Port Lockroy blog 7: Happy New Year!
01/01/2025
Port Lockroy museum manager Aoife McKenna looks back on her 2024 journey and ahead to her remaining time on Goudier Island.
The festive season is a busy period for anyone who celebrates Christmas, but as those who work in Antarctica can attest, December is a particularly manic month down South. With a stacked calendar, back-to-back working days with only Christmas Day off, and 24 hours of sunlight every day, the end of the year was a marathon rather than a sprint for the Port Lockroy team.
Aoife is the museum manager at Port Lockroy (UKAHT/Dale Ellis)
Before we knew it, 2025 was bearing down upon us as 2024 slipped into the past. The year was characterised by the arrival of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust in all of our lives. The lengthy application and selection process for working here started in March, and so Antarctica has loomed large over 2024 – like an iceberg on the horizon, drifting ever closer. Suddenly it was the end of October, and we were packing, ready to come South and begin the jobs we had spent the whole year preparing for.
Being in Antarctica puts many things into perspective. On the base we are surrounded by enormous mountains, the scale of which are difficult to comprehend from our position on Goudier Island. Great chunks of ice the size of the Nissen Hut calve from the glacier next to us, and whales almost as big as the island itself, drift alongside the zodiacs we take, flicking their tails through the sea. Everything – from getting ready in the morning, to cooking, to communicating with home – is a longer, more laborious process. All of this combines to create a powerful feeling of insignificance, at home in the ice.
Perspectives in Antarctica are different (UKAHT)
The turning of the new year has less significance here, compared to the eerily blinding light of midsummer, the hatching of the penguin chicks, and the slow creep of the sea ice. But celebration is not a uniquely human activity.
Whales, with their complex social systems and interpersonal dynamics, express joy together. Gentoo penguins squawk together in recognition as well as warning. And it is hard to believe that seals do not enjoy frolicking together as pups, or sinuously gliding through the sea as adults. Watching the wildlife in such a fraught environment, where danger can come from any angle, makes it seem all the more appropriate to mark our collective survival of another year.
Icebergs drifting by Port Lockroy (UKAHT)
One of the most common questions we are asked by visitors is ‘What are you going to do after this?’ Our tenure here is short – just five months – and sooner than not, we will shut down the base and return to the UK to spend the majority of 2025 away from Antarctica. The iceberg will retreat into the distance, but will perhaps remain a shadow on the horizon.
For me, I will only make one resolution this year: to appreciate the remainder of our limited time here, in these first few months of 2025.
From all of us here at Port Lockroy, thank you all for all your support in 2024, and we wish you a very Happy New Year and a joyful 2025!
– Aoife McKenna, Museum Manager, Port Lockroy
Port Lockroy gifts
Visit the Port Lockroy gift shop online. Each year, we have a team open Port Lockroy for the austral summer to welcome visitors from across the world to our living museum and post office. Proceeds from the gift shop and post office pay for the operation of Port Lockroy and help safeguard other British historic sites on the continent.
Follow a unique colony at the end of the world
The gentoos of Port Lockroy are perhaps some of the most famous penguins in the world! The colony made their home with us on Goudier Island over 30 years ago and we have been studying and contributing to their protection ever since. Inquisitive, fluffy and funny, we love sharing their activity with everyone around the world.
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