Evgeny Dikiy: “Locally, Antarctica is the least polluted, but global pollution is very noticeable here”

Now at DataArt, the Eco Weeks program continues, by launching which we are interested in the life of Antarctica and the polar stations of different countries. We sent several questions to the National Antarctic Scientific Center of Ukraine , and as a result we recorded a large interview with its director Yevgeny Dikim and Elena Marushevskaya, who is responsible for the center’s external communications! About plastikozuzh and compost for the polar greenhouse, Soviet whalers and tourist liners, good old diesel, global warming and new environmental studies.

- Now all the garbage from Antarctica should be taken to other continents?

Evgeny Dikiy: During the last changeover, among other things, they took a full hold of garbage for recycling. In general, a new approach to waste management is included in the program of modernization of the Akademik Vernadsky station. We are now introducing new environmental approaches, and at the same time we are scooping up what has accumulated during the time when no investments were made in the station. Perhaps in the near future we will become the first station in Antarctica with our own plastic processing right on the spot.

Elena Marushevskaya:We have an idea for recycling plastic, codenamed “Plastic”, which was not implemented this year due to the pandemic and related restrictions. But in general, for the project, which is carried out with the help of the Coca-Cola company in Ukraine, everything is ready, it remains to bring the equipment to the station. Plastikozhuy himself is such a cartoon character who is engaged in the processing of plastic. More precisely - hard plastic with the marking “2” or HDPE, from which they make caps and opaque bottles for household chemicals. We are going to split the waste from this material right at the station and make souvenirs from it. All this is arranged quite simply: crushed plastic is poured into an apparatus that looks like a coffee maker, in which there are molds and where it comes out, for example, a beautiful keychain in a divorce.


A model of one of the souvenirs that they plan to produce from hard plastic at the Ukrainian Academician Vernadsky station starting next year.

The main point, of course, is not to take the plastic out for recycling at all, but to give it a new life right there. Tourists will be able to pick it up as a souvenir - this will reduce the amount of garbage at the station and allow them not to look for something to take with them from the station as a souvenir.

Our project is part of the Precious Plastic international initiative . This is such an alternative garbage recycling program that uses very simple equipment. Something like a meat grinder plus something like a microwave allows you to make cool new things from assembled plastic.

As for PET, we also plan to split it and already sell it in the port in this form. That is, not to pay for its disposal, as it is now, but to receive money for it.

E. D .:Organic waste is also entertaining in its own way, but a little sad. The fact is that until recently, organic matter from the kitchen was disposed of in a very simple way - they were fed to skuas. And the birds are accustomed to having leftovers at certain times. If on some day the cook didn’t throw them out on time, one especially impudent skuas would beak out the window with his beak: “Guys, what are you doing, lunch!” But in fact, this is a gross violation - categorically it is impossible to do this in Antarctica, and we, of course, curtailed this practice. We do not have the right to interfere in the life of the local fauna by feeding birds. I’m sorry for the skuas, but they will have to wean: the protocol on environmental protection leaves no choice.


South Polar skuas. Photo from the page of the National Antarctic Scientific Center of Ukraine on Facebook

But if we don’t feed the seagulls anymore, then what about the leftovers? So far, the most creative idea is to recycle them on compost in special mini-walkers. Moreover, in any case, we are going to build at the station something like a small greenhouse or a greenhouse. This is exactly in accordance with the Antarctic Treaty, provided that the soil is completely covered and no seeds or fertilizers enter the environment. The first such experiment was conducted by German colleagues, the greenhouse is already working at their Neumeier station. It is logical to use your own recycled organics from the station as compost.

EAT.:I will add that we already bought such buckets-walkers and while we are testing them at home. The fermentation process is really going on, nothing comes out, there is no smell. Such EM containers with a bacterial culture inside are quite widely used for composting inside an apartment. We thought, since the Akademik Vernadsky station is essentially one large apartment, from which nothing else can be taken out, they should work there. The temperature at the station is the same as at home. But we still need to prepare a place where to pour the finished soil. And what to grow there, the cook has long come up with: onions and parsley - fresh vitamins!

- In general, the presence of man in Antarctica is noticeable?

E. D .:Man is a factor that becomes noticeable wherever it appears. But, of course, Antarctica was much luckier than any other continent. To begin with, this year we celebrated only 200 years with the opening of the continent. For comparison, South America was the last to Antarctica - it is about 11,000 years ago. All other continents by that time were already densely populated. So, by virtue of time - 200 years against 11,000 - this is the least contaminated continent. Again, the population density here is just fine: in the summer there is still a question of how to count tourists, but if we take only the population of stations, in the summer it is up to 4,000 people on the whole continent, and in the winter there are less than 2,000 people.

But in Antarctica, man also managed to spoil, and very specifically to spoil. Our countrymen — that is, the Soviet Union — were especially active in this. In particular, a separate gloomy page in history is the Soviet whaling flotillas. One was called "Glory", the other - "Soviet Ukraine", they were based in Odessa, went to the Southern Ocean every summer from 1948 to 1987. And although, say, the Japanese and Norwegians very well adhered to the whale population, the Soviet whalers killed them more than all the others combined! And if you will once be at the Russian Bellingshausen station, you will see a bunch of huge rusty fuel tanks next to it - there was a supply base for whaling fleets. Diesel for ships was stored there in thousands of tons, and now they are slowly turning into landscape, still reminding of this story.


During the active fishing in the twentieth century, the total number of blue whales in the world decreased from 215 thousand (the minimum estimate, others are called, up to 350 thousand) to 11-12 thousand. Photo: National Antarctic Scientific Center of Ukraine

Why Antarctica, I must say, was lucky - it is a protocol that prohibits the use of mineral resources, which is valid until 2048 (Madrid Protocol). If we recall what percentage of pollution exactly the development of mineral resources in any of our countries gives, we can imagine how much cleaner it is where you can’t get anything at all.

By and large, what is man leaving in Antarctica now? Well, organic waste, of course. There is a norm: if the population of the station is not more than 30 people, they are allowed to simply be dumped into the sea, without cleaning. If more, the wastewater must already be treated somehow. We have a subtle nuance in this regard: we are just on the verge. The fact is that in winter we have 12 people at Akademika Vernadsky, but in the summer it happens that it’s a little over 30. When a seasonal summer squad arrives, then, in principle, it’s sometimes under 40. Therefore, we think about the fact that the sewers we also have to clean. Although, if it was only about organics, then compared to penguins and seals on our island, it is so ridiculous that there’s nothing to talk about. But, there is one difference - seals do not use detergents and washing powder, but polar explorers use!This addition of surface-active substances is the real harm from sewer drains.

The task here is not trivial, because most biological treatment methods are designed for sufficiently high temperatures. Microbiological processes in the cold slow down. We are now looking for a solution, but at large stations with a permanent population of people of 50 or more, treatment plants are already installed.


Photo: National Antarctic Science Center of Ukraine

Further there is household garbage. But now there are very strict standards that require it to be completely disposed of for disposal, and they are generally respected. Previously, there was an unpleasant practice when ships, only having gone beyond the 60th degree, that is, outside the Antarctic Treaty area, simply dumped all waste into the sea. Eastern Europe certainly sinned this, but now it is considered barbarism by absolutely everyone. During the modernization of the station, we are now taking out not only what is being accumulated during the season, but also trying to clear old rubble. This year they cleaned a lot and scored a full hold: for comparison, the bill for garbage disposal in the Chilean port of Punta Arenos this year is 3 times more than last year.

- What exactly did you manage to accumulate? Is Academician Vernadsky a British station in the past?

E. D .:Yes, this is the former British Faraday station, one of the very old, it was generally founded in 1947. True, since then there has only been a point on the map and one house with the status of a museum, the “Wurdy House”, the same buildings that we use, were built in the 1970s. By the way, this is just one of the two stations where the ozone hole was discovered. The whole great international movement to preserve the ozone layer began precisely with the fact that the British physicists at Faraday and Hally noticed that something was wrong with the ozone layer. We have now taken this watch, our ozone is measured every three hours, regardless of the weather.

Returning to the trash, the British left nothing of this to us. Although some of the equipment transferred to us in the 1990s managed to turn into waste over the years. But the station 25 years ago, they gave it clean, like a chrysalis. A lot of old equipment had accumulated - after all, household garbage was taken out every year, but heavy iron wasn’t always. In particular, now old motor boats and snowmobiles, which took up a lot of space and could not be restored, went for recycling. In addition to such heavy metal debris, dozens of barrels are collected each year to be worked off from diesel generators, and what is scraped off the walls when cleaning the fuel tank. This year we export 60 barrels.


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. .:Honestly, I generally consider the day when Russia refused Ukraine to transfer one of the Soviet Antarctic stations to be very happy. Our government turned to the Russian one in 1992 - it requested from one to two out of 12 stations on the basis that they were built all the same together. But Russia was categorically against, which in the end turned into luck. Yes, for three years we suffered without our own station, but then we got a British one, built to fundamentally different standards. Remember how in Tolkien's The Hobbit? “Nora was hobby, which means well-maintained.” The British handed over such a hobby station to Ukraine.

Considering how many years Ukraine operated it without investing in its repair, I think that the Soviet station would not have survived to this day. The former Faraday had a margin of safety - the actual modernization of the station began only two years ago. Consider: 23 years from the date of transfer, plus the British did not give it to us immediately after the repair. Actually, many systems were already 40 years old! But they survived, and diesel engines, for example, in 1980, are still being finalized. Next year, we’ll replace them at last.


The buildings that the Ukrainian expedition uses now are built by the British in the 1970s

- Are global anthropogenic changes in Antarctica particularly noticeable?

E. D .:Mucked up less - this applies only to local pollution, global pollution is very noticeable here. Let's start with global warming, which affects primarily the polar regions: Antarctica here goes immediately after the Arctic. For example, at our station, during the observation period, the average annual temperature increased by 3⁰C. Also, it would seem, what is 3⁰C? We have more temperature fluctuations during the day. But if we are talking about the average annual value, then the difference is obtained, approximately as between Kiev and St. Petersburg. And such a warming occurred in Antarctica in the eyes of one generation!

I think you more or less regularly see messages on the network about breakaway icebergs the size of half the state of New York or, say, half the Netherlands. But this is a Gaussian: if at the end of the curve there are such large icebergs, then in the middle there are millions of small icebergs that no one is tracking, but they still float somewhere. In Antarctica, by the way, this is not only visible, but also audible. It is very quiet there. Unless you are standing near a diesel engine, then there are simply no background noises that we are used to in ordinary life. That is, you hear only the sound of the wind or some distant gathering of any of God's creatures. And suddenly in the middle of it like a gun: bang! This next piece of ice broke off, fell and swam away. And this happens every few hours.


Photo: National Antarctic Science Center of Ukraine

As for pollution, we launched an interesting research program together with the Czechs last year. We put in special collectors developed in the Czech Republic, which, if in a simple way, absorb persistent organic pollutants from ocean water like a sponge. You can’t sound the collected material right at the station, it is frozen and taken to Europe for processing.

EAT.:Actually, these studies have two areas: with the Czechs - just filtering the water, and its analysis, and with the Slovaks - the study of what accumulates in different living beings across the planet. From beavers to ostriches and penguins. We have submitted samples of starfish and fish for analysis, now we plan to transfer samples of penguin eggs. It turns out quite unexpectedly: even at such a distance from civilization, organisms synthesized by humans accumulate in organisms. They enter the global circulation and do not decompose even into the Antarctic.

Most likely, this means that they need to be taken out of circulation. At the level of the European Union, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has been created, which should consider such data and formulate restrictions for industry. By the way, we already had one success. We work in parallel on the Black Sea and found one pesticide there, which does not decompose, as the producer assured, but accumulates in fish and dolphins. This information became the basis for this drug to be banned after all, replacing it with another type.

E. D .:Another of the global pollutants that have just begun to be studied in the Antarctic, but it is already 100% known that it is there - the product of the destruction of all plastic bottles. Unfortunately, most types of plastic are not biodegradable, but they are mechanically crushed. When the bottles are carried into the ocean, they are gradually crushed to fractions of such a size that some crustaceans are not able to distinguish pieces of plastic from the algae they feed on. As a result, Antarctic krill begins to die of hunger with overfilled stomachs, because they are simply filled with plastic instead of normal food. For Antarctica, this is just beginning to be studied, while in other parts of the ocean, unfortunately, it has already been shown that the problem is serious. And again,Antarctica, with all its tourism and polar stations, doesn’t give so much plastic in close proximity - it definitely brings it with currents.

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. .:Before the coronavirus crisis, the market for tourism services in Antarctica grew by 15-20% per year, probably, perhaps the IT sector can grow at such a speed. About 5,000 tourists visited our station with its winter population of 12 people last summer, during the tourist season. This means that they were at Bellingshausen, which is north, that is, closer to the source of tourism. That is, there are a lot of tourists compared to polar explorers. Moreover, tourism is developing in two directions: extreme, on yachts under sail, and "classic" - with cruise liners, which take 200 and 500 passengers each. But all this concerns only one piece - the region of the Antarctic Peninsula, since any trip to other points is already exclusive and very expensive. Only a few get into the continent, maybe sometimes tens of people per year, but not more.


Hanseatic Inspiration - one of the three expeditionary vessels of the Hanseatic series. Their feature is large observation decks; ships are actively used for cruises to Antarctica. Photo: hl-cruises.com

Three months a year you feel the presence of a person in the form of cruise liners. And tourism is already becoming a real environmental factor. Now we are talking about how to regulate it, in particular, to clearly define the routes for groups. It is good that most travel companies participate in the Association of Antarctic Tourism, which itself is developing fairly stringent environmental standards. Since there was no stage of wild tourism, it immediately began high-tech and with large investments, and the rules were immediately quite culturally established.

- Is energy still completely diesel?

E. D .:So far, everything is on diesel. To my great regret, this happened historically - at the time when the station was being built, an alternative was not considered at all. Now we would like to change this, but the matter was very difficult. Antarctica is quite large and what we often imagine: in the summer of -30, in the winter of -80, a kind of Mars - refers to the central regions of the mainland. Where the Russian Vostok station or the American Amundsen-Scott station are located, there are really terrible temperatures, but almost absolute dryness is almost ideal conditions for wind energy. For almost the whole year there are uniform winds that seem to roll down the ice dome from the pole towards the coast. There is a trend for installing windmills. Some stations built in the XXI century, generally zero-emission, the first such was the Belgian "Princess Elizabeth." New projects,which I saw are also designed for this. Old stations so far only partially replace good old diesel with renewable energy sources, the main of which is the sun. Six months, of course, it does not work, but in the remaining half the solar panels very much justify themselves.

But if we take our piece of Antarctica, the so-called Maritime Antarctic - Marine Antarctica - then we see a much milder climate. We have a temperature record of -46, but generally in winter the frost keeps around -30, and in summer the temperature generally swims around zero in the range from -5 to +5. But on the other hand, there is almost one hundred percent humidity and for 270 days a year it either snows, or wet snows, or snows with rain. Winds at the same time from calm to 40 m / s. And most windmills are designed to work in a fairly narrow range. If the wind intensifies, they simply stop, because otherwise they will be ripped off. Therefore, I am afraid that we will not be able to make a complete transition to an alternative at all. But we would really like to save 20-30% of fuel - this would already be a contribution to the fight against emissions. We hope for solar panels, according to our estimates,in the summer they are able to provide just about 30% savings. But this project is still at the calculation stage.