Scott Base staff join Earth Hour

The nights are drawing in rapidly at Scott Base in the Antarctic.

On Thursday, it was dark about 10pm.

However, with 20 minutes of daylight being lost each day, or more than two hours a week, by the time the wintering-over team participates in Earth Hour a week tonight, dusk will have closed around the New Zealand base.

Scott Base winter manager Grant Hill, who is also the winter mechanic, is on his first trip to the ice.

He said the experience of fast-diminishing daylight was unusual.

"It's hard to believe," he said.

Winter team members and the Antarctica New Zealand head office in Christchurch considered it was appropriate for the base to participate in Earth Hour because of their stewardship of the Antarctic's fragile environment.

Significant effort already went into minimising the operation's footprint on the frozen continent, Hill said.

"We are keen in whatever way to do whatever we can as far as energy conservation goes. The base runs very energy efficiently anyway, but we thought it would be a good thing to get on board with.

"We'll be shutting down as much lighting as we can, but will need to keep as much safety lighting on as possible," Hill said.

"We'll turn off computers -- there's a lot of computers in the base, they will all be shut down -- and shut down all radios and stereos and TVs.

"We don't have candles and the base is full of smoke detectors, so we don't really want to use candles.

"We will probably sit round in the dark for a while and maybe go to bed early."

Heating would still be essential, as temperatures at Scott Base were now falling to close to -30deg.

Hill said nearly everything that was taken down to Scott Base was returned to New Zealand.

"All food waste is baled up and brought back again, and we don't have any food with bones in it. We've got recycling stations all over the base, and all plastics, aerosols, paper, batteries, all that stuff, gets sent back to New Zealand for recycling."

The winter team arrived at Scott Base in October with the summer crew, which returned to New Zealand last month.

Once the last flight out left next month, there would be 15 people at Scott Base until October, Hill said.

By Thursday, 2360 individuals had signed up for Earth Hour. Of those, 911 are from Christchurch.

Two hundred and thirty businesses and other organisations have also registered, 110 from Christchurch.

The numbers do not include people who have signed up in shopping malls.

- © Fairfax NZ News