Parts of the sea floor near Australia's Casey research station are as polluted as the harbour in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, according to a study published in PLOS One in August1.
The contamination is likely to be widespread across Antarctica's older research stations, says study co-author Jonathan Stark, a marine ecologist at the Australian Antarctic Division in Hobart.
Research stations started to get serious about cleaning up their act in 1991.
Much of the damage had already been done - roughly two-thirds of Antarctic research stations were built before 1991.
There are already more than 100 research stations or national facilities, and most of the buildings are located in ice-free areas, where they jostle with wildlife for a foothold on the most viable land.
"The stations have quite a large footprint for the number of people that are there," says Shaun Brooks, a conservation scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Hobart who co-authored the study.
Each nation is responsible for its own environmental monitoring around research stations, and practices vary, says Brooks.
If they clean up, they could find the Thing and then everyone dies. It's a classic Ice Station film and what I imagine every person worries about. They literally watch it - https://boingboing.net/2018/02/28/scientists-in-antarctica-watch.html
Why does everything have to be serious all the time? Who the fuck downvotes a Thing reference and Antarctica? The unaware, that's who.
I’m aware of the film. But it has nothing to do with cleaning up, or pollution? I’m only asking because it seems completely arbitrary to bring up The Thing except for the fact that it’s set in the Arctic.
I don’t ask that everything “be serious all the time”, I generally just prefer it make even a modicum of sense.
I see there isn’t any here.
You can't see how it's related? Digging around in the poles for clean up, literally the plot of the film.
I bet you can and you don't want to change your position. That's fine.