Over the past few weeks, I have had the privilege of visiting the Antarctic Peninsula as well as a number of neighbouring islands and research centres. Needless to say, Antarctica is a place full of wonders, with magnificent landscapes that are difficult to describe in words, with wild grandeur that we rarely see on Earth. Glaciers sprout vertically 100 feet or more from the blue, icy waters and are surrounded by huge jagged peaks that rise thousands of feet high. I'm sharing some ** of these ** that don't provide the proper sense of proportion. The immersive experience takes you back to the distant past, when our presence was not so common in the world.
Its isolation is one of the challenges to achieving this. Crossing the Drake Passage from the tip of Patagonia to the Antarctic Peninsula is no joke. We were on a small boat with 140 passengers on board and, according to the crew, the weather was very lucky. Still, it's normal to encounter 15-foot waves that slam into the boat from seemingly all directions. Wind speeds easily reach 50 miles per hour. There is not enough dramamine.
***marcelo gleiser
But beyond the majestic scenery, what really stands out is the life we see there. Antarctica has almost no land life, with few plants except for green and pink snow algae and some arctic grasses. Everything revolves around the ocean and what it has to offer. All animals are marine animals, and together they create a balanced food chain, from humble phytoplankton and krill (a small type of shrimp) to penguins, seabirds, seals and, of course, spectacular whales.
Krill eat phytoplankton and everything else eats krill. During the foraging season (which lasts about 120 days), a humpback whale eats about 2 tons of food per day, most of which is krill. Blue whales can eat 6 tons of krill per day. That's a lot of krill. And then, of course, orcas eat a lot, but see less and less in these places. This delicate balance depends on the climate, ocean temperatures, and of course, fishing. Yes, krill populations are declining rapidly, which affects the entire Antarctic food chain. No country or organization is responsible for regulating illegal fishing in Antarctic waters.
This is where articles about climate change and human environmental predation begin to lose readers. People don't want to hear about the negative effects of climate change, overpopulation, and environmental degradation. It's still a big mystery, at least for me. Given that our survival is entirely dependent on the planet – from the water we drink and the air we breathe to the stability of our land and seas – this deliberate detachment from nature always strikes me as absurd.
Is it really just to make money? Is it the inconvenience of changing diet or habits? Is it ignorance, intentionality, or unintentional? While I was there, I thought a lot, and while there was no single answer, it was certainly a self-imposed physical and cognitive distance. We don't need to go to the ends of the world to experience nature. But we are surrounded by a familiar, protective environment, our homes and cities, our habits and choices. Everything else, like stories from faraway places, sounds like this is what they are - stories from faraway places, which are not directly related to us.
It's not often that we have the opportunity to go to a pristine place like this and witness what nature does without us (well, mostly without us, as more than 150,000 people now visit Antarctica every year), to witness a world that few people have ever visited. But although the expedition of 140 travelers was very different, the response was unanimous: first thought of awe, then beauty, harmony and balance, as we witnessed the dynamic equilibrium of a complex living system with many interdependent operational parts. It's amazing to witness the engines of life intertwined with planetary-level feedback from oceans and air currents to create a living, breathing world. It puts the magnificence of our planet on a completely different level.
In 2009, Johan Rockstr M of the Stockholm Resilience Center proposed a framework for understanding the nine planetary systems that sustain life on Earth. He identified their boundaries and tipping points, beyond which the collapse became inevitable, irreversible, and incredible. One of the sleeping giants, which are now waking up, is the West Antarctic ice sheet, which, if melted, could raise global sea levels by 10 feet, with devastating consequences for coastal communities around the world.
As we cruised the myriad bays in the Little Zodiac, often surrounded by 5 to 10 humpback whales and albatross with a wingspan of 9 feet, and witnessed the icy glacier walls slowly crumbling into the ocean with thunderous cracks and splashes, we stopped here and there, cut off the engine, and only listened for a few minutes. Pray silently and thank the world for the gifts it has given us every second of our lives—as long as we pay attention.