When I left my cabin on March 6 on the oceanographic ship Hespérides , docked in the port of Punta Arenas (Chile), neither we who left to start the return to Spain, almost all scientists from the XXXIII Spanish Antarctic Campaign, nor those who remained On board we could imagine the change that our lives would make in a few days. All because of a microscopic and mysterious coronavirus that has turned the world upside down. A few days later, on March 11, the 56 crew members left the Magellanic channels heading south to close the bases. They began a confinement in the 82 meters long that the ship has, which in the end has lasted 42 of the 175 days they have spent on board. Now they must continue on the ground.
In the time since his departure from Cartagena, on November 12, on his return, on April 22, the BIO Hespérides has sailed more than 46,000 kilometers, which is the equivalent of giving more than one entire tour of the planet, but it has also been caused by ice-covered waters that have hit its hull, among icebergs - some up to eight kilometers long - and with a technical problem with an engine that was solved on the fly thanks to the fact that the replacement was received in the antartida.
The scientific challenge that lay ahead in the campaign was not easy: to carry out the plans of the 10 scientific projects and, in addition, to carry out the logistics tasks that require the supply and movement of personnel from two bases - Juan Carlos I and Gabriel de Castilla - on two different Antarctic islands. But the objective was met: “The campaign can be said to have been a success because all the proposed objectives have been met with a single boat, which is this one. We have been escaping from the worst moments with the weather forecasts and our clients , who are the scientists, have been satisfied, "Commander José Emilio Regodón told me just before he went down the gate on March 6.
Shortly after his departure, it was decided that the two Spanish bases in Antarctica had to be closed urgently and immediately return to Ushuaia with the 37 people still remaining in them. And it was done in just two days what would otherwise have taken a week. On this occasion, yes, Regodon could not wait for that benign weather window that he always seeks to cross the Sea of Sickles, which received them with a virulence that I could save myself. "We are almost all dizzy," some passengers told me in their messages.
As already mentioned in another article, the rapid changes in the international situation, with border closings and flight cancellations, prevented the 37 from flying to Spain from Argentina as planned, they did not even step on land, although if there is a place free of covid -19 in the world, that's Antarctica. Crews and passengers continued on their journey to Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, and there, finally, on March 28, they took a flight organized by the Government to repatriate 300 Spaniards. The SAGA project, which should have been done back in the South Atlantic, was also canceled. Its 37 members could no longer reach Rio de Janeiro, where they should have been picked up.
The Hespérides , and only with its crew, continued sailing to the Iberian Peninsula on a journey that took almost a month. Until he stepped into the Murcian port of Cartagena, in those 42 days of isolation, the commander tells me that they have had "a quiet journey": "Much more than the one we had in Antarctica and, also, shorter than we had planned, because we were going to return in mid-June after the SAGA campaign and then another campaign in the Canary Islands from mid-May, which is not expected to be done either ”.
Upon arrival, a country that is also confined, but on land, awaited them, where newcomers will now have to adapt to the conditions of the alarm state of the entire population, something that they have not stopped feeling as a very strange feeling despite to his previous experience and the fact that nobody was oblivious to what was happening in Spain. Among the crew, an officer has his father admitted to the provisional hospital of Ifema (Madrid) due to coronavirus and another lost his in these weeks due to another illness.
“We have followed the news, but, as much as they tell you, disembarking after five months in your city and seeing everything closed, nobody on the streets you know, cleaning services decontaminating with masks… It has been a tremendous impact. In the Navy, we like to be prepared for remote scenarios in our campaigns, but plausible, such as attending to a collision between ships, an oil spill or an eruption on Deception Island, but a global pandemic was not in the plans. Now the world is changing before our eyes ”, Regodon acknowledges.
At the moment, all the materials and scientific samples that have been brought on board will have to remain in the ship's holds, some of them frozen at temperatures of up to 80ºC below zero, given that their transfer to the different research teams is not feasible in this moment.
Although the 55 crew and the Hesperides commander remain at the disposal of the Balmis operation organized in the Ministry of Defense due to the pandemic, they hope to have some time to rest after 175 days in a row of polar campaign and frenetic activity. "We come from many months of work and professional stress, always concerned about safety and because the scientific objectives we were pursuing are being met, as it has been," says the commander, who this year ends his Antarctic adventure because this was his second year, and can no longer repeat.
The two great scientific challenges that lay ahead, in terms of logistics and personnel, have been the Tasmandrake geology and Bravoseis seismology projects, among many other Spaniards, but to all this must be added the close collaboration of the Antarctic Campaign vessel with numerous international polar programs, either collaborating in rescues, transferring personnel, facilitating the work of scientists, or providing them with materials. Specifically, with Argentina, Bulgaria, Chile, Czechoslovakia, South Korea, Ecuador, Peru, Portugal and Uruguay.
In total, 207 people of 18 nationalities have used the BIO Hespérides, which this year celebrated its Antarctic silver anniversary, to arrive and return from the largest, most fascinating and fragile laboratory on Earth. And I assure you that it is an adventure that is not forgotten.
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