Every year the United States Antarctic Programs annual resupply vessel Ocean Giant travels from the United States, via Chile and Christchurch, New Zealand on it’s way to McMurdo Station, Antarctica.
The vessel carries approximately 1000 20 foot shipping containers of supplies and equipment needed to keep the station running for another year. The vessel offload is one of the busiest times of the year on station.
The Ocean Giant comes in via a channel cut in the sea ice by the US Coast Guards icebreaker Polar Star, which is the most powerful non-nuclear icebreaker in the world. The Antarctic Treaty prohibits leaving any waste on the continent so once the cargo is unloaded all the previous years waste and old equipment is loaded back on the vessel for transport and disposal back in the United States.
Click through to watch a nice time-lapse video of the evolution taken by one of the crew of the Ocean Giant on 6 GoPro cameras.