Out now, ‘Ash Shinn is looking after your Antarctic research station’ – an interview with mechanical technician Ash Shinn from King Edward Point. Iceworld is available on your preferred podcast app.
Welcome to Antarctica. What’s it like living and working in one of the most extreme environments in the world?
Recorded at Rothera Research Station on the Antarctic Peninsula, the team talk extreme living, climate science, expeditions and becoming a community. From polar scientists to plumbers, these are interviews with ordinary people who are doing extraordinary jobs with British Antarctic Survey.
Iceworld is hosted and recorded by Nadia Frontier, and produced in partnership with Boffin Media.
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Do you have to get past hundreds of sleeping elephant seals to get to work? Ash Shinn does – but there’s no fresh water, heating or toilets at Antarctic research stations without him.
Ash apparently can’t get enough of working in Antarctica. He’s done a real tour of Antarctic Stations almost continuously since 2021 – he worked at BAS a through the winter at Rothera Research Station as a Mechanical Maintenance Technician, before going to the Aotearoa New Zealand Scott Base where temperatures plunged to -40°C. Host Nadia Frontier interviews him on their new deployment overwinter at the comparatively warm and green BAS King Edward Point station in South Georgia.
Nadia and Ash chat about what it’s like to have worked at all these different stations, the ins and outs of Ash’s job, and taking the time to appreciate the scenery when Antarctica starts to feel ordinary. What keeps Ash coming back to Antarctica season after season? What’s it like looking after a remote station that’s running mostly on hydro-electricity? And what, exactly, is a Reverse Osmosis Plant?
