Who

Jeroen Creuwels
The summer of 1997/1998 is the second season that the Dutch biologist Jeroen Creuwels stayed a summer (Oct-April) at Ardery Island. This rocky island in front of the Antarctic continent offers very good swimming facilities. Jeroen did not improve his previous swimming distance record, so he will come down another season for a new attempt.

Jeroen spends the European summers in urban Amsterdam and the Australian summers in Antarctica. Ironically during his studies he specialized in tropical ecology, but now, 4 years later, he found himself working at 66° South. As a biologist he worked on Iguanas on Curacao, Netherlands Antilles (an island in the Caribbean), Harbour seals in the Netherlands, and on Southern elephant seals (on Macquarie Island in the Subantarctic). He likes to study the ecology and behaviour of animals in their natural environment. Jeroen has always been very interested in studying primates (monkeys, apes, and humans). The only primate species regularly occurring in the Antarctic sometimes displays an amazing behaviour and in a very natural environment indeed. But now Jeroen tries to concentrate on different wildlife: petrels on Ardery island. His field work during the three summers down South should culminate in a Ph.D thesis, which he wants to finish in 2000 (more details about Jeroen's project are provided in the What-pages). Furthermore, he likes to travel and he worked as an outdoor guide for trekkings in Europe. He doesn't like shaving and has never seen a Star Wars movie.

Jeroen Hasperhoven
During the field season of 1997/98 another Jeroen from The Netherlands was present on Ardery. This one is called Jeroen Hasperhoven or simply Jeroen#2, and assisted with the technical aspects of the bird research on Ardery Island. That is why he is also known by "techno-ass". After he finished his Masters in Electrotechnical Engineering in the Netherlands by the end of Augustus 1997, not much time was left to prepare for his Antarctic adventure. In September he arrived in Tasmania to join Jeroen#1 and Susan for the trip on the Aurora Australis to Antarctica. During his stay he learned much about the "Identified Flying Objects", as he called the petrels at Ardery. These IFOs are identified by microchips which were injected by the Dutch birdos before, and read by antennas present in the colonies. His progress in the field of bird biology was remarkable: he discovered that on a nest where a chick is present also an egg had been laid before! Gradually he got more and more involved in fieldwork, and became the expert on South Polar Skuas and Snowie petrels in the Ardery Bird-boffin Team 1997/98. Back in Holland he is into the archery (some sort of sport with a bow and arrows). During the summer holidays, when not playing Robin Hood with his bow, he takes part in organizing workcamps in Russia. These are located 200km north-east of Petersburg and consist of construction work for social projects. His CD-collection was very useful as the shiny sides are the only mirrors present on the island. Jeroen did swim in the Antarctic waters around Ardery, and he found the water not warm. His cooking qualities are famous, at least on the island. He is a bit worried about his look after he saw the digital pictures made on Ardery and had had a few hair-cuts after that. Also, he shaves his beard off when he is at Casey.

Susan Doust
Many people pulled out as a field assistant on Ardery Island with the last one 9 days before the ship was leaving. The Australian Antarctic Division provided a little miracle to find a new field assistant, and finish all the training, testing and paperwork before the ship left. The victim is known as Susan Doust and before she realized she was already on her way to Antarctica. She studied at the University of Tasmania, with as specialisation Botany. After finishing her Bachelors degree, she did various jobs. One of them being instructing English to Japanese business people in Tokyo, Japan for a few months. At Ardery she learned easily what to do with the birds. Her main goal at Ardery Island was to shoot as many sunsets as she could. She does not fully agree with Jeroen#2's music taste and eat two-minute noodles as lunch. She has been practising rowing on a very high level, and rowed in several Aussie championships. Her skills to move over frozen water are less well developed, as she found out during a long ski-trip to one of the neighbouring islands (see Little Herring Island story). After finishing the work on Ardery she continued working as a bio-assistant at Casey. She was involved in work on human impacts on benthic ecosystems (a Ph.D project of Jonny - Wildman- Stark). Due to their research boat "Southern Comfort" sinking, she was mostly sorting out "benthic bugs" in the science lab.

Belinda Harding
Belinda Harding swapped places with Susan as being the field assistant during the second half of the season. Belinda always had a big interest in Antarctica and dreamt a lot about going there. She studied at the IASOS (Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies) at the University of Tasmania. Her Honours project was about environmental monitoring and cumulative impact assessment in Antarctica. Although she found the "Dutch Ovens" (as the apple-fieldhuts on Ardery are called) a rather cosy accomodation, she preferred during the warm summer months her private sleeping room. This one wa outdoors and had a good panorama and very good air- conditioning, had walls from metamorphic granite rocks and real stars on the ceiling. Towards the end of the season she preferred to sleep closer to the apples, as the street lights on Ardery Island still don't work. She had washed her long hair a few times (which immediately froze) and can't believe that Jeroen#1 has never seen Star Wars.

The Bird Boffins of the season 1997/1998 on Ardery Island
From left to right: Belinda Harding (Tasmanian field assistent), Jeroen Hasperhoven (technical assistant), Susan Doust (Tasmanian field assistent) and Jeroen Creuwels (expeditionleader).

Fellow expeditioners in Jeroen's first season 1996/1997 on Ardery
During the first half of the season the Ardery crew consisted of Jeroen and two of his colleagues of the Institute of Forestry and Nature Research (in Dutch: Instituut voor Bos- en Natuuronderzoek, abbreviated to: IBN-DLO): Jan van Franeker and Willem van der Veer.
(From left to right: Jeroen, Willem and Jan.)

Jan van Franeker
Jan is a Dutch bird boffin, and has loads of experience in research on petrels both in the Arctic and Antarctic. He spent four seasons down on Ardery, the first one in 1985. He is the coordinator of the long-term research on the ecology of the fulmarine petrels on Ardery Island. He started with writing Ardery Blizzards, newsletters from the island to Caseyites about events and matters during his stay at Ardery.

Willem van der Veer
Willem works as a technician for the technical department of the IBN-DLO. He is specialised in telemetry (=following or measuring on a distance) of animals. He started developing the artificial nest-system in 1994. Willem is hardened by two seasons in Siberia, where he worked for an IBN-DLO project on geese. On Ardery he also looked after the wind generators, solar panels and other electronic gear on the island.

Oliver Hentschel
The Tasmanian field assistant Oliver Hentschel, took over the places of Jan and Willem in the middle of January 1997. He was a very enthustiastic field-assistant and tried to work for two. He assisted Jeroen in all aspects of his research. He has been the only one trying to keep his face tidy on Ardery Island (for unknown reasons) by shaving himself with melted snow and with a lid of a pan as mirror. He is a very keen beer brewer and already (in)famous for his Gina (a 20% ginger beer) which he managed to brew on Ardery. During his stay overwinter at Casey he found a few more victims on Casey with his brewings. He managed to get blizzed or bogged almost every time he tried to go away from station during his winter jollies. He prepared the artificial nest system for the new season and made many nest-trays which were used in the 1997/98 season. He also did many bird observations over winter and found that more birds were returning during the winter than previously was assumed. In October 1997, when the Ardery Island Bird Team 97/98 arrived, he returned to Tasmania.