Travels with Burnie: Work

Sampling the biopile soil.

Sampling the melt lake below station

Drilling through the sea ice to
get some ice and algae samples.

Jez gets ready to power up our
new EKO experiment.

Bending rebar and feeling badass.

Spent most of my days here. The
orange containers are biocells.

I have one of those jobs that, when friends or family are asked what I do, has them replying, "Um...." My job title is Remediation Specialist but my job involves something different every day. I collect samples, build experiments, drill in the sea ice. Basically any tasks required to gather data relating to the study of degradation of fuels in cold climates. Guessing that doesn't really clarify much so, I thought I'd try to capture my time at Casey from a work perspective.

A surfactant we added to one of the
biocells to see if it would help with
fuel degradation.

Jack stirring his vat of surfactant bubbles.

Lots of time was spent in the site office.

Cutting heavy duty plastic to
fit into the biocells.

This picture tells the story of my season.
Me and Jack, working on who knows
what and laughing our butts off.

My morning (2 minute walk) commute.

We spent a lot of time shoveling
diesel contaminated soils in and
out of containers.

Gavin, our water treatment guru.

Johan - our stellar equipment
operator.

Testing groundwater.

The main projects involve piling soil that has been contaminated with diesel fuel into piles (biopiles) which sit over containment liners and are designed to maximize the sun exposure of the soil and into containers (biocells) which are a mobile and easier to handle way of doing the same thing as the biopiles. We experimented with running a small oscillating electrical current thought the soil. In theory this would break some of the contaminant free of the soil and encourage faster degradation. I also spent quite a bit of time drilling through ice into lakes and the ocean to look at diesel contaminated environments as well as clean environments.

A group photo of all the scientists and
science support people on station
this season.

About 90% of my days were spent outdoors all day working. This sounds worse than it is as the weather is above freezing much of the season and, when it's not, you just dress for the cold. I love working outside and being active all day long. Beats the pants off sitting at a desk.