The legacy of the whaling massacres lie along the beaches and slopes. The textures of slaughter linger, irremedial.. Unsanitised, unhidden, unsafe. Curved wood: boat ribs, fractured thwarts, scraps distorted by wind and snow and sea, weathered to palest white. Eroded planks, holed and stained by vanished nails.lie, wood-fingers pointing without … Continue reading
Europa entered the islands of South Georgia on Monday after an astonishing run from Elephant Island. We sailed all of it in a kind, steady 25-35 knots westerly to northwesterly, sometimes with a steep swell, averaging over 170 nautical miles every 24 hours. Most often, ships head for the north/east … Continue reading
Yesterday, Tuesday, we visited Penguin Island – the one just south of King George Island back in the South Shetlands. There are several others, dating from the times when penguins were a handy food source for sailors, marked as a place to refill your hold with salted meat. This one … Continue reading
Yesterday, Wednesday, we visited Deception Island. The horseshoe of hills is a classic caldera of a still-active volcano. At some point a massive eruption has left the 500m high ring around a basin, flooded because of a break in the rim to the south east. The basin is about seven … Continue reading
There are stations and bases scattered across Antarctica, spread very thin and mostly around the edges. These are places, with form and function: . I’m avoiding the word settlement because the Treaty doesn’t allow permanent settlement (which is a good thing). The term placemaking gets bandied around in my … Continue reading
Garlanded with honours and academic recognition, French paleo-geologist Claude Lorius still says towards the end of this film that he wonders whether his life will make a difference. He wanders elegiacally through rocks only half covered in ice and stands in the rising tide on some distant atoll, emphasising the ice … Continue reading
Torrents of bandwidth have been dedicated to the Paris climate change conference (COP15). I am not an expert, a scientist or diplomat so I’ve focused on one small question. What about Antarctica, the warning canary of climate change?The standout headline is the commitment to keep global temperatures ‘well below’ 2° above … Continue reading
Glacial melt isn’t only about sea-level rise. It’s about mud. Sediment to be precise. As old ice melts into the sea it brings down all that stuff it’s been sitting on, the mud it has scraped up and absorbed over decades and centuries. Newly exposed, ice-free beaches deteriorate too, putting … Continue reading
The isolated, unique ecosystem of the New Zealand islands lay undisturbed for millennia with no ground-based predators. Flightless birds evolved, laying eggs in safe nests like this sweetly curled kiwi. Then humans turned up, along with rats: ground-based omnivores which have had a massive impact on all sorts of species. I was … Continue reading
