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flNiTflRdTjIC A NEWS BULLETIN published quarterly by the NEW ZEALAND ANTARCTIC SOCIETY (INC) -*. South Africa's new research and supply ship Agulhas reflected in the mirror- clear water of Polarbjorn Bay near Sanae. The Agulhas made her maiden voyage to Sanae in the 1977-78 season. She replaced the RSA which made her first Antarctic voyage in 1962. Registered at Post Office Headquarters, Wellington, New Zealand, as a magazine. 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V 3 S / ''iHONVIlSHS 4 \ V/s< \\ A9U3°vN3bssn\_\ 0NV1\p OnVW, DNINNOUO// \ ^ A3||BHH3003M / v * Hinos • 3-09\ Nvdvrl^Ast>4-, eoJ°8^ \/ witfawv Hinos ' xn-|Au6!So b s s n eAB)|SAajBZB|OAbN vsaeue<f Obv SBpBDJQ 0/ ■ -."•*&* *\ A3NXH0 HinOS -«l H3IM0NVS HinOS ''. VI9U039 HinOS (successor to 'Antarctic News Bulletin') Vol. 9, No. 1. 97th Issue. March, 1980 Editor: J. M. CAFFIN, 35 Chepstow Avenue, Christchurch, 5. Address all contributions, inquiries etc. to the Editor. CONTENTS ARTICLES OHIO RANGE EXPEDITION 7-9 POLAR ACTIVITIES NEW ZEALAND 2-9 WEST GERMANY 10-13 AUSTRALIA 13 UNITED STATES 14-18,21,24 UNITED KINGDOM 19-21 JAPAN 22-23 CHINA 24 FRANCE 25-28 NORWAY 26 SOVIET UNION 29-30 SOUTH AFRICA 31-33 SUB-ANTARCTIC FRENCH SURVEYS 27-28 BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH 33-34 GENERAL TRANSGLOBE EXPEDITION 28 THE READER WRITES 42-44 ISSN 0003-5327 © New Zealand Antarctic Society (Inc) 1978. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any way without the prior permission of the publishers. <v'& ANTARCTIC March 1980 NEW ZEALAND SEASON ELLSWORTH MOUNTAINS TO HORLICKS New Zealand's Antarctic research programme for the 1979-80 season, which ended last month, called on the services of nearly 150 men and women during the summer. Field parties worked out of Scott Base and Vanda Station, and participation in international or United States programmes enables New Zealand scientists to range as far as the Ellsworth Mountains on the Weddell Sea side of the continent, and the Horlick Mountains only 525km from the South Pole. As in past seasons they took part in other national programmes, and shared field work with scientists of four other nations — United States, Japan, Australia, and West Germany. Of special importance in the Scott the last members of the summer team Base rebuilding programme was the in left Scott Base to fly back to New stallation of a desalination plant which Zealand. The winter leader, Mr C. A. will provide the base with 8000 litres of Roper, of Christchurch, and his 10 com fresh water daily. Of Danish design, the panions, will have radio-telephone and plant uses reverse osmosis to treat salt telegraph links with the outside world water pumped from McMurdo Sound. during the winter; they will not see new In reserve is a new snow melter unit in faces again until late August or early stalled in the 1978—79 season. It is September when the spring flights by warmed by waste heat from the United States Navy Hercules aircraft will powerhouse, and provides 2000 litres of bring fresh food and mail. They will water daily. share their isolation with 21 huskies. For some time [his journal, like many other publications, has had to face the pro blem of increases in printing and postage costs. It has not been possible to maintain the present subscription rates, and the New Zealand Antarctic Society has decided reluctantly to increase them forthwith by $1 a year. New Zealand subscribers will now pay $7 a year for "Antarctic". The overseas rate will be NZ$8. Subscribers who have already been billed for 1980 will pay the old rate; new members will be charged the new rate. A team of six men from the Ministry Deputy-leader at Scott Base this of Works and Development installed the winter is Mr D. Reese, an assistant desalination unit, which is the only one maintenance officer from Te Anau. His of its kind in the Ross Dependency. companions are N. Hill (base engineer, There is a similar unit in operation under Masterton), B. Hagan (fitter-mechanic, Arctic conditions in Greenland. The new Palmerston), R. Hendry (fitter- system does away almost entirely with eiectrician, Turangi), W. A. Bull (cook, the feeding of hungry snow melters, Temuka), G. Keown (storekeeper, which has been a laborious full-time job Palmerston North), R. Phillips (radio for two men day and night ever reason technician, Auckland), L. B. Slattery since 1957. (postmaster, Christchurch), A. Hayden Eleven men began seven months of (Post Office technician, Invercargill), isolation officially on February 14 when and C. Faber (assistant maintenance March 1980 ANTARCTIC officer-carpenter and dog handler, Well found in areas previously thought to ington). contain river deposits. Geologists who studied the oldest sedimentary rocks in EARTH SCIENCE the Ohio Range in the early 1960s New Zealand contributed three scien thought they had been deposited by tists to the major United States earth rivers as well as in a shallow sea. But the science project in the Ellsworth Moun three geologists concluded that all the tains more than 2100km from Scott Horlick Formation deposits they Base. They were among 24 scientists examined were marine except for one from six nations who look part in the place right in the middle of the Ohio project last season. Dr G. G. Claridge Range. and Mr I. B. Campbell, of the Soil Apart from the ubiquitous Pleuro- Bureau, investigated the distribution thyrella and large orbiculoidids, other and chemistry of salts in Ellsworth fossils, and in particular, bivalves, mountain soil, and the nature of the bellerophontids, tentaculitids, and tri- chemical weathering process, and Mr J. lobites, were concentrated into thin M. Anderson, of the Victoria University beds. Although they belonged to genera of Wellington geology department, did similar to those in the New Zealand stratigraphic work in the area. A second Deonian, the Ohio Range fossils showed New Zealand geologist, Dr A. Sporli, of closer affinities with South American Auckland University, was with the and South African faunas, especially in United States research programme. their greater size. Crinoid fossils and Another remote project in which New trilobite grazing and walking tracks were Zealanders and Americans were con recorded for the first time, and impres cerned was the expedition to the Ohio sions of freshwater bivalve shells were Ranae of the Horlick Mountains 525km found at the top of the Permian coal from the South Pole and 1422km from measures on Ml Glossopteris. Scott Base. Led by Mrs Margaret Brad- [A fuller account of the Ohio Range shaw, the Canterbury Museum's expedition appears elsewhere in this geologist, the expedition made the first issue. It was written specially for "An discovery of fresh-water shellfish fossils tarctic' by Mrs Bradshaw.] in the Transantarctic Mountains. It MAPPING WORK spent 50 days in the field making a sedimentological and paleo-ecological One of the early parties in the field examination of the Devonian Horlick last season was the geological expedition Formation which outcrops only in the led by Mr R. H. Findlay, of the Antarc Ohio Range. tic Division, which left Scott Base on With Mrs Bradshaw were Drs Lucy November 1. Its mission was to make a Force and Karl Kellogg, of the United geological analysis of the metamorphic States Geological Survey, and Graeme rocks in the Blue Glacier region below the tall peaks of the Royal Society Ayres, an Antarctic Division field leader. United States geologists who Range, and to continue New Zealand's worked in the Ohio Range in 1958 detailed geological mapping programme discovered marine Devonian fossils, but between the Skelton and Taylor a little freshwater clam fossil found by Glaciers. the New Zealand expedition had never After 65 days in the field the expedi been found in rock of Devonian age tion returned to Scott Base on January before. The clam and its fellows pro 4, having mapped some 700 square bably lived in ponds throughout the kilometres of rugged terrain. It brought forests which grew in Antarctica about back for study 800 rock samples aged 260 million years ago. between 500 million and 650 million Another important geological find years from the Koettlitz Group and the was made by the party in a lower and Granite Harbour Intrusive. The mapp older set of rocks. Marine fossils were ing project, initiated in 1975, will be S£K ANTARCTIC March 1980 continued in the 1980—81 season. By became stuck in a melt-water stream the end of the summer it is expected that running on and under the surface of the in all some 3000 square kilometres of Blue Glacier.