formation."

This year the evolution was further complicated by a portion of B15, a massive iceberg that had broken off from the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000. The iceberg originally had an upper surface area of about 4,500 square miles. The piece blocking part of the normal transit line to McMurdo Sound was 90-miles long and 15- to 20-miles wide. The annual sea ice also extended far beyond its usual range for this time of year.

Despite the challenges, Darnell and her escorts arrived at McMurdo Station Jan. 19, and the tanker off-loaded 163.8 million barrels of fuel at McMurdo's aptly named ice pier.

From right to left: U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker USCG Polar Star, icebreaker USCG Polar Sea and Military Sealift Command tanker MV Gus W. Darnell navigate the ice channel Jan. 22 approaching McMurdo Station, Antarctica.

The ice pier is a 550-foot by 200-foot floating dock created by cutting the perimeter of the annual sea ice and adding water. As the ice thickness increases, workers grade it and add more water, repeating these steps until a five-meter-thick ice cube exists, tethered to the land by cable and accessible by a pre-fabricated steel bridge. The ice pier is then covered with volcanic ground dirt from Ross Island.

After off-loading her cargo, Darnell and her icebreaker escorts departed McMurdo Station on Jan. 26. Darnell left her escorts Jan. 28 to return to the more temperate latitudes where she normally works transporting Department of Defense fuel as an MSC tanker.

MV Green Wave loaded her initial cargo in late December in Port Hueneme, Calif., then transited to Lyttleton, New Zealand, where she loaded additional cargo. Once fully loaded with items ranging from food, housekeeping supplies, construction material and scientific equipment and parts, Green Wave departed to rendezvous at the ice edge with the two Coast Guard icebreakers.

Green Wave and her icebreaker escorts successfully arrived at McMurdo on Jan. 31 and began off-loading. Green Wave then loaded ice core samples and retrograde cargo for her return trip. Some of the ice core samples represented millions of dollars spent in recovery and millions more in research money for multi-national scientific groups.

Green Wave loaded two containers of Vostock ice, known as "deep ice" because it is recovered from the Russian Vostock Station area and is the deepest and oldest ice recovered. Some of the Vostock ice aboard Green Wave may be tens of thousands of years old, according to Capt. Stalkus. Recovered by Russia, the ice will be transported by the United States and eventually sent to France for final research.

Green Wave also carried 3,920 tons of retrograde materials, including vehicles, tractors, metals, plastics, paper cardboard products, used oil, low-level radioactive materials for science, human waste, food waste, chemicals, compressed gasses and helicopters and aviation supplies being returned to the United States. All nations with a presence in Antarctica are supposed to remove all unused materials and waste from the Antarctic, as mandated by international treaty, to keep the environment pristine.

Green Wave departed McMurdo Feb. 10 for Lyttleton, New Zealand, but during the week of cargo operations, the channel made by the icebreakers began to refreeze.

"It took us 36 hours to transit the first six miles of departure," said Capt. Stalkus. "There is a narrow operational window getting in and out of McMurdo Sound, and this year's conditions made it a tight squeeze."

Green Wave arrived in Lyttleton Feb. 17, off-loaded a portion of her cargo and departed for Port Hueneme where she arrived in early March to off-load her remaining cargo.