Journeys to the ice

In the realm of the Earth sciences (within the cramped offices of competitive post-graduate students at least) there has always been a playful antagonism between ‘hard rock’ and ‘soft rock’ geologists. So I was certainly fraternising with the enemy when I recently caught up with a good friend, Jodi Williams, to hear about her travels south during the … Read More

While I was still busy sunning myself on Coromandel beaches during the first few days of 2010, the research vessel JOIDES Resolution was approaching Wellington Harbour after a record-setting drilling leg off the Canterbury coast. The Resolution’s sole purpose is to carry out the research objectives of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), … Read More

’Great God! This is an awful place…’ So wrote Robert Falcon Scott in January of 1912 upon discovering that the Norwegian, Roald Amundsen, had beaten him to the South Pole. A rather unfair review you might say, but then again, Scott was about to find out just how unforgiving a place the … Read More