Costa Rican seismologist Marino Protti visited the Antarctica for the first time in 2013 as part of the Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD), with the objective of installing twenty seismologic stations to measure the displacement of the glacial and the earthquakes produced by the same.

Now, three years later, Dr. Marino Protti, an experienced seismologist from the Costa Rican Volcanological and Seismological Observatory, (OVSICORI), is going back to the Antarctica to gather the stored data and dismantle the stations.

“We will replace the batteries and leave them for another two weeks, registering more data. Afterwards we will dismantle everything”,said Protti

The scientific expedition will include personnel from the University of San Diego California and the director of the investigation, Susan Schwartz, who worked with Protti in Nicoya, Guanacaste.

The WISSARD project is a multidisciplinary study of ice sheet stability and subglacial geobiology.

“Due to the action of gravity, the ice formed becomes a solid block and it moves in the direction of the ocean. This is the case of the Whillans and Mercer glacials; that move at a speed of 400 meters every year; the area of contact between the ice and the Whillans lake has a similar behavior to that of a subduction zone. Twice a day, every time the tide is high, the ice raises and produces a slide of 60cm; pretty much the same effect that displaced the plate in the Nicoya earthquake, the difference is that in the Antarctica this happens twice a day ”, explained Protti to La Nacion’s reporter Michelle Soto.

This phenomena allows scientists to study subduction earthquake cycles and collect data and stats of the process of accumulation and release of forces.