Professor Tony Haymet's idea of luck might not be the most mainstream.

The Surf Beach-local is fascinated by Notothenia - a genus of icefish native to the Antarctic that live in water colder than the freezing point of their blood.

"When I first heard about these fish, I thought, 'well that's impossible,'" Prof Haymet said. "But they have evolved proteins that inhibit the growth of ice in their bloodstream. It's quite extraordinary."

It was this fascination that took Prof Haymet on three separate scientific expeditions to Antarctica to study the proteins in fish blood.

Living in Antarctica was a "wonderful experience" amongst the community at the stations at McMurdo Sound or Scott Base. Prof Haymet's days blurred into nights and, along with most scientists, he experienced 'big eye' - the phenomenon where sleep is hard to come by because it never gets dark.

"It's hard to sleep because it's daylight most of the time and even though a lot of the bases and stations have very good blackout blinds, in your head you know that it's light out there," he said. "You wake up 2am and think 'oh, I could go out there and do my experiment'. A lot of people don't sleep very much. We would always say 'you can sleep when you get back to Christchurch.'"

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With his colleagues, Prof Haymet would dig a hole in the ice, and lower a steel cable with 50 hooks and some bait 1500 metres down into the Southern Ocean. They would catch Notothenia, tag them, take samples of their blood and scales before returning the fish to the water, all while discussing different ideas as to how proteins work.

The fish were slimy and stinky, but Prof Haymet said people lose their sense of smell in Antarctica because of the low humidity.

"You don't realise how bad the slimy fish smell in minus 20 or minus 40 degrees," he said.

Afterwards, he and his colleagues would return for dinner in the mess hall and warm up. After a few days, Prof Haymet noticed other scientists were giving them a very wide birth at meal times.

"As we warmed up the smell was in our hair and in our skin and we stank," he said.

Eventually others in the mess hall warmed to the fishing group, and Prof Haymet reflects on wonderful conversations over mealtimes, as scientists would discuss the weird and whacky experiments they were doing on the ice.

Occasionally he would help out with other scientific groups.

"Everyone gets invited to help other scientists out," he said. "I went out with the penguin guys and people looking for meteorites and people from helicopters looking at killer whales."

"Antarctica is an Alice in Wonderland scientific paradise.

"It shouldn't be minimised - there is absolutely no doubt it is terrific fun... but some of the hardest work I have ever done."

Prof Haymet believes Australians are naturally captivated by the Antarctic and always have been. He is just one Australian caught up in a "reservoir of love and interest in Antarctica" stretching back to the days of Mawson and early exploration on the ice. It's a relationship that continues with Australia committing to fund scientific exploration in Antarctica and construct a pioneering, world-class icebreaker ship for future science expeditions - Prof Haymet is especially excited about the latter.

However, he noticed that there was only so much governments could fund in the Antarctic, and there were wonderful experiments missing out on funding.

It was this observation, his love for the Antarctic and the opportunities he received that motivates Prof Haymet to volunteer as chair of the board of the Antarctic Science Foundation.

"Every now and then scientists come up with a great experiment that needs to be done now," he said. "The charity can do a few things the government can't do, or some experiments that are a bit too risky."

So far the charity has supported students from all around the world planning on researching in Antarctica, and an experiment tracking krill movements using sonar data.

Prof Haymet said Antarctica is intimately linked to Australia, and to the rest of the world.

"Most Australians realize that what happens in Antarctica does affect Australia: farming and our fisheries and our sea level rise," he said.

"92.5 per cent of the heat created by pollution is transferred to the ocean. That heat moved from the surface into the deep ocean.

"The ice [in Antarctica] is being melted from beneath by the warmer ocean, not heated from above, which is where I would have assumed the heating was.

"That heat has a lot of different effects - thermal expansion, causing sea level rise. It is something that effects all Australians."

Yet Prof Haymet is very upbeat about the future of scientific research in Antarctica - "the most optimistic I have been in a long while," he said.

He wants to preserve the beautiful landscape that gave him so much enjoyment, and which has captivated him for so long.

"I'm just a regular Australian who was lucky enough to do some work there in the course of my career," he said. "But I recommend that everyone should go. Not everyone will go on a scientific expedition, but you should go."