Antarctica—The Last Frontier

BY AWAKE! CORRESPONDENT IN AUSTRALIA

PARTS of Antarctica can get so cold, says one writer, that “if you drop a steel bar it is likely to shatter like glass, . . . and if you haul up a fish through a hole in the ice within five seconds it is frozen . . . solid.” Because of its extreme conditions and its surreal, naked beauty—at times complemented by breathtaking displays of the southern lights—Antarctica could pass for another world.

But Antarctica is very much a part of this world. In fact, it has been likened to a vast natural laboratory for studying the earth and its atmosphere as well as global environmental changes, including those related to human activities. It is in relation to these studies that scientists are becoming increasingly concerned. They have observed ominous new phenomena in the South Polar Regions, and these suggest that all is not well. But first, let us see why Antarctica is a unique continent.

To begin with, Antarctica—the most isolated continent in the world—is a continent of contradictions. It is supremely beautiful and pristine but brutally inhospitable. It is the windiest, coldest place on earth, yet it is singularly delicate and sensitive. It has less precipitation than any other continent, but its ice represents 70 percent of the planet’s fresh water. With an average thickness of some 7,100 feet [2,200 m], the ice makes Antarctica earth’s highest continent, averaging 7,500 feet [2,300 m] above sea level. It is also earth’s fifth-largest continent, yet Antarctica has no permanent residents larger than a half-inch [1 cm] wingless midge, a type of fly.

Like Visiting Mars!

As you venture into Antarctica’s interior, you see fewer and fewer signs of life, especially when you reach the areas called dry valleys. Covering some 1,000 square miles [3,000 sq km], these polar deserts are mostly set high in the Transantarctic Mountains—a chain of ranges spanning the continent and rising in places to over 14,000 feet [4,300 m]. Icy gales whistle through the dry valleys and quickly whip away any snow that might fall. Scientists believe these valleys to be the nearest earthly equivalent to the surface of Mars. Hence, they were deemed a suitable venue for testing space equipment before launching the Viking mission to Mars.

Yet, even the dry valleys host life! Inside porous rocks, in tiny air pockets, live exceptionally hardy forms of bacteria, algae, and fungi. They survive on the barest trace of moisture. Outside, their surreal world is one of stark rock formations called ventifacts, whose bizarre shape and high sheen are the result of countless centuries of Antarctica’s unremitting winds.

Named Before It Was Discovered

Speculation about a giant southern landmass goes way back to the ancient Greek philosophers. Aristotle, for one, postulated the need for a southern continent to counterbalance lands known to exist in the Northern Hemisphere. The book Antarctica—Great Stories From the Frozen Continent says that “as the northern hemisphere lay under the constellation of Arktos, the Bear, so, Aristotle (384-322 BC) reasoned, the unknown land to the south must be Antarktikos—in other words, the total opposite”—or the antipode. So Antarctica enjoys the distinction of being named, in effect, some 2,000 years before it was discovered!

In 1772, British explorer Captain James Cook sailed south in search of this postulated southern continent. He entered a world of windswept islands and huge icebergs, or “ice islands,” as he called them. “Some of them,” he wrote, were “near two miles [about three kilometers] in circuit and 60 feet [20 m] high, and yet the sea broke quite over them, such was the force and the weight of the waves.” Determined, Cook continued south, and on January 17, 1773, his ship, the Resolution, and its companion, the Adventure, were the first vessels known to cross the Antarctic Circle. Cook doggedly navigated his way through the pack ice until eventually he was blocked. “I could see nothing to the southward but ice,” he wrote in his log. He was, in fact, just 75 miles [120 km] from Antarctic soil when he turned back.

So who first saw Antarctica? Indeed, who first set foot on it? To this day nobody is sure. It may even have been whalers or seal hunters, for when Cook returned home, his reports of an abundance of seals, penguins, and whales sent hunters scrambling to this region.

Blood on the Ice

Cook “stumbled upon what was probably the largest congregation of wildlife that existed in the world, and he was the first man to let the world know of its existence,” wrote Alan Moorehead in his book The Fatal Impact. “For the Antarctic animals,” says Moorehead, “[the result] was a holocaust.” The book Antarctica—Great Stories From the Frozen Continent states: “Towards the end of the eighteenth century, sealing in the southern hemisphere took on all the appearances of a gold rush. The insatiable demands from China and Europe for skins soon cleared all the [previously] known sealing grounds leaving sealers desperate to find new land with unplundered rookeries.”

After the sealers had all but killed off their livelihood, whalers began plundering the seas. “No one will ever know how many whales and seals were killed in the southern ocean,” writes Moorehead. “Was it ten million or fifty million? Figures become meaningless; the killing went on and on until there was virtually nothing left to kill.”

Nowadays, however, international laws protect all Antarctic flora and fauna. Additionally, an absence of land predators combined with a bountiful marine food supply make the Antarctic coast a summer haven for wildlife. But Antarctica shows signs of a more insidious assault, one that may be beyond the reach of international agreements.

[Box on page 15]

POLES APART

Though they have similarities, the North Pole and the South Pole are ‘poles apart’ in more ways than location. Consider the following.

The immediate North Pole region is all ice and sea, whereas the South Pole is near the center of earth’s fifth-largest continent.

The North Pole is hemmed in by the populated landmasses of America, Asia, and Europe, whereas Antarctica is surrounded by a vast ocean, indeed, the most tempestuous one on the planet.

Tens of thousands of families live within the Arctic Circle, which is also home to thousands of plants and animals. However, not one human calls Antarctica home. The only indigenous life forms are algae, bacteria, mosses, lichens, two species of flowering plants, and a few species of insects.

“Antarctica has been called the pulsating continent,” says the Encyclopædia Britannica, “because of the annual buildup and retreat of its secondary ice-fronted coastline.” At its peak, the ice pack expands up to 1,000 miles [1,600 km] out to sea. This expansion and contraction is six times that of the Arctic ice pack, giving Antarctica a greater influence on global weather.

Antarctica—A Continent in Trouble

WHEN astronauts view the earth from space, says the book Antarctica: The Last Continent, the most distinctive feature of our planet is the ice sheet of Antarctica. It “radiates light like a great white lantern across the bottom of the world,” the astronauts reported.

Containing some seven million cubic miles [30,000,000 cu km] of ice, Antarctica is an ice-manufacturing machine of continental proportions. Snow falls on the continent and packs down to form ice. Gravity forces the ice to flow slowly toward the coast, and there it slips into the sea to form massive ice shelves.—See the box on page 18.

Receding Ice Shelves

In recent years, however, accelerated melting has reduced the size of a number of ice shelves, and some have disappeared altogether. In 1995 a 500-square-mile [1,000 sq km] section of the 620-mile-long [1,000 km] Larsen Ice Shelf collapsed and broke up into thousands of icebergs, according to one report.

The area that has been affected so far by receding ice is the Antarctic Peninsula. A continuation of the Andes mountain range of South America, this S-shaped peninsula has seen a 4.5-degree-Fahrenheit [2.5 Celsius] rise in temperature over the past 50 years. As a result, James Ross Island, once enclosed by ice, can now be circumnavigated. Receding ice has also brought about a sharp increase in vegetation.

Because significant melting has occurred only in the region of the Antarctic Peninsula, some scientists are not convinced that it is an indication of global warming. However, according to a Norwegian study, Arctic ice is also in retreat. (Because the North Pole is not situated on a landmass, much Arctic ice is sea ice.) All these changes, according to the study, fit the pattern predicted to occur with global warming.

But Antarctica does more than respond to temperature changes. The continent has been described as “the vital engine which drives much of our global climate.” If that is so, then future weather patterns may be affected if the continent continues to undergo changes.

In the meantime, high above Antarctica a hole twice the size of Europe has formed in the atmosphere’s ozone layer. Ozone, a form of oxygen, shields the earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation that damages eyes and causes skin cancers. Because of the increase in radiation, researchers in Antarctica must protect their skin from the sun and don goggles or sunglasses with special reflective coatings to protect their eyes. Only time will tell to what extent Antarctica’s seasonal wildlife is affected.

Delicate Continent—Tread Lightly

The above heading might be a fitting welcome for visitors to Antarctica. Why so? For several reasons, according to the Australian Antarctic Division. First, because of Antarctica’s simple ecological relationships, the environment is highly sensitive to disturbances. Second, plants grow so slowly that a footprint in a moss bed may still be visible ten years later. Damaged or weakened plants are at the mercy of Antarctica’s high winds, which can destroy whole plant communities. Third, extreme cold means that waste products can take decades to decompose. Fourth, people may inadvertently bring in microscopic life-forms alien to this isolated, and hence vulnerable, continent. Finally, the places tourists and scientists tend to frequent are the coastal fringes—the areas that are also most favorable for wildlife and vegetation. Because these areas comprise only about 2 percent of the landmass, it is easy to see why Antarctica could soon become overcrowded. That raises the question, Who polices this huge continent?

Who Rules Antarctica?

Although seven countries claim portions of Antarctica, the continent as a whole has the unique distinction of having neither a sovereign nor a citizenry. “Antarctica is the only continent on earth to be completely governed by an international agreement,” reports the Australian Antarctic Division.

Called the Antarctic Treaty, the agreement was signed by 12 governments and entered into force on June 23, 1961. Since then, the number of participating nations has grown to over 40. The treaty’s objective is “to ensure, in the interest of all mankind, that Antarctica shall continue forever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and shall not become the scene or object of international discord.”

In January 1998 the Environmental Protection Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty came into force. This protocol bans all mining and mineral exploitation in Antarctica for a minimum of 50 years. It also designates the continent and its dependent marine ecosystems as a “natural reserve devoted to peace and science.” Military activities, weapons testing, and the disposal of nuclear wastes are prohibited. Even sled dogs are banned.

The Antarctic Treaty has been hailed as “an unprecedented example of international cooperation.” However, there are still many problems to be resolved, including sovereignty. Who, for instance, will enforce the treaty, and how? And how will the member nations deal with the rapid growth of tourism—a potential threat to Antarctica’s delicate ecology? In recent years over 7,000 ship-borne tourists have visited Antarctica annually, and this figure is expected to double before long.

Other challenges may arise in the future. For instance, what if scientists find valuable mineral or oil deposits? Will the treaty prevent commercial exploitation and the pollution that often follows? Treaties can be changed, and the Antarctic Treaty is no exception. In fact, Article 12 makes provision for the treaty to be “modified or amended at any time by unanimous agreement of the Contracting Parties.”

Of course, no treaty is capable of shielding Antarctica from the effluents of the modern, industrialized world. What a pity if the beautiful “white lantern” at the bottom of the globe were to be sullied by the far-reaching effects of human greed and ignorance! To hurt Antarctica is to injure humankind. If Antarctica teaches us anything, it is that the whole earth—like the human body—is an interrelated system, perfectly coordinated by the Creator both to sustain life and to give us enjoyment.

[Box/Picture on page 18]

WHAT IS AN ICE SHELF?

High in Antarctica’s interior, streams of ice formed by falling snow work their way down toward the coast—some flowing as much as half a mile a year, according to recent satellite radar images. Many of these ice streams merge like tributaries, forming huge rivers of ice. When they reach the sea, these frozen rivers float on the water to form ice shelves, the largest being the Ross Ice Shelf (shown here). Fed by no less than seven ice streams or glaciers, it is the size of France and up to half a mile thick in places.a

Under normal circumstances, ice shelves do not retreat. As the glaciers feed more ice into the shelf, the outer extremity of the shelf is pushed farther out to sea, like toothpaste being squeezed from a tube. There huge chunks eventually break off (a process called calving), and these chunks become icebergs. Some icebergs are “as huge as 5,000 square miles [13,000 sq km],” says The World Book Encyclopedia. In recent years, though, calving has accelerated and ice shelves have retreated, some even disappearing altogether. Even so, this does not raise sea levels. Why not? Because ice shelves are already afloat, displacing their weight in water. But if the ice on the Antarctic mainland were to melt, it would be like emptying a seven-million-cubic-mile [30,000,000 cu km] reservoir into the sea! Sea levels would rise some 200 feet [65 m]!

[Footnote]

[Picture]

Massive blocks of ice calve off the Ross Ice Shelf. The ice shelf here rises about 200 feet above sea level

[Credit Line]

Tui De Roy

[Picture on page 20]

A Weddell seal pup

[Credit Line]

Photo: Commander John Bortniak, NOAA Corps