Paul
Ward
At the age of about 14 I was at home on a
school day with a real or imagined illness and while laying there suffering
(it's hard when you're 14 and ill) there came a film on the tv "Mr. Forbush and
the Penguins". This was a film about a young man who went to Antarctica to study
penguins (starring
John Hurt) and it planted a seed.
At the age of about 17 I was in the college
careers library with little to do (or at least little that I wanted to
do), so I started looking through what was there and came across some
information on working in Antarctica. This struck me as an exciting and
worthwhile thing to do, so I resigned myself to the rest of the day spent on the
humdrum and stored it away for some years. The seed however had germinated.
A degree in Zoology later and a desire to use
this to do something I might never be able to do again met with my love of
nature and wild places and the memory of what a great place Antarctica might be
to go to led me to start looking through the job section in New Scientist
magazine. Like many people I know who eventually went South, I wasn't successful
the first time, but I got the second job I went for - I was to be a marine
biologist on the British Antarctic Survey base on Signy Island in the South
Orkneys (in retrospect far more appropriate than the first job I went for).
I
spent just over 2 years in Antarctica from 1985 to 1987
doing this job, in particular focussing on the metabolism and muscle of
Notothenia neglecta. This was when I took the photographs in this web-site and
developed a deep admiration for Antarctica and a love of its wildlife (I
suspected I might before I went!).
On return to the UK I became a teacher and after giving many
illustrated talks to pupils and seeing what else was available on the web about
Antarctica decided to put what I had together into a web site (about 14 years
later when the interweb was invented), and so here it
is. I hope you enjoy this site and its pictures.
Since this site started it has snowballed (pun intended) into
an ever expanding hobby/facility/job in directions that I never thought it
would. I did think that after about 3 years of part-time work this site would be
"finished", now about 8 years later my to-do list is bigger than it ever was and
from where I am at the moment there will be no end as the longer I go on, the
bigger the plans get.
Early in 2007, Cool Antarctica had it's 10 millionth visitor,
a truly astonishing number to me for my little hobby-site and show-case for my
pictures that I took. I am so glad now that photography and making the most
of the Antarctic Experience are what guided me while South rather than only
focussing on the intricacies of the muscle metabolism of Notothenia neglecta.
I now find myself in a fairly unique position where I can
relate my own Antarctic experiences and act as a hub for other people to send me
their own pictures and information to further promote the status of Antarctica a
wonderful and unique part of our planet. I can't think of another website I'd
rather be responsible for.
You can contact me if you want
via
p.s. Hi to any pupils at Cromwell Community College,
Chatteris, Cambridgeshire UK where I currently teach and who sometimes come here to check if I
really do have a web site!
FIDS
My other sites Anglian
Gardener |
English
Gardening |
Greatest
Love Poems
Darwin's Galapagos
| Russian Esprit
