More ice? Less ice? Both, and both matter.

So, is there more or less ice on and around Antarctica these days? The answer: yes.

Most significant to weigh in recently on the issue of climate change in the deep, deep south is the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.

The group's just published study, "Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment," found a strong warming trend over the Antarctic peninsula while the rest of the continent has cooled. And by the reckoning of the international team that produced the report, both are the results of civilization's presence on the planet.

The cooling comes from the hole in the ozone layer -- which appears to be working essentially as a vent that stovepipes out warmer air. The ozone layer also soaks up the sun's heat. So less ozone means less warmth. That factor, though, is an aberration. Worldwide efforts to curb ozone depletion have actually worked. And with the aberration of a damaged ozone layer disappearing, that cooling effect will fade.

Meantime, the researchers said the global build-up of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide have warmed the peninsula especially and the entire Southern Ocean generally.

That's led to a growth of plant species in the oceans and on the rocky coast -- some of them grasses introduced accidentally by people traveling to Antarctica.

Ice is retreating rapidly -- except where it's not.

Some 90 percent of glaciers on Antarctica have shrunken in recent decades. At the same time, there is more sea ice in areas like the Ross Sea because of the ozone effect while the warming peninsula is seeing less ice. The researchers -- a group of more than 100 from eight countries -- expect the loss of sea ice will become more universal in the southern region as the ozone layer is re-established.

Cute -- it's what's for dinner

You guessed. When times got tough, the pups got sauteed.
Diaries of the Shackleton expedition talk about the sorrow that our pictured Second Officer Tom Crean suffered when the time came to make dinner out of the little guys. (For those of you who joined us late, Ernest Shackleton's Endurance expedition was the tragic and heroic last-gasp effort by the Brits to capture a polar first by crossing the continent on foot. The Norwegians beat them.)
Although the crew, Crean especially, took a fondness to the dogs, the huskies could be a nasty pack prone to chomping on the hands of their handlers. But they were critical to early 20th century polar expeditions. Attempts to use gas- or diesel-powered tractors proved disastrous. And ponies, it turns out, even when fitted with pony snow shoes (no kidding) are much better for birthday parties than crossing the ice.
And dogs, when the going gets really tough, are as good for breakfast as they are for lunch.

Frozen water, frozen, water, frozen ...

People who come to Antarctica talk about living on the continent as living "on the ice."
What that doesn't convey is the feeling you get within hours of arrival of how much the ice seems to be living itself. Of course, it isn't alive. But it changes constantly.
When we arrived on Anvers Island, the bay looked like this:

By this morning, after the tide had gone out, it was full of brash, or junk ice and looked more like this:

Likewise, late last night this mini-iceberg that's been hanging around Palmer Station like a lost kitten spontaneously started bobbing and twisting in the water. In the end, it didn't flip over. But it's likely to go bottoms-up, or "turtle," before long.

(Notice its resemblance to a Henry Moore sculpture -- with the added bonus of being noticeably in flux by the day and by the hour.)
(This one, on the other hand, looks like something Tim Burton might put together if he worked in whites and blues instead of blacks and, um, blacks:

The shame here is that the almost black light quality of the blues is hard to transfer from ice, to camera lens to computer to blog -- particularly when your correspondent is pretty sure that ISO stands for "I swear, officer.)

If only they had statues to abuse

Culturally, if not taxonomically, the sheathbill is the pigeon of the Antarctic. So lowly is its status that some folks call them shit chickens.
Like chickens, and unique among Antarctic birds, their feet are not webbed. They are also chicken (free-range, anyway)-like in size. They are common and they are scavengers.
Given a chance they'll feast on the eggs of penguins, terns or petrels. In a pinch, they'll gorge on feces (no cracks about reporters being the sheathbills of the human world).

Ice, Ice, baby

A hundred, or maybe multiples of that, icebergs are drifting toward New Zealand. There are so many, in fact, that a shipping warning could kick in soon if the ice doesn't let up, shipping in the region could be in doubt.

The small iceberg shown here is on the opposite side of the continent, and well away from busy shipping routes.
But on the other side of Antarctica the traffic in ice spotted by satellites is more problematic.
Scientists think the icebergs are the remains of a giant ice flow that split from the continent, possible due to climatic changes.
New Zealand has sent out coastal navigation warnings, but there are no imminent plans to shut down shipping.
New Zealand was barraged by icebergs in 2006, and a sheep was flown by one on a helicopter so it could be shorn in a publicity  stunt to promote the country's wool industry.

The Drake is a fake

We dodged a bullet in crossing the Drake Passage. It can be the roughest seas on the planet, but Neptune smiled upon us. Sea legs were shaky, but that was it. We got through quickly and puke-less.
This is a link to photos from the short voyage.

Polar paparazzi

When the crew of the Endurance was trapped in the winter ice, the frozen sea working like a vise to crush their ride home, photographer Frank Hurley made pictures. It wasn't easy, what with the flesh-freezing winds and that whole winter-long night going on. But he strung some lights for this classic.
Here's what he wrote in his diary:
“During night take flashlight of ship beset by pressure, This necessitated some 20 flashes, one behind each salient pressure hummock, no less than 10 of the flashes being required to satisfactory illuminate the ship herself. Half blinded after the successive flashes, I lost my bearings amidst the hummocks ,bumping shins against projecting ice points and stumbling into deep snow drifts.”
For all his work, just a fraction of his images survive. When Ernest Shackleton ordered the abandoning of the ship, the "boss" helped him cull through the bulky glass plates that did then what our tiny memory cards do in today's digital cameras. To make sure Hurley wasn't tempted to go back and retrieve more pictures, Shackleton insisted on shattering the discards.
Why'd they take any at all when weight was so critical? Their sale was one of the few things the crew had to make money off of the journey.

Isn't he cute?

We saw this guy alone on a small ice berg a few hours before our ship landed at Palmer Station. Having arrived, I'll post more pictures and maybe something interesting when I have things a little more in order.

Have canned air, will travel

     Here’s a business idea: Fix microscopes. And make house calls. To the poles.
     Too late, Jim Janoso has beaten you to it. Toting a suitcase crammed with mirrors, lenses, flashlights, tiny screwdrivers, small allen wrenches, oils and canned air, he travels to the world’s most remote research outposts so scientists can better look at little things. “I never thought I’d get down here,” he says while swaying side to side on a laboratory stool as our ship makes its way south. But he’s bound, for the third time, for Antarctica. It’s been more serendipity than calculation that made him microscope mechanic to the poles. He is trained as a mechanical engineer and has worked in the aerospace industry, for the forest service and a concrete manufacturer. Happenstance introduced him to the former proprietor of Northern Focus Optical, which traveled mostly to middle schools and high schools tending to microscopes in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
     Janoso took over the firm in 2003 and branched out to higher-end microscopes and expanded his circuit into Alaska and some its most isolated camps.
     Word of mouth soon enough landed him a gig in the Antarctic. Now, he says, “I sometimes forget where home is” (actually Roundup, Mont.) while going to polar regions for their spring and summer season and roaming the lower 48 states much of the rest of his time. As we bob across the ocean on the way to Palmer Station, he dissects the ship’s high-end microscopes.
     There will be more microscopes awaiting his trained eye and steady hand when we arrive. Janoso sometimes gives long-distance direction on the art of microscope maintenance to their handlers around the world. Careful about moving from -40 to a heated room lest condensation creep in between the lenses. Mind how you move from the warm to the very cold or risk cracking glass.
     Other problems require his rare skills and the spare parts he’s toted with him. Inevitably, he’ll need something that’s not stowed in his bag. Sometimes, he’ll borrow tools in the ship’s machine shop and fashion a fix. Just as often, the repair will have to wait until next year – if ice and weather and research funding gaps don’t conspire to delay him longer. “I’ll go anywhere,” he said. “I love it.”

When waters collide

     This is where the water wrestles with itself.
     Nature has drawn a loopy circle through the Southern Ocean well away from, but around, Antarctica. The line wanders anywhere from north of 47 degrees latitude to south of 60 degrees, and meanders from season to season, year to year. It’s where the deep-chilled brine of polar surface water slips beneath the warmer waters of the north. The result of the battling waters is the Antarctic Convergence.
     Although it is a virtually invisible – and somewhat shifting – line, the Convergence forms perhaps the most imposing quarantining of species in the world. Consider that in an area larger than North America there are just 39 of the more than 9,000 species of birds on the planet. This time of year the Convergence – alternatively, the Polar Front – sees surface waters around Antarctica become diluted with fresh water from ice melt.
     The mix and churn of the warm and saltier water from the north with colder Antarctic water conjures up great blooms of algae. Tiny shrimp-like krill feed on the algae, and then become the main staple of dinners for everything from penguins to whales. On board a ship, there’s no noticeable difference from the convergence itself beyond a dip in temperature. While the Convergence is often associated with violent seas, the roller coaster conditions are often just a coincidence.

     And we are taking a shortcut through the most notorious coincidence. The Drake Passage overlaps with the Convergence and marks the spot where winds and currents circling from the west out of wide-open seas come barreling between the tip of South America and the Antarctic Peninsula. Shortly before sundown last night we passed by the bottom of Tierra del Fuego (pictured) and into the Drake. The swells here are decidedly larger than what we saw before entering the Drake. Waves wash over the back deck and fewer people wander out to the bow. It has become a seesaw. But by Drake standards, the weather and seas are rather calm. And those who stand watch are rewarded with the sight of an albatross.

Southward ho!

     The Laurence M. Gould shoved off into a bright Chilean afternoon, carrying a crew of 17 and a few dozen geologists, paleontologists and biologists bound for the Southern Ocean.
     We'll spend about a day navigating the fjordish (sorry, the word works for me) straits that will wind us calmly by Argentina and then out through the much more rollicking Drake Passage.
     We compared notes on seasickness medicine, some folks already drowsy and dry-mouthed from the drug patches they'd pasted behind the ears the day before. 
     Got about an hour's lecture on safety. Short version: Try not to bang your noodle in a doorway or fall off the side. 
    Quickly saw dolphins and penguins swimming by the bow.
    Sharing sleeping quarters with three others in what basically amounts to a shipping container below the water line. Shower, I'm told, is too flights up. But I'm in no hurry.

One comes, one goes

This ship came in across the dock this morning (Monday). We're set to sail at 2 p.m.

What the chic crowd is wearing this (Austral) summer

My threads:

Adios a Punta Arenas

One last run through our South American staging ground.

Unlike so much of the world, the homogenizing taint of U.S. franchises – McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut in particular seem so common everywhere else – has yet to invade the southern tip of Chile.

More than a few shops catering to tourists and locals trade in the hiker chic brands like North Face and Columbia. (Oddly, though, I don’t think I ran across signs for Patagonia clothes, which is named for the region.)

But still, there are places that would fit in nicely en Los Estados Unidos. Consider Lomit’s (alternately described on its menus as the more Latin Lomitos). It could substitute nicely for Chicago’s Billy Goat Tavern, a watering hole and grill long popular with that city’s newsfolk dating back to the age of Royko. Middle aged readers will remember it as the place that inspired early “Saturday Night Live” skits with Dan Akroyd and John Belushi bullying their customers in thick Balkan accents about “cheeseburger, cheeseburger, no fries – chips!”

The staff at Lomit’s doesn’t come on as strong, but they dish up a deliciously greasy burger smothered in a muenster-like cheese. The sandwich is the size of your face – unless you’re John Kerry. The meal is best washed down with Austral Calafate Ale – named for the native calafate berry that turns it slightly sweet and crimson – straight from the southernmost brewery in the world.

It doubles as a sports bar, and the folks were watching a game Sunday afternoon that had something to do with a ball. But I was left clueless because there was no hoop or bat or Chiefs massacre.

Along the cold windy beaches, as much rock and seawall as sand in many places, young couples like to huddle tightly together in twosomes. I guess it’s one way to keep warm.

At the town square, it was as if John Phillip Souza had imposed his will on a Latin jazz band. A mix of army and naval troops marched through the main drag and assembled for a mini-concert at the town square. They improved tremendously when they stopped marching and swapped in more salsa for the Souza.

Later I would do my own marching, spending a few hours cruising for a pharmacy that was open, carried seasickness pills and could understand my use the word vomito. Not easy on a Chilean Sunday.

I stumbled across what seems a ritual on Sundays for families to make to trek to tightly packed two-story mausoleums. Maybe long cold winters led people this way rather than waiting until spring to bury the dead.