Science Guy goes to Marion Island

Today I'm introducing the Steemit world to a most amazing young man, Thando Cebekhulu, first generation university graduate in his family and poster boy for science.

Thando got his BSc (Hons) in Zoology from the University of the Free State in South Africa. And a few short years later, he won a spot on a scientific research team to spend 13 months on Marion Island, in his case, researching a number of different species of sea birds.

Photo credit: http://varsitypost.com/nmmu-team-research-marion-island-birds/

Marion Island?

Fun fact - Marion Island is the southernmost tip of South Africa (not Cape Agulhas as I had thought), about halfway to Antarctica and smack in the pleasant Roaring Forties, which gift it with gale force winds beautifully captured by this real-colour satellite image of both Marion Island and Prince Edward Island.

Photo credit: https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/40000/40806/princeedwardis_ali_2009125_lrg.jpg

It's cold and windy there, and apparently the island is still an active volcano.

If you're interested in finding out more about these fascinating islands and the ongoing South Africa National Antarctic Programme (SANAP) research programme there, I suggest you start here and here, but a Google search will give you what you're looking for in particular.

The meteorological research station is situated on the leeward side of the island.

[http://saweatherobserver.blogspot.co.za/2010/04/67th-relief-expedition-to-marion-island.html]

It looks a lot fancier in real life; in 2008 or so, SANAP completed construction of a Glass Reinforced Plastic, mouseproof (that's another story you'll find out about if you keep reading about Marion Island), self-contained unit for researching humans to live in. That's the yellow installation in the photo below.

Enough about Marion, what about Thando?

Thando is passionate about science. His mother, a domestic worker, calls him "the clever one" (well, he is). When he was in high school, he was desperate to study biology, and after a few unexpected hurdles like lecturers not bothering to pitch to give their lectures, he graduated with a BSc. Hello world! We got him onto LinkedIn, he scoured the want ads, made himself known to potential employers...and zip. He couldn't find work. So hardworking Thando did his Honours. Once that was under his belt, he found a post as an intern at the Department of the Environment of the Western Cape of South Africa, starting 1 April 2016, and next we saw he was posting photos of himself on Facebook with Cape gannets or in a research boat on the Orange River. Science heaven!

Sometime towards the end of last year, Thando let us know he'd applied to be a member of a research team and that it was highly competitive. Not much else; okay, fingers crossed. Over the months he sent folIow-up messages on the winnowing process - it started to look like he was competing for a spot on the Survivor show. Apparently several thousand applicants get whittled down to 20, who will live together for 13 months without seeing any other people after the SA Agulhas II leaves port for Antarctica a week or so after dropping them off.

The successful applicants did intensive training in seaworthiness, firefighting, cooking and "living with the same bunch for a year without killing each other" (my name for that "module", definitely not SANAP's). Then departure day came - 6 April 2017! Here's a photo of Thando with his mother and his sister Zandile from launch day Rev1, Friday 7 April. Not 6 April, you say?
Launch Day is a whole other story I'll tell in another post.

Thando is now a part of the ongoing seabird research team. His charges include a range of penguins, albatrosses, petrels and skuas, and he says he absolutely loves them.

Bandwidth and comms are extremely limited on the island, and as you can imagine it would be very expensive for SANAP to allow unlimited social media access for the island's residents. We hear from Thando when he can send us a message, and we're hoping to get him onto Steemit so he can share what he can of his experiences on the island. We'll keep you posted, and here's hoping you'll be able to hear from Thando directly!