site.btaBTA to Send Special Correspondent with Fourth Consecutive Bulgarian Antarctic Expedition

BTA will for a fourth consecutive year have a special correspondent on board the Bulgarian naval research vessel Sv. Sv. Kiril i Metodii (RSV 421) and at the national press club of BTA at the Bulgarian Antarctic base.

Simona-Aleks Mihaleva, a senior editor in BTA's Balkans Directorate, will depart for Antarctica on January 24 together with the head of the national Antarctic expeditions, Prof. Christo Pimpirev, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences' (BAS) Geological Institute's Assoc. Prof. Stoyan Georgiev, Snezhana Rusinova-Videva from BAS' Stephan Angeloff Institute of Microbiology, and writer Vasil Popov.

In Punta Arenas, the group will be joined by Dr. Gergana Georgieva from the Faculty of Physics at Sofia University and oceanologist Prof. Emil Stanev from Germany, as well as Greek scientists Dionysia Rigatou from the University of Athens and Eleni Kytinou from the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research.

BTA has had a national press club on board RSV 421 since 2022. In February 2024, Bulgaria’s national news agency also opened one at the Bulgarian Antarctic base St. Kliment Ohridski on Livingston Island. The press clubs exist thanks to the gratuitous support of RSV 421 and the Bulgarian base, which have provided the premises.

During all three expeditions of the Bulgarian research vessel to Antarctica and back, BTA has sent correspondents. BTA English Service editor Konstantin Karagyozov was the correspondent during the historic first voyage of RSV 421 at the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023. He reported throughout each of the 127 days of the expedition with text, video materials and photographs on the scientific research conducted during the entire voyage (including across the Atlantic Ocean in both directions) and throughout the stay on the Ice Continent. BTA also had a correspondent during the second voyage of Sv. Sv. Kiril i Metodii during the scientific research in early 2024 — Emil Granicharov, who sent his video ship’s log, with the materials available for use by all media. During the ship’s third voyage in early 2025, the correspondent was Milena Ostrovska.

The materials of BTA’s special correspondents on board RSV 421 and in Antarctica are freely accessible in the special thematic section BTA's Log in Bulgarian and English under #Bulgaria - Antarctica and may be freely used by all media with attribution to BTA. BTA Director General Kiril Valchev recalled that thanks to its correspondents, the Agency ranks among the top search results on Google when searching for the phrase Antarctica correspondent.