A guided tour of the Tangaroa

Stacey Mulgrew, the Land Information representative gives a tour of the ship. Stacey starts on deck and explains the decks of the ship using the ship’s deck plans. She shows where one of the laundries is on board where Matt Knox is unloading a washing machine. Stacey shows the ship’s gym where Arne Pallentin is working out and she explains that the Tangaroa even has a sauna. After that Stacey shows her own cabin and visits the doctor, Jenny Visser in the ship’s surgery.

Points of interest for teachers:

• The tour should give students an idea of the size of the vessel and how important it is that everyone is comfortable on a long voyage like this.

• The ice scraping past when Stacey is in her cabin.

• The ship’s doctor needs to be prepared for a range of conditions. Note the doctor is mentioning a defibrillator – this is an electrical device used to counteract fibrillation (uncoordinated twitching) of the heart muscle and restore normal heartbeat by applying a brief electric shock.

• What health problems are most likely on a voyage like this?

Transcript

STACEY MULGREW

Hi I’m Stacey Mulgrew, I’m one of the team members on board the Tangoroa for the census of Antarctic marine life. Welcome to Antarctica.

Why don’t I take you inside and show you where we live!

So these are all the decks onboard the Tangoroa and as you can see my cabin is right down here, right in the bowels of the boat. We’ve got a couple of laundries on board – oh hi Matt.

MATT KNOX

Hi Stacey.

STACEY MULGREW

We’ve even got a small gym - Hi mate!

We’re really spoiled onboard to have a sauna and I can tell you on a cold day in Antarctica this is the best place to be.

STACEY MULGREW

So welcome to my cabin. This is my bunk down here I was lucky to secure the bottom bunk. And this is my roomy Lisa’s top bunk. Every cabin has a little sitting area in it and some bookshelves and obviously we try and have these here because it gets quite rough and things can fly around quite a lot.

And back over here we have some wardrobe space just for each of us and of course every cabin is equipped with a toilet and shower. It’s quite basic but it’s all it needs to be. The tiles get really cold because – oh hear that noise – that’s, the bow of the boats right here so that’s the ice pushing through.

And we’ve even got a hospital onboard. And this is our doctor Jenny Visser.

Hi Jenny.

DR JENNY VISSER

Hi Stacey how’s it going

STACEY MULGREW

Good

DR JENNY VISSER

Well here we are in the hospital, the ships hospital. You can see we’ve got plenty of gear, emergency medication we’ve got surgical instruments even a defibrillator in case of a real emergency but hopefully that’s something we’ll never have to use.