Category: Antarctica

Ross Island is interesting. It is not very big, just 80 km across. McMurdo base is there. The most populous base in Antarctica. Up to 1,200 people. Run by the USA. Nearby, Scott base is run by the Kiwis. They also have a hut to the north of the island. There are three historic locations, restored wooden huts from the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. The island also has two volcanoes. One is considered extinct while the other smoulders away, venting smoke almost continuously. The land is all snow covered with five large glaciers radiating from the centre. One side of the island is effectively connected to mainland Antarctica by a permanent ice sheet. The ocean on the other side freezes every winter but is navigable for part of the year. The world’s most southerly port, at Hut Point, is typically opened by ice breakers in the spring. From here a seasonal marked route runs 1,600 km to the South Pole. Greenpeace once had a base on Ross Island. It really is an interesting place.

Our first stop was at Cape Bird. Given all the potentially interesting locations on Ross Island, this is possibly quite low on the list. There is a small hut for scientific observations. Owned by NZ, there is no-one there at the moment. To one side, between the hut and glacier, is one of the world’s largest Adélie penguin rookeries. Except, just now, as elsewhere, the birds have all gone. Only a handful of Skuas with some late chicks, a few moulting penguins and a massive smell. The sun was out. There was not much breeze. The prurient penguin pong was prodigious and pungent.

We walked along the beach as far as we could go. Then back again, a slightly different way. There were a few seals snoozing by the waters edge. There were a lot of penguin feet. Many chicks die before reaching adulthood. Our guide assured us that only 10% survive the first year. The reality is between a third and two thirds but even so that is a lot of dead penguins. Skuas clean up the dead chicks. They are also responsible for some of the dead chicks being dead. However, Skuas appear to not like the feet. Little desiccated penguin feet are scattered all over the beach.

In the afternoon, we went to visit Shackleton’s hut. This was much more interesting and did not involve a beach of penguin bones and guano. First, we had to sail across the bay to Cape Royds. This gave us a chance for lunch and to watch some orca. We saw several pods of Ross Sea Killer Whale. They are a distinct species, endemic to the Ross Sea. None of the whales came particularly close to the ship. In fact, they all appeared to keep roughly the same distance. Near enough to be seen, far enough to deny a good photograph.

Shackleton’s hut is a designated historical monument controlled by The Antarctic Heritage Trust (New Zealand). The hut was prefabricated in Britain and taken south for the first expedition led by Shackleton. The intended location proved inaccessible, so it was erected at Cape Royds. Establishing the base was difficult. Unloading the ship, the Nimrod, took nearly three weeks. They were hampered by harsh weather, ice conditions and disagreements with the ship’s captain. 10m by 6m, the hut was home for 15 men during the winter of 1908. From here, the expedition achieved the furthest ever south (88°23′ S), the first ascent of Mount Erebus and the discovery of the location of the South Magnetic Pole

The hut was left in good condition with enough supplies for 15 men for a winter. A letter, inviting any subsequent party to use the hut, was left inside. The door was locked and the key prominently nailed to the door. More recently, the Heritage Trust have repaired and reinstated the hut so that it still looks as if Shackleton only just left. The dog kennels are outside. Food and other supplies are inside. Fortunately, the cold, dry conditions of Antarctica help preserve the hut as a museum. Access is carefully controlled and restricted. We needed to clean our boots and only four people were allowed inside at a time. In 2010, several intact cases of whiskey were discovered underneath the hut. The original distillery has now recreated the taste of Shackleton’s whiskey. You can buy a bottle, for a premium, but that does include a donation to the Heritage Trust.

We wandered around the area. There is a small hill with some nice views. A frozen lake with a few penguins sliding across it. Diane did her penguin impression. I wondered about how Shackleton’s hut got its water supply. Usually, at a small Antarctic base, the water comes from melting snow. You need a good supply of clean snow. It is cut into blocks and melted in a large pot on the stove. When we visited the hut, it was surrounded by penguins. Extremely cute but far from ideal when it comes to clean snow.

In the evening, we headed across the sound towards Cape Bernacchi. The sun only sets for about three hours at night. Late in the evening, it was low but still bright. We had some wonderful views of the mountains and could watch ice starting to form on the water. When the sea first begins to freeze over it forms little circular patches called pancake ice.

100 km or so south from Cape Adare is Cape Hallett. It is a very picturesque area dominated by the Admiralty Mountain Range. The mountains were discovered in January 1841 by Captain James Clark Ross, Royal Navy, who named them for the Lords Commissioners of the British Admiralty under whose orders he served. Back then, naming geographic features after your sponsors was a well-established and successful ploy for obtaining further sponsorship.

A large Adélie penguin colony is located on the southern side of Cape Hallett. This is where we went zodiac cruising. Conditions were perfect. Calm water, sunshine, a few icebergs with seals lazing around on them and the distinctive smell of the penguin rookery. As with the other places we have visited, most of the penguins have left now and gone to sea. Just a handful of moulting penguins and a lot of guano to show for it.

We pottered around for the best part of two hours. Looked at some penguins. Looked at some seals. Saw a leopard seal but could not get a good picture of it. Mostly because it was sound asleep and not at all interested in us. We looked at some rocks and listened to someone who knew a bit of geology. That was quite interesting. Volcanic features. We looked at some glaciers. One of the guides started talking nonsense. They do this occasionally. They assume that we, the clients, know absolutely nothing about where we are. So, sometimes, to fill the silence, they start telling us stuff as if they know what they are talking about. It is best just to let them get on with it. They never suspect that, sometimes, old people know things.

Back on the ship there was talk of a weather window. We were heading right down to the bottom of the Ross Sea. This is, traditionally, the most reliable way to get south. Shackleton, Scott and many other heroes came this way to Ross Island. Scott named it after Ross. He did not have to. Ross was dead by then and Scott’s funding came from Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Society. Ross, however, was a pillar of Antarctic exploration and this sort of thing went well with the London based leather armchair explorer societies. Our issue was that Antarctic weather is changeable and occasionally ferocious. To take advantage of the weather window we needed to get on with getting to Ross Island.

The zodiacs were packed back onto the ship and we set a course south. For the whole of the next day, we made good speed. No sea ice, very few icebergs, beautiful sunshine and just a few birds following the ship. The expedition team drummed up a few talks. I got on with this blog. Diane got in some essential sleeping time. At Ross Island things were going to get very busy.

We are woken every morning by an announcement on the ship PA system. Fortunately, Howard, the expedition leader, has quite a gentle voice. His wake-up call with the weather and daily program is more Radio 4 than Heidi Hi. This is a good thing because otherwise I would need to work out how to disconnect the speaker in the cabin. It can be a bit of a guess as to what time we are going to be woken. This particular morning it was before dawn.

Sunrise proved to be quite spectacular making the early start worthwhile. Tabular icebergs (the big flat ones) were floating past. Seabirds were flying around the ship. A pod of killer whales went past. It was all turning out to be an extremely exciting morning.

After breakfast and a second pod of Orca we arrived at Cape Adare. Historically this place is extraordinarily significant. It is the site of the first ever landing on mainland Antarctica. It is also the first place anyone ever spent a winter on Antarctica. Biologically it is the location of the largest Adélie penguin rookery in the world. The first big impression Cape Adare made with me was the stink. The beach has an entire geological layer of penguin guano. Relatively few birds are here at this time of year but over 200,000 breeding pairs not so long ago. Today the sun is out and the beach area is warm, soft and vibrantly pungent underfoot.

We went ashore in zodiacs to have a look at the huts. Through the Antarctic Heritage Trust the site is registered as an Antarctic Specially Protected Area (ASPA 159) the highest level of protection available under the terms of the Antarctic Treaty. We need to tread carefully and speak in hushed tones. In January 1895, Norwegian explorers Henrik Bull and Carsten Borchgrevink landed here. Borchgrevink claimed to be the first to step onto the Antarctic mainland. Or it might have been Leonard Kristensen, ship captain, as cited in expedition accounts. Or Alexander von Tunzelmann, a 17 yo deck hand who claimed he jumped out to steady the boat for the others. Borchgrevink came back in 1899 as leader of the Southern Cross Expedition, also known as the British Antarctic Expedition. They erected two huts in which to spend the winter. The very first winterers and the very first buildings in Antarctica. This was the first British venture of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Later, Scott and Shackleton would become famous for their exploits. But nobody particularly like Borchgrevink. He was Norwegian and we would have preferred a reliable British Naval Officer. He also had an abrasive personality that appeared to upset pretty much everyone he ever dealt with. These two traits led him to becoming the first Antarctic hero that you never heard of. He received some recognition thirty years later. The Royal Geographical Society admitted “justice had not been done” to his work and awarded him the Patron’s Medal.

Members of the Northern Party of Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition over-wintered at Cape Adare in 1911 and 1912. They erected one hut, which has fallen into ruin today. The Norwegian built huts have fared much better. Zoologist George Murray Levick made observations of the penguins throughout the year and was horrified. He saw “depraved behaviour” including “hooligan penguins” that exhibited homosexuality, necrophilia (mating with dead females), sexual coercion and the physical abuse of chicks. Returning to Britain, his paper Sexual Habits of the Adélie Penguin was deemed too graphic for the official expedition report. His lost paper was rediscovered at the Natural History Museum and published in full in 2012. What Levick regarded as “moral failings,” modern biologists consider the result of sexual inexperience in young birds and high hormonal levels during the short, intense breeding season. Life can be hard as a teenage penguin when nobody understands you.

Diane had a quick look inside the huts. Despite their enormous historical significance, they actually look like a pair of old garden sheds. We wandered around in the penguin poo for a while. Back in the day, superior quality guano was a rich source of nitrogen for fertiliser and gunpowder. Borchgrevink the unloved, had even submitted a commercial proposal to collect the droppings.

After the breeding season comes the moulting season. A catastrophic moult is critical for survival. It replaces every single feather to ensure they remain waterproof and insulated. Typically lasts between 2 and 4 weeks. Without their waterproofing, penguins cannot enter the water to hunt. To survive, they must gorge on food before the imposed fast. This can double their body weight which makes them extra tasty to predatory killer whales and leopard seals. At this time of year, most of the birds have headed off to sea. The remaining slow moulters stand around looking shaggy and a bit despondent.

We were saved from nasal assault by the offer of a zodiac cruise. This gave us the opportunity to look at some odd shaped bits of floating ice. As icebergs melt and occasionally roll over, they can assume some strange patterns. Glacial ice typically forms in annual layers. This striation combines with patterns caused by wave action, meltwater and gas bubbles to form a remarkable range of shapes and textures. We also saw a few minke whales, a few Weddell seals and the first Emperor penguin of the trip.

Sailing south from Macquarie Island we had a couple of sea days. Nothing much happening. Nothing much to see. I spent some time on the back experimenting with camera settings. My relatively new Canon EOS R5 MkII is a lovely camera but has way too many options. It also has way too many complex and fiddly controls to manage all the complex and fiddly options. A lot of learning is needed to master the beast. I try and take this in small and manageable slices.

Antarctica is in a state of political limbo. Slices of it are claimed by various countries. Many of these claims are overlapping. Antarctica has no permanent population, no citizenship and no government. There is no Antarctic sovereignty. Personnel present in Antarctica are always nationals of some other country. In 1959 the Antarctic Treaty was ratified by most of the countries with a stake in Antarctica. Think cold war. This was primarily an arms control agreement. It designated the continent as a scientific preserve, established freedom of scientific research and banned military activity. To date this has worked well. There have been a few minor skirmishes but the treaty serves everybody’s interests, so far, so it prevails. I worked in Antarctica 35 years ago and was always extremely impressed by international spirit of scientific cooperation it engendered. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the robustness of the treaty is like a house of cards. To date, Antarctica has only been useful for scientific research. That is changing. When I worked down south, there were no tourists. None. A half dozen brave people in yachts would visit the very northern tip of the peninsula. Last year there were 120,000 tourists. Numbering a mere 5,000, the scientific community is in the minority these days. What is more, these tourists not rough and tough hardy types. Far from it. They are mostly of the retired demographic enjoying a comfortable lifestyle. We are spotting icebergs from the bar of the observation deck while sipping a gin and tonic and nibbling a few salted cashew nuts.  

The winter is still harsh. Less than 1,000 people on the whole continent and no tourists. No doubt this will change. However, I am not suggesting that tourism will be the problem. To date, the increase in visitors appears to be benign. Antarctica is uniquely vulnerable but even so, it is a whole enormous continent. 120,000 people spread quite thinly. The International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO) is the tourism body for self-regulation. They report to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting, an annual forum for Antarctic Treaty nations to exchange information, discuss matters of common interest, and formulate measures for managing the Antarctic region. This is voluntary self-regulation. IAATO is all set up to look very official. The implication and likely ambition, is that for a tour operator to work down south they will need to be a member. Like most standards, it primarily benefits the organisations that set the standards while putting barriers in the way of aspirants. I would anticipate that getting the necessary governmental permissions to visit Antarctica is greatly facilitated by membership.

Antarctica will get into trouble at some point on the current global socio-political trajectory when technology and resource scarcity intersect. The inauguration of President Trump initiated post-truth politics. Since then, we have seen a collapse of the social growth of civilisation in favour of capitalist greed and isolationism. Events such as Brexit, the reappearance of war in Europe and Trump’s second term are points on a line that reinstates a world order based on power and nationalism. As, and when, necessary resources in Antarctica become economically viable to access, one of the superpowers will be there. No amount of waving the Antarctic Treaty documents will make any difference. While staring out of the cabin window with the gloomy thought in my head, I saw the first iceberg go past. This was much more interesting. Not far ahead was the first sea ice. A strip of loose, brash ice that had probably been floating around for a while.

Next day, we were bearing down on the Bellany Islands. A remote, uninhabited volcanic archipelago, approximately 325 km north of the Antarctic coast. Discovered in 1839, the chain, is heavily glaciated, features steep cliffs, and is rarely visited due to harsh weather and ice. We aimed for the middle of the three islands. This meant we has to cross the Antarctic circle to get there. The event was taken as an excuse for celebration. King Neptune visited the top deck. There was cheering, photographs and a toast. I avoided the nonsense and got on with trying to master the camera.

Meanwhile, as we closed in on the shelter of the islands, the wildlife began to appear. Seabirds, a few penguins standing around on ice floes and whales. A lot of whales. Mostly sperm whales, I think. Every few minutes there seemed to be another puff of water vapour from a whale blowing.

The zodiacs were put in the water and we had a short cruise between Sabrina and Buckle Islands. The wind had picked up again making the sea quite choppy. It was mere minutes before we were all soaked by salty spray. But it was worth it. There was a small group of whales feeding and we could get close to them. An intense flock of cape petrels marked the spot and every couple of minutes one or more whales would pop out of the water. Difficult to take photographs with the cold wind and the spray but an amazing privilege to watch. Back on the ship, we had a hot shower and then settled down with a glass of wine to be served an excellent meal. Such is the way of the modern Antarctic explorer.