PROTECTOR Back – the Ice Patrol Ship PROTECTOR has returned from a maiden deployment to the South Atlantic.     The PROTECTOR conducted three separate intensive work periods in the ice using the.  multibeam echo sounder and deployed her survey motor boat to provide hydrographic charting and imagery of the region for the UK Hydrographic Office,  The Hydrographic Office still provides 80 per cent of the world's nautical charts.    The PROTECTOR also assisted with the resupply of British Antarctic Survey stations in the region, and the ship tackled a ferocious fire which raged through a Brazilian research base on King George Island in the South Shetland Islands, as previously reported.     A few weeks later the ship punched through the ice in a race against time to pick up a team of British Antarctic Survey scientists.   The PROTECTOR put the group on the remote James Ross Island but worsening weather meant they had to be rescued four days later.     With a change of wind direction there was a chance ice from the Weddell Sea would be driven towards the island, potentially blocking the ship in.    The deployment also included surveying the forbidding shore of Point Wild on the northern coast of Elephant Island.     In April, the PROTECTOR ventured to the most southerly point of the deployment, the British Antarctic Survey Rothera Research Station, 800 miles south of Cape Horn. The ship delivered aviation fuel in rolling seas and in temperatures of minus 15 degrees Celsius.   The PROTECTOR will deploy “South” again in September 2012.