Antarctica Diary

Last November I had the great privilege of visiting one of the last true wildernesses left in our shrinking world. Antarctica, if you travel more or less continuously, takes four and a half days to reach starting from the UK. The North Pole is much easier to get to. Fly to Norway or Iceland and you are there within twenty four hours.

The differences between the North and South poles are intriguing. First the most obvious, the Antarctic is a vast landmass surrounded by ocean. The north pole lies in the Arctic Ocean surrounded by land; Canada, Russia, Greenland and parts of North Western Europe. A variety of terrestrial animals live in the Arctic for example wolf, arctic fox, reindeer, hare and of course polar bears. No animals live on land in Antartica, the climate is simply too inhospitable. An incredible 90 flowering plants flourish in the Arctic whereas only a few very hardy lichens survive the temperatures and winds of Antarctica.

The mean temperature in the Arctic is -18c whereas in the Antarctic it is -50c. Holiday travel to each continent takes place at temperatures well above the average and in our case that meant arriving in the Antarctic at the beginning of Spring with temperatures between freezing and minus 5. It can be colder in a ski resort. But it isn’t just the temperature which renders animal and plant life impossible in Antarctica. It is the wind. Antarctica is the windiest continent on earth and this drives the sea currents around the landmass which is one of the main reasons for the freezing conditions.

The weather can change dramatically in a matter of a few hours or less. On our first day there we were beaten back from our course by the sea ice swirling around the ship in loose chunks. The mosaic patterns made by the formations of ice in the sea were very beautiful and the ship seemed to glide through easily. But when the wind suddenly gets up it whips the loose chunks of ice together and the ship can become marooned in a bed of ice from which there is no escape until the weather changes. As winter approaches in the Antarctic, the sea freezes from the edge of the continent northwards, at an incredible three kilometres per day.

We embarked on our voyage from Ushuaia in Argentina, the southern most point in the world before Antarctica. After a forty eight hour crossing Antarctica finally came in to view at seven in the morning. I made sure I was up and out on deck to experience the gradual coming in to view of the desolate and mountainous icescape that grew larger and larger as we approached. I had thought about this for a long time and now on a freezing November morning it was at last coming in to view. It was dramatic and forbidding. I thought of those early explorers for whom reaching the edge of the continent was merely the beginning of a trek of almost two thousand miles inland to find the south pole. Our voyage, although billed as an ‘expedition,’ was very much armchair Antarctica by comparison I had to admit.

Our ship had nearly one hundred passengers. I was surprised to find that the average age on board was early to mid thirties. I discovered this was because our cruise was billed as an activity based expedition. Apart from a few modest climbs the activities were not exactly challenging. We enjoyed the Zodiac cruises which had ten of us piling in to a motorised dinghy to sail right up to the glaciers and around the ice shelfs.

We left the ship twice a day in the Zodiac dinghies. Sometimes to cruise in and out of the icebergs and other times to land wherever we could. Once on land we did some hiking and the climbs were certainly worth the effort as the scenery would open up and it was majestic. One of our fellow passengers was truly inspirational. Elisabeth was German and lived in Montreal. She was also travelling alone at the age of eighty five years. Elisabeth did all the climbs, unaided, got in and out of the Zodiacs and participated fully in all the activities. At the end of the trip Elisabeth embarked on the four day journey home which involved at least four flights some of them leaving in the middle of the night. I loved her company and will always remember her, particularly when I start thinking that something can’t be done...

The ice was a revelation. On the dullest, foggiest, snowy day where visibility was very poor you would suddenly get this rush of aquamarine blue. Ice shelves make up nearly fifty per cent of Antarctica’s coastline. These sheets of ice can be several kilometres thick and they store two thirds of the world’s fresh water. Glacier ice forms when the airspace between grains of snow become compressed and all the air is squeezed out. The ice that forms then absorbs light and radiates this brilliant aquamarine blue colour. As you glide through the channels that run in and out of the coast line you encounter a magnificent array of icebergs in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Icebergs that peel off the iceshelves can be miles long and miles wide.

Wildlife there is in abundance. There is not a huge diversity of species; birds (including penguins), seals, whales and not much more besides. But you rarely see less than a thousand penguins at any one time. They divide themselves into rookeries of fifty or so birds and each rookery is sited within fifty yards of the next one. There are seventeen types of penguin of which we saw three: Chinstraps, Gentoos and Adelies. They are all entirely at ease with humans. We observed a five metre limit but they would frequently come within a meter of us. They are not in the least timid as, on land at least, they have no predators. Although they do have to protect their eggs. My friend who I travelled with observed an altercation between two males over a nest on which a female was sitting, the female became distracted, moved and exposed her egg. Quick as a flash a Skua bird bore down on the nest and scooped up the egg.

You can observe penguins for hours without tiring of the experience. They have strict courting rituals which involve a lot of bowing to the ground in front of eachother and then the male helps to build a nest by bringing stones and building them in to a nest that just raises the resulting egg above the ground and away from the risk of water swirling in and around. Although quite ungainly on land penguins are expert swimmers and can dive in search of food to depths of up to 170 metres. But it is at sea where they are most at risk from seals and so they have to keep swimming once they leave the shore.

The threat from global warming is much more immediate from the rising temperatures of the north pole than it is in the Antarctic. Some of the ice is melting down south but at a far slower rate. The main threat to the environment of Antarctica is fishing. The reason whales travel thousands of miles to the southern oceans in the spring is the abundance of a crustacean called Krill. Krill is a shrimp like creature fed on by whales, seals and penguins and there is at present no shortage of them. An enzyme within Krill has made it difficult to preserve for human consumption. Sadly there are companies working on the science to overcome this issue, in a world where demand for sea food and fish is infinite the ability to fish the southern oceans for Krill is a huge commercial opportunity. It would also do untold damage to the wild life of the Antarctic whose survival has depended on the abundance of Krill for centuries.

The journey back over Drake’s Passage in the southern Atlantic took us round Cape Horn and back to Ushuaia. By this time we had been on the ship for ten days, apart from daily landings, we had seen just one other ship during the whole voyage and that was a British research vessel. When you go to Antarctica you really go to the ends of the earth and it feels like the beginning of the world.

Margot James
December 14th 2008