Emailing Antarctica

[Paul Ward]

I'm making this post as it's a question that gets asked frequently and it came up again today - no it's not good news!

Hi Paul,

I am a teacher of a year 4/5 class. I was wondering if we as a class could mail some questions about life in Antarctica to someone on one of the bases. Would they have time to respond?

(edited)

This kind of request comes up quite frequently - and the answer is pretty much no.

First of all email addresses of the bases are not made public and secondly the people on the bases have little or no interest in replying to them. The only way it would work is if you already knew someone before they went to Antarctica and arranged it that way.

The CoolAntarctica site has answers to just about any question that I've ever been asked or seen asked - when I come across a new one, I add it in. The vast majority of questions are repeats or re-wordings and realistically no-one is going to spend the time typing it all out again to provide a more personal communication.

Having said that, if there are genuinely any new questions or ones that I haven't covered, please add them to this thread and I'll see what I can do about them. I'm afraid I won't respond to questions I know are already here - use the search facility at the bottom border of the main site for that - click on the logo at the top of this page.

[psr]

Hi Paul,

It's me again!! I forgot to ask on behalf of my students...are kids allowed to go to Antarctica and if not what's the age of Antarctic consent??

psr

[Paul Ward]

Hi psr, good to hear from you again. No there is no "age of Antarctic consent", but Antarctica is not really a child-friendly continent at the moment.

Ships that visit are geared towards adults and there are few children who accomapny those adults, in fact as far as I know there are no child-friendly facilities at all, it's either "like it or lump it" as far as kids are concerned - fit in with the adults or... well - fit in with the adults.

I wouldn't really advise anyone under the age of about 14 to consider going to Antarctica as they would be pretty dependent on their accompanying adult (with the resultant effects on that adult).

However, I am in negotiation (in a longer term perspective) with a more child-friendly approach to Antarctica - still the older age group though. Any trip means being away from home travelling internationally for 10 days or more.