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24 Hours of Sun at the South Pole | Continent 7: Antarctica


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

The sunlight down there is incredible because you get to see animals go about sort of what they do in perpetual sunlight. In 24 hours, generally, if you have nighttime, if we've got an instrument on an animal, or it gets dark out, you can't work.

For me, I'm a very visual person. A lot of the stuff that we do is visual—looking at whales, following them. So to have the constant sunlight in the summertime, it's pretty remarkable. Perpetual sun—it's not easier to film in, is this the start?

Because it's going to get crazy. The thing is, like, you come out of your tent, and it's 2:00 in the morning, and you have to put your sunglasses on because it's so bright. But due to the perpetual sun, you get sunburned; you have to put on gobs and gobs of sunscreen.

The atmosphere is thinner there, and it just adds an extra challenge. You can't put enough filters on your camera because it's always so bright. It's kind of a blessing, and it's a little bit of a curse too.

Yeah, I'm confused now at the time. Actually, I think it's morning. The deceptive thing—you don't know it's after midnight because it’s always bright. The actual sun is probably harder than perpetual night to deal with because to get routines and patterns into your life, you can be awake at 2:00 o'clock in the morning.

It's like a nice warm summer's day, so you end up going for a walk, and suddenly your routines have gone away. Whereas in winter, it's initially a little bit easier to get into a normal daily routine.

Double-arrow for comfort and extra warmth—being able to wake up at 3 a.m. or 2 a.m. and it be bright sunlight is quite an unusual thing. But what you see and what you hear in those hours is quite special.

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