Paul Ward
At the age of about 14 I was at home on a school
day with a real or imagined illness and while laying there suffering (it's hard
when you're 14 and ill) there came a film on the tv "Mr.
Forbush and the Penguins". This was a film about a young man who went to Antarctica
to study penguins (starring John Hurt) and it planted
a seed.
At the age of about 17 I was in the college careers
library with little to do (or at least little that I wanted to do), so I
started looking through what was there and came across some information on working
in Antarctica. This struck me as an exciting and worthwhile thing to do, so I resigned
myself to the rest of the day spent on the humdrum and stored it away for some years.
The seed however had germinated.
A degree in Zoology later and a desire to use
this to do something I might never be able to do again met with my love of nature
and wild places and the memory of what a great place Antarctica might be to go to
led me to start looking through the job section in New Scientist magazine. Like
many people I know who eventually went South, I wasn't successful the first time,
but I got the second job I went for - I was to be a marine biologist on the British
Antarctic Survey base on Signy Island in the South Orkneys (in retrospect far more
appropriate than the first job I went for).
I spent just over 2 years in Antarctica
from 1985 to 1987 doing this job, in particular focussing on the metabolism and
muscle of Notothenia neglecta. This was when I took the photographs in this
web-site and developed a deep admiration for Antarctica and a love of its wildlife
(I suspected I might before I went!).
On return to the UK I became a teacher and after giving many illustrated
talks to pupils and seeing what else was available on the web about Antarctica decided
to put what I had together into a web site (about 14 years later when the interweb
was invented), and so here it is. I hope you enjoy this site and its pictures.
Since this site started it has snowballed (pun intended) into
an ever expanding hobby/facility/job in directions that I never thought it would.
I did think that after about 3 years of part-time work this site would be "finished",
now about 8 years later my to-do list is bigger than it ever was and from where
I am at the moment there will be no end as the longer I go on, the bigger the plans
get.
Early in 2007, Cool Antarctica had it's 10 millionth visitor,
a truly astonishing number to me for my little hobby-site and show-case for my pictures
that I took. I am so glad now that photography and making the most of the Antarctic
Experience are what guided me while South rather than only focussing on the intricacies
of the muscle metabolism of Notothenia neglecta.
I now find myself in a fairly unique position where I can relate
my own Antarctic experiences and act as a hub for other people to send me their
own pictures and information to further promote the status of Antarctica a wonderful
and unique part of our planet. I can't think of another website I'd rather be responsible
for.
You can contact me if you want via
p.s. Hi to any pupils at Cromwell Community College,
Chatteris, Cambridgeshire UK where I currently teach and who sometimes
come here to check if I really do have a web site!
My other sites
Anglian Gardener |
English Gardening |
Darwin's Galapagos
| Russian Esprit
|
