We had the best surprise today! We got to visit the Italian Research station: Mario Zucchelli and get our passports stamped!!! They only take 1 ship of visitors in a season and they haven’t had visitors in over 7 years so quite the experience. One of our naturalists is Italian and he was able to arrange the rare opportunity.
We were broken up into 4 groups because it isn’t a large station. Our group went out on the zodiacs first and we got to see the back side of the station, a Waddell seal, and some cool granite rock formations.
We finally got our turn to the station and one of the first individuals that we met works for the Italian Air Force out of Pisa. It was a blast trading stories about the area and felt very nostalgic.
The station only operates during the summer months so the first group arrives in late October and they close up the base the first week of February. They’ve been in operation for over 35 years doing different scientific projects. The last few years has been coring ice to study climate change. They’ve successfully drilled to 800,000 years ago and the goal is to go back 1.5 million years. Each core that is taken out, is cut into 1 meter segments and then cut in half length wise. Half the core is packaged up and shipped off to Europe for joint study among the European community. The other half is stored at the joint Italian and French base: the Dome Concordia that is deeper into the continent on the Eastern side.
After our walk through the station, they had refreshments set out for us and we got some pizza and cannolis: YUM!
This was such a highlight to our trip and I’m so thankful that we got the rare opportunity to visit such a neat place.
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So very excited for your adventure and opportunity that you’re experiencing. So amazing!
This is so incredible!!!