Wednesday Women: Isabelle Ansorge
Isabelle as a child always wanted to be an oceanographer. “When I was 13 my father sent me off for 6 months on a Tall Ship to sail around Africa. And so, having grown up on sailing ships and sailing the world at a very young age it seemed only natural to follow in my passion to build a career around the sea.
I first studied at Plymouth University in the UK, where I completed a BSc in Ocean Sciences in 1992. I came to South Africa in 1993 and under the mentorship of Professor Lutjeharms in the Oceanography Department at UCT I started to turn this passion into a sea-going academic career.
One of my first jobs at UCT was to gain seagoing experience in working with all ship-based equipment. I loved being at sea and felt that after my many experiences on both national and international research vessels that I would be good at teaching practical oceanography. And so began a long period of sea-going adventures between 1996 and 2016 in which UCT Honours students were taken to sea onboard the old SA Agulhas I and from 2012 the new SA Agulhas II. The training was always part of the 5 week Prince Edward Island relief voyage and in those days students had to work the winches, drive the CTD software, work up the data for mini-projects!
Isabelle’s Working Life: “I was employed as a lecturer at UCT in 2006 and have worked hard to build a career both nationally and internationally in observational oceanography. My passion and love for the sea can be seen in the many opportunities that I create for students both at UCT, and as can be seen from the SEAmester Floating University across the entire country. I was the first female PhD graduate in Oceanography at UCT in 2000, I am the only female Full Professor in the Oceanography Department and the first female Head of Department in 2016. “
What drives me:” I love teaching students. Taking a student to sea and watching them learn and seeing their eyes light up when they first board the SA Agulhas II is extremely rewarding. Many of my former students have returned to sea either as senior researchers leading their own cohort of students, or they have built their career in marine management or moved into the academic field. It is so rewarding see young inexperienced students join a cruise and leave imbued with a new confidence and a passion for their discipline.
“I am proud of the SEAmester programme and how we have been able to develop linkages with traditionally non marine universities both through their students joining as SEAmester students or their own Lecturers joining the academic programme. The state-of-the-art research vessel, SA Agulhas II, provides such an incredible teaching and research platform for this programme; its size, comfort and shipboard facilities allow groups of 46 students and 30 lecturers to productively interact over a period of 10 days as can the photo of Prof Gammon teaching students in the ship’s stairwell shows so well!.”
My advice to the young generation: “Four words – always take the initiative! In the UK the only sea-going opportunity I had was to work on the River Tamar outside of Plymouth! In South Africa our students go to Antarctica! But it takes you to make that difference. We have so many wonderful opportunities in South Africa and access to such incredible marine programmes and platforms but the sparkplug to get started must come from you. All academics get frustrated by students not willing to engage with their surroundings and 
not even realise the enormous privilege it is to be on a research vessel such as the SA Agulhas II. You don’t have to be the brightest student in the class but by staying engaged, enthusiastic, interactive and dedicated to your studies you will always go much further in life. Opportunities are endless but it takes you to grab it!”
Text and Images supplied by Isabbelle Ansorge.
Visit SANAP website on Isabelle Ansorge’s current research projects within the program. Also see Sunday Science on SEAmester
https://youtu.be/0LUpdr-masA
Above (l-r) : Greg(middle) to leave for Bouvet; Greg on Marion Island; Greg on Bouvet Island 
I took up my current employment in 2006 as marine mammal biologist at the 
When I was very young I was keen to become a game ranger. While in high school this had morphed into being a zoologist. And this is the career that I was lucky enough to follow. It has given me wonderful opportunities and allowed me to do some fascinating things. I had always wanted to work in wild places and so arriving on Marion Island for the first time was like arriving in paradise. Before the end of my first year, I new that I had to return. I loved every moment on this rough place. Not only was it beautiful and challenging, but it also allowed one the opportunity to observe animals fairly closely and wonder about their way of life and behaviour. How did these very distant relatives of our survive in an environment so hostile to us? Thus it was also intellectually stimulating. And I have loved to return to wild places and ask questions about the natural work ever since.
If you want to become a scientist, do what you love. It is a tough career that requires
The SANAP symposiums is: “..the perfect platform for diverse disciplines to “cross-fertilise” ideas often leading to collaborations. It is an exciting community; the people are so different, but the focus is on the same problems in the same place.” – Rosemary Dorrington
The 6th 
The 1st SANAP symposium took place in Stellenbosch in October 2007 over a period of 2 days hosted by Steven Chown of the Stellenbosch University and in 2009 the Symposium was held in Cape Town, on 8-10 February 2009.
In Grahamstown in 2014 the 3rd Symposium was hosted by Ian Meiklejohn and Rosemary Dorrington of Rhodes University. Rosemary in an 
In 2016 the 
The last and 5th SANAP symposium was held in Hermanus organized by Michael Kosch of SANSA and Kenneth Findlay of CPUT.
“Auroras provide direct visual evidence that the atmosphere is shielding life on Earth from the radiation hazards of space.” – 
About 10% of the solar wind becomes trapped on the Earth’s magnetic field lines in a process called magnetic reconnection, the rest is rejected and flows past the planet into deep space. The trapped particles accumulate, but this cannot go on forever. They are eventually released into the upper-atmosphere in a process called substorms, exciting the atomic oxygen and molecular nitrogen to produce the familiar green and red colours from oxygen, and sometimes the blue colour as well from nitrogen. Charged particles, such as electrons and protons, are constrained to follow the magnetic field lines, and since the Earth’s magnetic field is similar to a dipole bar magnetic, it is only in polar regions where the magnetic field lines reach down to the ground, which is why the auroras appear mostly in polar regions.
Auroras appear in the height range 100 to 300 km above the Earth’s surface, typically with red, green and blue appearing near the top, middle and bottom, respectively, of this height range. The height of the auroras, and therefore their colour, depends on the energy of the particles, with higher energy able to penetrate to lower altitudes. Auroras are rarely seen at lower latitudes such as South Africa except during major geomagnetic storms, an example of which occurred in 1989 when auroras were visible from Durban.
The following are a few articles in the South African Journal on Antarctic Research available on the Antarctic Legacy of South Africa (ALSA) digital repository
From 2017, he is a PhD student at the 
Earth science, in general, has always been fascinating to me and since I was little, my desire was to discover and learn new things related to our oceans.
Thanks to oceanography, I can attend fantastic expeditions anywhere in the world, exploring from the icy polar seas to the warmer waters of the equator, spending weeks or even months on board of research vessels. During these trips, I always meet colleagues and extraordinary scientists that share the same interests and passions of mine, even if they are from different fields. Furthermore, coming to South Africa, I joined two great scientific communities: one is the 
This is a great career that stimulates you at any moment of your life, and if you are curious, motivated, and resourceful, well… this job is waiting for you.
