Tuesday, 7 Jan 2003
SEATTLE, Wash.
To reach Antarctica by sea, you must sail 600 miles across the Drake Passage, notorious for its fierce storms. We were extraordinarily lucky on our initial crossing: We encountered only mild swells, described as a two on a scale of 10 by our guides.
Despite the calm weather, most of us wore Scopalamine patches to ward off seasickness. The nickel-size patches, which are worn behind either ear, gradually secrete medication that wards off potential nausea -- at the cost of certain dizziness. The scene vaguely resembled an "X-Files" episode, since those of us wearing patches appeared to have been taken by aliens. The Russians even had a crew member who resembled Fox Mulder, or at least the single women on board thought so. We might not have been able to think straight, but at least we kept our food down.
On our second day at sea, we crossed the ever-shifting Antarctic Convergence, where the warmer tropical waters of the north blend with the cold waters of the Southern Ocean. The mixing temperatures of the waters creates rich conditions for krill, the macroscopic base of the Antarctic food chain that sustains many seabirds and other wildlife.
A Royal Albatross glides beside our ship. Surviving adults may live more than fifty years.
Large, majestic albatrosses followed our ship, gliding back and forth across the stern on their eight-to-12-foot wingspan. Albatrosses spend their first nine years at sea riding wind currents, coming ashore again to breed only once they've reached maturity. Aside from the birds, only the open ocean surrounded us. Not since Sept. 11 had I seen the skies so empty of airplanes.
In Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a storm drives a ship off course into the southern seas. Accompanied by an albatross, a strong northerly wind begins to carry the ship back northward -- until a sailor shoots the great bird with his crossbow.
Following the death of the bird, the winds dissipate and the ship becomes stranded. As the sailors begin to suffer from thirst, they hang the dead bird around the neck of the man who shot it. It is a haunting allegory of gradual repentance.
If you eat tuna or Chilean sea bass, you might have an albatross around your neck as well. According to New Zealand's World Wildlife Fund, "Long line fisheries are widely believed to be the major cause of falling albatross populations. ... In the Southern Ocean, tuna fleets alone set more than 200 million hooks annually."
Tabular icebergs break off the Antarctic ice shelves, drifting for up to two years.
In addition to albatrosses, we saw our first icebergs. Large tabular icebergs break off of various Antarctic ice shelves and drift around the continent on circular currents for up to two years. Photos do not do justice to the size of these giants. Generally, the visible part of the iceberg represents only one tenth of its true mass; the remainder lies below the sea. The icebergs we saw seemed to be a few miles long and 15-30 stories high. As a casual observer, I can't claim to have seen much evidence of global warming on my trip -- but the recently accelerating breakup of Antarctic ice shelves represents some of the best scientific evidence of global warming.
Midway through our crossing, our expedition leader admonished us not to whistle on the ship, as our Russian crew believed that it encouraged the winds and created stormy weather. On our boat, as on that of the ancient mariner, superstitions lived on. As the ship moved quite a bit even under mild swells, most of us respectfully wondered aloud what a stormier crossing would be like. Even though I've been back more than a week, I still occasionally wake up in the morning feeling my room rolling as it did on the ship.
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