Martyn Tranter: The Arctic Academic

On the few days a year that it snows in the UK, the country descends into bedlam; roads are closed, shops are cleared of their stock in a torrent of panic buying and schools and work places are closed until the blizzard subsides. But having spent well over a year conducting research in the Arctic and Antarctic, heading off to work in the snow is the norm for Bristol University’s Martyn Tranter. 

Based in the School of Geographical Sciences, Martyn is soon to be awarded the Polar Medal for enduring the extreme weather and conditions that exist in the Arctic and Antarctic. I went to speak to him about the expeditions that have earned him this prestigious accolade, and find out about the research that takes him to the ends of the earth. 

What does your research involve?

I look at geochemical reactions at the bottoms of glaciers and ice sheets where there is a lot of biological activity. You’d never believe it; fifteen years ago people didn’t really think there was microbial activity under glaciers let alone ice sheets, but there definitely appears to be. Increasingly there is a climate change aspect to the work that we do and what we’re interested in is, for example, the production of green house gasses from beneath ice sheets. A lot of them have grown over soils and forests, and it’s very likely that microbes are turning over that organic matter, so the current drive in biogeochemistry of the cryosphere is how much CO2 or methane is being produced, how stable it is, and whether it could be catastrophically released into the atmosphere.

Walking on lake ice in the Valley of the Dead, Antarctica. The 

landscape here is littered with the mummified carcasses of seals

Where have you worked?
I've been to Greenland several times and I've been to Antarctica several times. I've also been to the European Alps and Svalbard, which is half way between northern Norway and the North Pole. When I sum up the time I've been in the field  it’s well over a year.

How do you deal with the extreme Arctic weather conditions? 

You sort of get used to it. Curiously, you’re often most comfortable when the temperature is well bellow zero, but if there’s wind and a lot of humidity in the air you really feel the cold. In the temperatures I work in, 4°C is a tropical heat wave, and in Antarctica it would only get up to one or two degrees. At -20°C you’re very conscious that your body gets cold very quickly and your face stings if it’s exposed to the cold at all. The lowest temperature that I’ve been out in is -50°C in Saskatchewan and then, despite the fact you've got tons of clothing on, when you stop moving you can feel a cold wave coming into your clothes and the wind cuts into you like a knife. You have a hot drink and a sandwich to keep you going, but you don't want to rest for more than 20 minutes because the cold gets into you and you stiffen up. 

Do you find yourself eating a lot out there to deal with the cold?

Its great for a fat bugger - you’ve just got to keep eating carbohydrates and fat. Chocolate is great – sweet and fat. Everybody just goes for the sweet stuff. You just can’t help yourself. The first time I went down when I was younger I was on double eggs and bacon for breakfast, my body just said ‘get the fat down you’. Meal time is a big thing, particularly the evening meal. An army marches on its stomach, and so does a field camp.

Are you involved in the Lake Vostok drilling program?

There are 3 big drilling campaigns going on at the moment: The Russians are drilling into Lake Vostok and they’ve just stopped 30 meters short. In two winter’s time the Americans are going into the Whillans Ice Stream looking at is glacial lakes in the fast moving bits of the Antarctic ice sheet. The Brits are going into sub glacial Lake Ellsworth, which is a small lake under the west Antarctic ice sheet. That’s the project I’m involved in, and we hope that in two years time, if the Russians don’t get into Vostok, we will directly access waters from beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. 

Some criticisms of such projects are that they could contaminate a pristine environment that has been isolated for millions of years. How do you ensure that this doesn’t happen?

You have to take that sort of thing very seriously. What we feel about it is if you take the types of microorganisms that are adapted to exist on the surface and then stick them under 3 or 4 km of ice at a temp of -2°C, the balance of probability suggests that not many of these microbes would be able to survive in this environment. We’re also trying to minimise the number of microbes we introduce from the surface of the lake and all the equipment will be sterilized with UV and hydrogen peroxide. We’re charged to take these precautions by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), and have to provide all our planning to the international research community. So, we think we are on pretty solid ground.

Martyn Tranter and Jemma Wadham sampling waters
draining over winter from Finsterwalderbreen, Svalbard. 
The air temperature is well below freezing.

Do you encounter much wildlife?
In Antarctica I work where [Captain] Scott's team trained before their final expedition, and they named it the Valley of the Dead. That’s because some of the seals, as they’re trying to head towards the sea ice edge, accidentally turn left and start going up the Valley where they eventually run out of energy and die. Scattered throughout the valley are mummified seals, some of which are a couple of thousand years old. I’ve seen orcas take a minke whale calf, and you also see them ‘spy hopping’, which is where they come up to the surface, see where the penguins and seals are and jump on to the ice and grab whatever they can. The skuas then come down and scavenge the scraps. It’s a brutal environment. 

Are any of the animals dangerous to humans?

The big predators in the Antarctic are leopard seals, they take a scuba diver every now and then. In Svalbard I’ve encountered polar bears several times, some of which could have been unpleasant. Once we were there just when the bears were coming out of hibernation when they are really hungry, and we had an incident where a couple of young polar bears were trying to break in to the hut that we were sleeping in.

How did you get them to go?

You frighten them off with noise because they’ve got very sensitive hearing, and the wind on the hut drove them nuts - they don’t like noise they’re not used to. You get drilled when you go to these places; you’re taught how to use a rifle, you’re taught how to use a flare, you’re taught what to do, and you’ve screwed up big time if you have to shoot a bear. 

Are you looking forward to receiving the Polar Medal? 

Yeah its March 1st I'm getting it. I'm a Taffy and that’s St David's Day, my wife and kids are coming up and it’s in Buckingham palace, so I'm really looking forward to it. I’m a bit embarrassed, but proud underneath. You don't do the research to get anything like that, but when it comes along its really nice.