During the Graham Land Expedition (1934-1937) the British founded a scientific base on the Argentine Islands (Western Antarctica). As a permanent meteorological observatory, the base began to work on the Winter Island from 1947. In 1954 the station was moved to the Marina Point, Galindez Island.
From 1994 to February 1996, the process of transferring the station to Ukraine continued. This was British Government gesture of goodwill. After the collapse of the USSR, Russia declared itself to be its successor, and then, at the request of Ukraine to transfer within the framework of the distribution of assets of the former USSR one of the five operating at that time Antarctic stations gave a negative answer.
On November 21, 1994 “Vidrodzhennia” international fund allocated 12000 dollars for the project “Ukraine goes back to Antarctica”. On December 5, 1994 four Ukrainian experts – Yuri Oskret (station life support system), Dr. Gennady Milinevsky (scientific programs), Оleksandr Lushnivsky (communications service) and Volodymyr Georgiev (diesel stuff) have arrived to Faraday station and worked there till February 15, 1995....
By Lily Katzman
Earlier this month, (click here) Antarctica experienced record high temperatures, causing the southernmost continent’s ice caps to melt at an unprecedented rate. As a result, Eagle Island, a small island off Antarctica’s northwest tip, experienced peak melt; brown rock appeared from beneath the ice and several ponds of melt water accumulated at the center.
And with these unprecedented temperatures, the algae that normally thrive in freezing water and lie dormant across the continent’s snow and ice are now in full bloom and cover the Antarctic Peninsula with blood-red, flower-like spores.
On February 24, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine posted photos of the phenomenon to their Facebook page, showing ice around their Vernadsky Research Base—located on the Galindez Island off the coast of Antarctica’s northern Peninsula—covered in what researchers call “raspberry snow” or “watermelon snow”. This red-pigmented algae, also known as Chlamydomonas nivalis, has the potential to jumpstart a feedback loop of warming and melting, worrying scientists about the continued impact of climate change on this critical region....
It is a green algae regardless of it's color. It is like people, the color is different but the basic anatomy remains the same.
C. nivalis, contains a red pigment known as hematochrome, which sometimes imparts a red colour to melting snow.
...We studied temperature and light-dependence of photosynthesis, (click here) and plastid and extraplastid red pigment composition of red snow algae (Chlamydomonas nivalis) from snow patches in the high Alps of Austria. Both photosynthetic and respiratory data support the cryophilic adaptation of snow algal cells, but C. nivalis produced oxygen without any inhibition at temperatures up to 20°C and maintained this for 1 h, at irradiances up to 1800 µmol m−2s−1. Chlorophyll and primary carotenoid pigment composition was similar to that found in most other Chlorophyta....
