Now and then – a personal account of an expedition to Antarctica
Theresa Kirchner
This is an account of my participation in an expedition to Antarctica over three weeks in winter term
2016 onboard the ecotourism ship Akademik Sergey Vavilov, for course credit (that’s right) towards
my Master’s degree in Wildlife Science at Oregon State University.
‘…no voyage, no salty yarn;
only different, less stimulating paths toward a career’.
- Robert Cushman Murphy
Personally, I have never really been into history. I have a lot of things to do and to occupy my mind
with, and living in the past is not one of them. Similarly, I have never really cared much for
philosophy. I have always pictured philosophers as old men with oversized heads sitting somewhere
in a dark room thinking about things, instead of experiencing them. Maybe owing to this ignorance, I
find it absolutely astonishing that over 2000 years ago, Greek philosophers (in my ignorant mind
sitting somewhere in a basement in ancient Greece) were able to use logic (and clairvoyance?) to
conjure up an entire continent.
Raffael’s ‘The School Of Athens’ shows the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle during a brief
venture out of their basements to ruminate on life, the universe and everything, with friends and
students. Photo: http://mv.vatican.va/4_ES/pages/z-Patrons/MV_Patrons_04_01.html
Long before the heroic era of Antarctic exploration in the ‘testing-ground for men with frozen beards
to see how dead they could get’ (Wheeler, 1996) *, these philosophers concluded that there needed
to be a landmass in the southern hemisphere to balance the disproportionate amount of land in the
northern hemisphere. Aristotle referred to this antipode to the land under the North Star
constellation Arktos as Antarktikos. Fast forward more than two millennia, and – Booom! – turns out
they were right. And I am skeptical even more than I am ignorant, but I was able to ground-truth this
outrageously far-fetched hypothesis. I was able to do what Aristotle & Co. dreamt of (probably in
uncannily accurate detail) - to fly down to the tip of South America, hop on a ship, cross the Drake
Passage and walk around on this continent.
Boom! Antarctica. Photo: Theresa Kirchner
During my preparation for this voyage, naturally (my spring term grades should hopefully be carved
in stone at this point so I feel that I can speak freely) I skimped on learning about the history of
Antarctic exploration. So when during the expedition I attend a talk by the onboard historian Karen
Williams on ‘Shackleton and the Three Franks’, the details of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition
are mostly new to me, and it is pretty obvious: I am lucky, privileged, weak and I HAVE NO IDEA. This
account of human perseverance and ENDURANCE is unbelievable (more accessible now that I
actually am in Antarctica, but for the same reason also even more unbelievable). Had there not been
a versed photographer on board to document the ordeal, I might not believe that it actually
happened. Here is what I take away from this account (Let’s also keep in mind that this is only one of
many Antarctic expeditions encountering less-than ideal circumstances): So 100 years ago this guy
Shackleton gathers up an extremely capable and experienced crew to sail from England via South
Georgia towards Antarctica in this wooden ship. He names the ship Endurance (I assume) because
after several preceding brushes with Antarctic death he knows what it takes to live to tell the tale.
The goal is to really push the envelope and to traverse the Antarctic continent by foot 1800 miles
from the Weddell Sea via the South Pole to the Ross Sea (with the help of the Ross Sea party).
However, before anyone sets foot on land, the Endurance gets trapped in sea ice in the Weddell Sea.
For nine months, the crew drifts northward with their ship, in the opposite direction of where they
intended to go. Eventually, they drag three small wooden boats off the Endurance and set up camp
on an ice floe, just before having to suffer the disheartening sight of their ship being crushed by the
ever-encroaching ice and sinking. The men drift on their floe for five months before it breaks apart
and they have to take to the life boats. They manage to reach Elephant Island in the South Shetland
Islands, where the majority of men is marooned to await rescue.
Elephant Island. Photo: Theresa Kirchner
While The Boss and five men set out in their 22-foot open boat to sail 870 miles of the most
treacherous waters of the world ‘… where nature has been given a proving ground on which to
demonstrate what she can do if left alone’ (Lansing, 2000) to get help from a whaling station in South
Georgia, Team Elephant Island is condemned to play the waiting game, surviving on the meat of
seals, penguins, limpets and sheathbills (and we all know what THOSE birds eat all day).
Dinner? Photo: Theresa Kirchner
After Shackles and his cronies spent over two unimaginable weeks constantly exposed to howling
winds, soaked by freezing water and at risk of getting sunk by waves or colliding with ice, they reach
South Georgia. And they are on the wrong side of the island. There are mountains between them and
the whaling station that are considered uncrossable. So they cross those mountains. After their
arrival at the station it takes four attempts to rescue the remaining crew, all 22 of which had survived
four months on Elephant Island in the Antarctic winter. Now THAT puts me to shame for whining
about missed flight connections on my way to Chile and the carbohydrate-heavy diet on the ship. The
expedition I am on includes maids who make the beds every day and leave little chocolates on the
pillows, a masseuse, a plunge pool for people who would like to experience the icy waters of
Antarctica with the convenience of having a hot shower and a sauna around the corner, and chefs
who cater to vegetarian, vegan, garlic-intolerant and gluten-free diets.
The next day, with the harrowing account of Shackleton’s and his men’s ordeal still ringing in my
ears, feeble vegetarian me steps onto the Antarctic continent, dressed like an onion with a fully
synthetic water- and wind-proof high-performance ultra-technical outer peel (it’s still a bit cold). I
look at the penguins. These little birds go au natural in their biodegradable foul-weather gear and
make living in Antarctica look like it’s no big deal. In theory I know about the morphological,
physiological and behavioral adaptions that enable them to live down here, but I still want to crouch
down next to one, gently clutch the adorable little bird, stare into its eyes, and whisper ‘But really,
how do you do it?’.
How do you do it? Photo: Theresa Kirchner
The day we spend cruising around on zodiacs near Brown Bluff in the Antarctic Sound is stunning.
The sky is bright blue and the water surface is glass calm. A group of about 40 minke whales, about
40 times the size of the largest group of minke whales I have ever seen, is hunting krill near the edge
of the sea ice. They disappear under the ice edge, circle around and come up all around our zodiac.
Three humpbacks dive right under us, also on the prowl. It seems like swarms of krill abound in the
entire area. We watch the whales for several hours before, sadly, it is time to return to the ship.
Minke whales at Brown Bluff. Photo: Theresa Kirchner
One day, on a zodiac cruise in a little bay, we stare at the face of a giant glacier (from a safe distance,
of course), when we hear an ominous loud rumbling sound (if there is anything I definitely never
thought about, it is the SOUND of ice). A piece of glacier breaks off, and I take a thousand pictures.
The calving of a glacier! The birth of a little iceberg! It is so beautiful! When the ship prepares to head
out of the bay, most people have retreated to their cabins to recover from the exhausting task of
sitting in a zodiac for a few hours. With a cup of hot chocolate in hand I am standing on deck and turn
back to look at the glacier face we had visited earlier, just in time to see a GIGANTIC piece fall off and
plunge into the water. It is so big that it completely disappears under the surface for a while, before
bopping back up and swaying to and fro until finding its balance. The waves created by the impact
travel across the bay all the way to the ship. I really don’t know what to say.
Glacier calving (the little one). Photo: Theresa Kirchner
When asked about my time onboard the expedition, the word that best describes my brief encounter
with the alluring beauty of Antarctica and its promise of adventure that calls like a siren, its peaceful
yet maddening solitude and the history of uber-human mental and physical determination, is:
humbling. (I also learned that people can come up with some pretty great ideas while sitting in their
basements, stroking their beards and thinking about things.)
Icebergs. Photo: Theresa Kirchner
Now, before you hate on me for having the luck to go to Antarctica, for course credit (let’s face it, I
probably would), and returning alive and intact (the only digits I lost were on my bank account), let
me say that, like every other grad student, I worked 7 days a week during the entire term. Before the
start of the expedition, I was analyzing data for my thesis, reading papers and writing short essays on
topics such as politics, governance, science and climate change in Antarctica, designing a research
project that I would work on while in Antarctica, and writing a synthesis paper on the role of the
Southern Ocean in the global cycle of carbon dioxide. During my time on the ship, I prepared a
presentation on my synthesis paper and presented it to the passengers, and conducted 46 biodiversity
surveys for my research project (At one point, there was a pod of 15 orca whales frolicking at the
stern of the ship under a rainbow with dolphins jumping over them and a unicorn flying by. However, I
only know this from the reports delivered by the expedition leader over the PA system of the ship, and
the lore told by the passengers at the bar that night, because throughout the encounter I was
standing on the bridge at the bow of the ship – for science – because a bird had just entered my
observation corridor there and – I’m such an amateur – I was struggling to determine whether it was
a greater shearwater or a soft-plumaged petrel). At the end of the expedition, I analyzed the data I
had collected and presented my results to the passengers and wrote a final report on my research
when I was back on campus. So your curiosity won’t keep you awake tonight, here are the highlights
of my research: We did not observe a latitudinal gradient in biodiversity (Bummer, I know). Expected
observations of a decrease of biodiversity with increasing distance to shore were obfuscated by (no
surprises there) collinearity of the predictor variable with water depth. The observed species
distribution can be used to delineate bioregions in the Atlantic part of the Southern Ocean as well as
an artistically ungifted alcoholic can draw the coastline of the Antarctic Peninsula.
I would like to thank Prof. Ari Friedlaender, Prof. Michael Harte and Prof. Selina Heppell for enabling
my participation in the expedition; all responsible OSU officials for permitting student participation in
an expedition to Antarctica; Dr. Grant Humphries and Dr. Stephen Bailey for their help with the data
collection for my project; Karen Williams for her eye-opening talk, and the entire team from One
Ocean Expeditions and the Vavilov crew for facilitating a safe, unique and mind-expanding
experience. The William and Francis McNeil Fellowship Award from OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science
Center as well as the Thomas G. Scott Grant Scholarship from OSU’s Fisheries and Wildlife
Department provided essential financial support for my participation in this incredible program.
*To set the record straight, there were a few women among the 5000 applicants for Shackleton’s
expedition, but none of them ended up on the ship.
REFERENCES
Berkman, Paul A. (2002): Science into Policy: Global Lessons from Antarctica. Academic Press, San
Diego.
Lansing, Alfred (2000): Endurance: The Greatest Adventure Story Ever Told. Carroll & Graf Publishers,
Inc., New York.
Piggott, Jan R. (2004): Shackleton’s men: Life on Elephant Island. Endeavour 28(3): 114-9.
Stallard, Avan J. (2010): Antipodes to Terra Australis (PhD Thesis submitted to the University of
Queensland).
Steward, John (1990): Antarctica: An Encyclopedia. McFarland & Company, Inc., North Carolina.
Wheeler, Sara (1996): Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica. Jonathan Cape, London.