Biologist voyages around southern continent
A two-week sea cruise usually conjures images of sunny, tropical skies and warm nights sipping rum drinks by the pool.
That wasn't Alicia Burtner's experience at all.
The Butler native returned March 13 — just before the United States went on lockdown — from a voyage around Antarctica.
The southern continent was filled with rock, ice and penguins, not palm trees and cabanas.
Burtner, a fish biologist with the federal Department of Energy in Maryland, is a 2004 graduate of Butler Area Senior High School and the daughter of Darrell and Paula Burtner of Butler.
“I wanted to go. It was on my bucket list of things to do. Time and opportunity lined up and I took it,” Burtner said.
“It just worked out that I could do this and I had a chance to do this,” she said. “For some reason people didn't understand why I would do this.”
Burtner said she went alone because it was hard to find a travel buddy willing to commit that much time and money for a trip to the bottom of the world.
She flew from Baltimore to Miami, then from Miami to Buenos Aires and then from Buenos Aires to the capital of Tierra del Fuego, Ushuaia, which claims to be the southernmost city in the world.
From Ushuaia, Burtner embarked on the Ocean Nova liner for the cruise to Antarctica.The Ocean Nova was built in Denmark in 1992 originally to sail the ice-choked waters off Greenland. Its ice-strengthened hull made it suitable for expedition travel in Antarctic waters.“I shared a room with two roommates. I never met them before but they were both really nice,” she said. “One was a student from Boston and the other was with a nonprofit foundation in Texas.”She said her stateroom was a little small, but the ship provided toiletries, robes and slippers.“If it weren't for the rocking seas and cramped quarters, it was really comfortable,” she said.She said the ship held 72 passengers.“It had a big dining room with three meals a day. I was impressed with the food. It was better than anything I could cook,” she said.Because Antarctica is in the Southern Hemisphere, the seasons were reversed. Her trip took place during the continent's summer.“The weather was just about freezing. Sometimes it got to the lower 40s. It wasn't uncomfortable,” she said.
The Ocean Nova traveled around the continent's peninsula stopping to allow the passengers shore excursions at various islands and bays.The passengers would reach the beaches traveling in smaller Zodiac boats from the cruise ship.“Mostly we visited beaches that had penguin colonies or elephant seals. On one island, there were some historic whaling structures,” she said. “We went out to see how they had weathered over the years. It wasn't well, but it was interesting.”“They did the longer jaunts overnight and for most of the traveling we were asleep,” Burtner said.She said she and her one cabin mate, Anna, wound up taking shore excursions together.But wherever Burtner and her fellow travelers landed, they never saw any people not affiliated with the ship.“We did see some research vessels in the distance. We learned they were doing geological surveys,” she said.But if humans were scarce, penguins were not.One stop was Baily Head on the easternmost extremity of Deception Island, which was home to a breeding colony of an estimated 200,000 chinstrap penguins on its black sand beaches.
Chinstrap penguins have a characteristic black band on their head that “makes them look like they are wearing bike helmets,” Burtner said.But that wasn't the only thing that made the stop at Bailey Head memorable.Penguins numbering in the thousands impressed the visitors with their aroma.“It was a distinct smell that took a little time to get out of your clothing,” Burtner said.The various short excursions generally lasted anywhere from two to five hours, depending on the location and what the weather was like.“It also depended if you were cold-tolerant. You could go back or stay until they forced you back,” she said.The ship's passengers were accompanied by guides from Peru and Chile who proved to be fluent in English. All had worked in the Antarctic at some point.She also got a chance to go kayaking twice, once seeing a pod of humpback whales.“The humpback whales were 40-feet to 50-feet long. We weren't scared. It was pretty peaceful,” she said.Burtner said the only incident, if it could be called that, was on one beach excursion when a leopard seal took an interest in the visitors and followed them everywhere.Now that she's back at her Bowie, Md., home and working from home under pandemic restrictions, she admits to getting a little stir-crazy.She works from home, for now, for the Department of Energy's Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as a fish biologist.Burtner, who has a master's degree in environmental science from Duke University, works on hydropower projects.“I make sure they follow environmental regulations so they don't kill all the fish,” she said.
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