Antarctica — The Art of the 7th Continent (part 3)

Feeding time!

The Antarctic air is cold, sharp and clean. I descend the ramp from the Ocean Endeavour and jump over the Zodiac’s pontoon, wondering what a pontoon is, rocking the small inflatable boat as the pilot looks alarmed. With 10 people on board the shuttle, the away team heads for the rocky shore and the abandoned red huts of an old Argentinian base. A lady wants to know if the lumps on land are penguins. I’m wondering if she’ll be our first sacrifice.

The island smells like a fish market. There are Gentoo Penguin chicks not a foot high, in blustery grey downfeather robes, eyes sleepily closing — each one in it’s own special spot. Around them are red and white Jackson Pollock paintings of poopy, digested krill; splayed radially as the breeze changes direction — the streaks compass the wind patterns of an Antarctic summer.

Not bad eh?

The chicks are fairly big so late in February, still molting into their sleek suits of black and white. A few parents rush by, impeccably dressed, wobbling madly, chased by hungry offspring. This is an exercise drill before feeding time. The parents will puke up semi-digested krill to feed their young so the little maestros can make more krill paintings.

Neon orange path markers are laid along a slippery trail — past the red huts, around the nesting sites and up a low mountain. Stray too far and you could fall into a snow-covered crevasse several meters deep. Sometimes you must stand aside to let a penguin pass unhindered. If only the world did the same with all wildlife.

Panorama

At the top of the hill, a 360 degree panorama unfolds — a grey-glass bay surrounded by mountains mirrored in water. Frozen rivers tumble as glaciers to the sea, and somewhere in the quiet distance, you can hear the crack and calve of ice as the world warms. The ice on Antarctica is averagely 2 km thick, ancient, and thermostats temperatures across the globe. It’s melting fast enough to raise sea levels, play havoc with the weather and raise an entire continent submerged by it’s weight.

We pack back into the Zodiac for a spin around Paradise Bay. There are whale fins in the distance, and behind them, powder-blue glaciers form high fortifications beneath white castles of rock and ice. Chunks have broken off and are floating in the water around us. They’ve left behind ice-caves and archways — doors to the imagination as much as symbols of a hidden world. My thoughts are running with frost giants and ice wolves and cloud gods made of hailstones. Somewhere below me, even stranger creatures huge and small live lives in this freezing ocean.

Of Ice Caves and Myths

A few hours later, we’re in another Zodiac in Neko Bay. Crabeater and Weddell Seals laze like languishing renaissance beauties on futuristic wind-sculpted icebergs. It’s possible to be sleek and fat at the same time.

A distance away, a 10-foot long Leopard Seal has made a kill. The predator’s jaws are around the carcass as it spins, tears and eats in the water. Storm Petrels with delicate feet dance on the rippling surface, picking up scraps in their beaks; Zodiacs circle; and the huge seal, like some mythic sea serpent continues to writhe not 20 feet away from us. Cybernetic camera eyes click approvingly. It’s a rare sighting in the wild, one that even experienced guides haven’t seen.

I have pictures of Antarctica that will last a lifetime. So do others. I wonder if like me, they see the past, the present and the future all rolled into one thought. Do they see the dots that connect?

Leopard Seal chases Storm Petrels