The late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw dramatic new developments in climatic medicine, particularly the institutionalisation of thinking about tropical hygiene. There were also more limited efforts to understand how hygiene theories should be applied in a polar environment. Studying the British National Antarctic Expedition (1901–1904), led by Robert Falcon Scott, helps us understand how these practices had both similarities and differences from applications of hygiene in other contexts. The expedition offers unique insights into debates about hygiene, environment, and health because of the important, and well documented, role that medics, naval officers and scientists played in organising logistical arrangements for the journey to Antarctica. In analysing the writings of expedition members and organisers, this paper examines the ways that the universal tools of hygiene theories were applied and developed in a polar environment. Many of the most acute threats seemed to come not from the outside environment but from the explorers’ supplies and equipment. There was general agreement on many issues. Yet the expedition’s organisers, medics and leadership had numerous arguments about the best way to preserve or restore health. These disagreements were the product of both competing medical theories about the cause of disease and the importance of embodied (and somewhat subjective) observations in establishing the safety of foods, atmospheres and environments in this period.

Approximately five centuries of the involvement of Portugal in Antarctic regions is described. Discoveries, the sealing and whaling industries, and modern developments are discussed.

Observations on the external locations of harpoon wounds were made on 127 minke whales Balaenoptera acutorostrata taken during Japanese commercial whaling operations in the 1978/79 Antarctic season. The numbers of wounds per whale did not vary between catcher boats, the average being 1.2. Although the cranio-thoracic region seemed to be the target of choice (bearing 60.5% of all wounds examined), the proportion of wounds in this region varied significantly between catcher boats, ranging from 43.6 to 75.7 per cent. It is suggested that this variation arose because to hit the cranio-thoracic region, the first section of the whale to surface, requires considerable skill on the part of the gunner.

Drawing on qualitative interview data, this article explores past and current Australian Antarctic Program expeditioners' perceptions of the personal qualities of expeditioners alongside their views of Antarctic station culture and expeditioner recruitment procedures. The findings reveal study participants shared similar views about expeditioner personal qualities. However, the findings also suggest that the current demographic similarity of expeditioners (e.g. the overrepresentation of white men) is perhaps much more important for assessing organizational fit than the Program might be selecting for. Participants described the ways in which interpersonal interactions and the social environment can deeply affect an expeditioner's experience of the station culture. Women in this study pointed to the connection between the overrepresentation of men in the expeditioner population and a potential male bias in station culture. These results extend the existing literature on person-culture fit in Antarctica. To conclude, I provide recommendations for diversifying the expeditioner applicant pool in Antarctica that can also be applied to the selection of other workforces in isolated, confined and extreme work environments, including space missions.

Parasitic ‘turbellarians’ are known from various animals such as echinoderms, crustaceans, annelids, bivalve and gastropod molluscs. So far, however, no ‘turbellarians’ have been reported from cephalopods. In this paper we report a parasitic ‘turbellarian’ from the giant Antarctic octopus, Megaleledone setebos. We dissected two specimens of M. setebos caught in the Ross Sea (Antarctica) and found numerous worms in their intestine and liver. The worms were spherical or oblong and had two morphologically different poles. The frontal pole bears a small conical protrusion containing large elongated pear-shaped frontal glands and large polygonal cells. The ducts of the frontal glands open terminally to form the frontal organ. The caudal pole has an opening shaped as a folded tube connected by the genital pore with a common genital atrium, which continues into a canal with a muscular sheath. The worms were identified as ‘turbellarians’ from the family Notenteridae (Fecampiida). This family contains only one species, Notentera ivanovi, reported from the gut of a polychaete at the White Sea. The worms that we found in the gastrointestinal tract of the octopuses were morphologically similar to N. ivanovi but differed from it in several important respects. Phylogenetic analysis based on 28S rDNA gene showed that the newly found worm clustered together with other fecampiids in a highly supported clade and was closely related to N. ivanovi. On the basis of these morphological and molecular data, we described a new species, Octopoxenus antarcticus gen. nov., sp. nov. (Fecampiida: Notenteridae), establishing a new genus to accommodate it and provided an updated diagnosis of the family Notenteridae. This is the first report of a parasitic ‘turbellarian’ from a cephalopod mollusc.

In this commentary, I investigate the Poles differently, and in situ, rather than only as stereotypically barren uninhabited expansive places on a globe or maps. The human stories are behind the relatively white space on which few place names are marked. But the more visible ones are made and told through a male-dominated, colonial narrator and mapmaker, until more recently. Cartography, like history, has overwhelmingly documented men’s worlds, stories, dominations and accomplishments, creating a virtual whiteout of women’s and notably Indigenous women’s stories also in polar regions. In this commentary, I report on a journey into (re)mapmaking I did of women’s stories told through female place names and toponymies of women especially in the Antarctic, through a crowd-sourced project, Mapping Antarctic Women. I explore not only mapping female place names and women’s stories in the Arctic, exploring gendered, colonial and western culture mapping but also newer digital Indigenous place name mapping and also mapping of human-exacerbated changes in the ice that makes the Antarctic map.

When Sir John Franklin’s expedition ships, lost since 1845, were found in the Arctic in 2014 and 2016, respectively, they were referred to several times in the media as ghost ships. However, such a comparison is not new. In 1862, an article linking the disappearance of the Franklin expedition to that of a ghost ship in Antarctic waters appeared in a newly founded German geographic journal aimed at a general audience. The story of the ghost ship Jenny in the Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica would probably have been long forgotten had it not appeared again in this journal in English translation a century later. Since then, the story has appeared again and again in publications about mysterious phenomena, without succeeding in answering the question of whether such a ship ever existed at all. Instead of continuing to look for evidence of the actual existence of the ship, the following article not only presents the sources of the 1862 journal article but also examines how the story itself might have originated. In addition to a well-known legend about a ghost ship in the Arctic waters of Greenland, which will also be analysed in greater detail, oral tales and tradition about two almost forgotten voyages into Antarctic waters and a well-known one have probably also been incorporated into the tale of the ghost ship Jenny. All translations from German are by the author.

Supporting Antarctic scientific investigation is the job of the national Antarctic programmes, the government entities charged with delivering their countries’ Antarctic research strategies. This requires sustained investment in people, innovative technologies, Antarctic infrastructures, and vessels with icebreaking capabilities. The recent endorsement of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) Polar Code (2015) means that countries must address challenges related to an ageing icebreaking vessel fleet. Many countries have recently invested in and begun, or completed, builds on new icebreaking Polar research vessels. These vessels incorporate innovative technologies to increase fuel efficiency, to reduce noise output, and to address ways to protect the Antarctic environment in their design. This paper is a result of a Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs (COMNAP) project on new vessel builds which began in 2018. It considers the recent vessel builds of Australia’s RSV Nuyina, China’s MV Xue Long 2, France’s L’Astrolabe, Norway’s RV Kronprins Haakon, Peru’s BAP Carrasco, and the United Kingdom’s RRS Sir David Attenborough. The paper provides examples of purposeful consideration of science support requirements and environmental sustainability in vessel designs and operations.

Accurate citation practices are important to ensure a robust knowledge base and overall trustworthy academic enterprise. The prevalence of poor citation practices has been assessed in multiple fields, resulting in estimates of inaccurate citations ranging typically between 15% and 25%. Here, we assessed the accuracy of citations in research articles extracted from 11 journals with a polar sciences focus. Thirty percent of citations from recent articles (published between 2018 and 2019) and 26 % of citations between 1980 and 2019 were found to be inaccurate. We found no evidence for differences in citation accuracy between the journals assessed, or effects on citation accuracy associated with the number of authors, number of references, position of references or if a citation was a self-citation or not. Importantly, we present evidence for a decline in citation accuracy between 1980 and 2019 in polar sciences. Citation practices are unlikely to improve unless journals provide incentives for scholars to be more meticulous, and we recommend active monitoring of citation accuracy and citation appropriateness by reviewers and editorial staff.

The surface spectral albedo was measured over coastal landfast sea ice in Prydz Bay (off Zhongshan Station), East Antarctica from 5 October to 26 November of 2016. The mean albedo decreased from late-spring to early-summer, mainly responding to the change in surface conditions from dry (phase I) to wet (phase II). The evolution of the albedo was strongly influenced by the surface conditions, with alternation of frequent snowfall events and katabatic wind that induce snow blowing at the surface. The two phases and day-to-day albedo variability were more pronounced in the near-infrared albedo wavelengths than in the visible ones, as the near-infrared photons are more sensitive to snow metamorphism, and to changes in the uppermost millimeters and water content of the surface. The albedo diurnal cycle during clear sky conditions was asymmetric with respect to noon, decreasing from morning to evening over full and patchy snow cover, and decreasing more rapidly in the morning over bare ice. We conclude that snow and ice metamorphism and surface melting dominated over the solar elevation angle dependency in shaping the albedo evolution. However, we realize that more detailed surface observations are needed to clarify and quantify the role of the various surface processes.

Recent initiatives in polar research like Women in Polar Science and Women of the Arctic have shone a light on the strengths of female polar researchers and the struggles they have faced in their respective careers. These initiatives have started and contributed to ongoing conversations in the polar research community about increasing diversity and making the field more inclusive. In this commentary, we discuss the need to focus on intersectionality in diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives in polar research, and to address intersecting barriers faced by members and would-be members of our fields. These barriers are varied, often overlapping, and include, but are not limited to: gender identity; sexuality; socio-economic status; language; disability; and race. Polar research is poised to benefit from a tremendous diversity of ideas and approaches if we as a community can fully commit ourselves to understanding and addressing overlapping, interconnected barriers to equality and progress in polar research.

Are similarities of temperature, snow and ice cover, and (certain) marine mammals sufficient to warrant both polar regions being considered a single object of study or governance? We argue that their treatment as a unit is an invitation to examine the motivations behind the choice to be polar rather than Arctic or Antarctic. For individuals such as James Clerk Ross or Roald Amundsen, logistical requirements and analogous goals facilitated careers spanning both the Arctic and the Antarctic. This trend continued through the 20th century as individual scientists studying phenomena such as glaciers, sea ice, or aurora defined their research as “polar” in nature. Organisations such as the Scott Polar Research Institute and Norwegian Polar Institute could draw on traditions of national exploration in both polar regions, while the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg gained its southern mandate with the importance of the International Geophysical Year. By comparison, neither the Arctic Institute in Copenhagen nor the Argentine Antarctic Institute felt any need to become polar. The creation of polar identity is ultimately a matter of geopolitics, of the value states see in instruments and symbols that speak to polar rather than Arctic or Antarctic interests. In cases such as Finland’s icebreaker industry, a technological capability justified Antarctic interest even without any national research tradition. We conclude by asking whether there is anything more natural about the polar regions than there is about the concept of a “tripolar” world in which the high alpine regions form a natural unit along with the Arctic and Antarctic.

Although archaeological studies focusing on 19th-century sealing have been performed over the past 30 years, its history and sites have traditionally had low visibility in Antarctic narratives and the Antarctic Treaty System policymaking on heritage. Researchers face the challenge of increasing the visibility of sealers’ history and public awareness of the importance of conserving the oldest sites of Antarctica. In this paper, we propose that identifying patterns of tourism activity in the South Shetland Islands, specifically in their temporal and spatial dimensions, could help protect these sites and engage visitors with the early history of Antarctica. Data collected by the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators were used to calculate landing point usage trends over time and the frequency of passenger landings from 2003–2004 to 2015–2016. We defined six different visitation patterns with temporal tendencies of passenger landings that varied from increasing, constant, or decreasing trends over time, differing in the magnitude and intensity of visitation. This information was used to assess the situation of particular sites located in the vicinity of tourism landing points. We set priorities for their conservation and management decisions and highlighted their relative potential to engage visitors with the stories of 19th-century sealing in Antarctica.