100 years ago Amundsen and his Norwegian party became the first humans to reach this earth's farthest south. For all of us who love the unknown, seek out the empty spaces, and blind ourselves just a little to leave room for discovery, I take the milestone in human endeavor to be a bit bitter-sweet. I do raise a cheer to the man who so efficiently traveled in a realm so deadly to his less prepared companions. But leave some blank spots on the map for me...
Two articles:
UK Guardian, with original news clippings:
http://bit.ly/vnHgL4
Scientific American, a whole lot longer and more in depth:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=south-pole-discovered-december-14-1911
And in two weeks we travel south for our own bit of discovery :)
Happy holidays to all!
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Invasion of the King Crabs!
Oh my oh my the crabs are coming the crabs are coming. Funny video, in a biology nerd kind of way: http://www.crabnet.tv/
Hang on for the talking penguins at the end....
:-)
Ted
One year ago today, scientists on a research ice breaker in Antarctica found conclusive proof that climate change was allowing predatory King Crabs to invade the fragile Antarctic continental shelf, threatening the unique flora and fauna that holds potential for cancer medicines and other cures. Today, Storyteller Film releases the short documentary film "Crabnet Antarctica: The Hunt for Invading Crab" that documents this disturbing discovery.
Hang on for the talking penguins at the end....
:-)
Ted
One year ago today, scientists on a research ice breaker in Antarctica found conclusive proof that climate change was allowing predatory King Crabs to invade the fragile Antarctic continental shelf, threatening the unique flora and fauna that holds potential for cancer medicines and other cures. Today, Storyteller Film releases the short documentary film "Crabnet Antarctica: The Hunt for Invading Crab" that documents this disturbing discovery.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Raise a glass for old Frank Wild
Today there's a bit the great Age of Exploration being laid to rest anew, as Frank Wild is being buried at Grytviken next to his travel companion of old, Sir Ernest Shackleton. Those of us headed south this season can look forward to toasting them both in January! Great story, eh?
http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/magazine/news/antarctic-explorer-gets-polar-burial-frank-wild
Antarctic explorer gets polar burial (full story below)
Also, here's the most recent South Georgia Association newsletter
http://www.sgisland.gs/index.php/(h)South_Georgia_News_and_Events --- highlight being a story about glacier retreat and one about fur seals. Glaciers: "...smaller glaciers are also experiencing huge collapses. An example is the Harker Glacier, at the head of Moraine Fjord, which is estimated to have lost a half kilometre of glacial tongue in the past year alone."
And fur seals: "Research conducted at Bird Island has shown the remarkable ability of female fur seals to return to breed in almost exactly the same spot where they were born.....most of them get within 12-metres of their birth place. Researchers do not know how the seals find their way back."
Happy holidays all,
Ted
http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/magazine/news/antarctic-explorer-gets-polar-burial-frank-wild
Antarctic explorer gets polar burial
27th November 2011
Today, Antarctic explorer Frank Wild will finally have his last wish granted 72 years after his death, as his ashes will be laid to rest in a polar graveyard
A commemorative polar expedition is under-way to grant Antarctic explorer Frank Wild his final wish, to be buried on South Georgia Island alongside fellow pioneer Sir Ernest Shackleton. His ashes will be buried on the 27 November, 72 years after his death.
Wild was one of the great, yet unsung, Antarctic explorers and the right-hand man to Sir Ernest Shackleton. He had more experience in Antarctica than any of the other famed explorers, and although he came close to death many times on polar expeditions, his peaceful death may be the reason he did not get the same glorification as the others.
He met his death in 1939 in South Africa, and his final wish to be buried on South Georgia Island was never fulfilled because of the out-break of World War II. His body was presumed lost, and his name disappeared from the pages of history.
However, his adventurous lifestyle and relationship with South Africa caught the attention of polar historian and author Angie Butler, who became fascinated with his life, and made it her duty to find his ashes and commemorate his wish.
Angie told Wanderlust, “The story was that he was buried in Brixton cemetery in Johannesburg. There was hardly anyone at the funeral and a lone sea cadet playedThe Last Post. It sounded like this awful desultory affair.”
But early in her research Angie discovered that his funeral actually took place at Braamfontein cemetery, and that his wife had him cremated, not buried, so that his ashes could go to South Georgia. It was at this point that the trail went cold.
“I kept going though, for several years. Then I found an old paper cutting that had been written in 1966 that said Frank Wild's ashes were kept in an old chapel. It didn't say which chapel, but I just knew that it was the chapel in Braamfontein cemetery,” Angie continued.
“And they were there, in a wooden box, quite banged and scraped, so it looks like it has travelled around a bit. It hasn’t just been sitting on the shelf. It’s a greeny-gold colour that has been stippled and a little bronze plaque with his name and date of birth and death. So it’s definitely him."
The commemorative expedition set out on the 20 November, and will take his remains back to South Georgia, where his ashes will be buried today, on the 27 November, in a small intimate graveyard on Grytviken hill.....
http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/magazine/news/antarctic-explorer-gets-polar-burial-frank-wild
Antarctic explorer gets polar burial (full story below)
Also, here's the most recent South Georgia Association newsletter
http://www.sgisland.gs/index.php/(h)South_Georgia_News_and_Events --- highlight being a story about glacier retreat and one about fur seals. Glaciers: "...smaller glaciers are also experiencing huge collapses. An example is the Harker Glacier, at the head of Moraine Fjord, which is estimated to have lost a half kilometre of glacial tongue in the past year alone."
And fur seals: "Research conducted at Bird Island has shown the remarkable ability of female fur seals to return to breed in almost exactly the same spot where they were born.....most of them get within 12-metres of their birth place. Researchers do not know how the seals find their way back."
Happy holidays all,
Ted
http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/magazine/news/antarctic-explorer-gets-polar-burial-frank-wild
Antarctic explorer gets polar burial
27th November 2011
Today, Antarctic explorer Frank Wild will finally have his last wish granted 72 years after his death, as his ashes will be laid to rest in a polar graveyard
A commemorative polar expedition is under-way to grant Antarctic explorer Frank Wild his final wish, to be buried on South Georgia Island alongside fellow pioneer Sir Ernest Shackleton. His ashes will be buried on the 27 November, 72 years after his death.
Wild was one of the great, yet unsung, Antarctic explorers and the right-hand man to Sir Ernest Shackleton. He had more experience in Antarctica than any of the other famed explorers, and although he came close to death many times on polar expeditions, his peaceful death may be the reason he did not get the same glorification as the others.
He met his death in 1939 in South Africa, and his final wish to be buried on South Georgia Island was never fulfilled because of the out-break of World War II. His body was presumed lost, and his name disappeared from the pages of history.
However, his adventurous lifestyle and relationship with South Africa caught the attention of polar historian and author Angie Butler, who became fascinated with his life, and made it her duty to find his ashes and commemorate his wish.
Angie told Wanderlust, “The story was that he was buried in Brixton cemetery in Johannesburg. There was hardly anyone at the funeral and a lone sea cadet playedThe Last Post. It sounded like this awful desultory affair.”
But early in her research Angie discovered that his funeral actually took place at Braamfontein cemetery, and that his wife had him cremated, not buried, so that his ashes could go to South Georgia. It was at this point that the trail went cold.
“I kept going though, for several years. Then I found an old paper cutting that had been written in 1966 that said Frank Wild's ashes were kept in an old chapel. It didn't say which chapel, but I just knew that it was the chapel in Braamfontein cemetery,” Angie continued.
“And they were there, in a wooden box, quite banged and scraped, so it looks like it has travelled around a bit. It hasn’t just been sitting on the shelf. It’s a greeny-gold colour that has been stippled and a little bronze plaque with his name and date of birth and death. So it’s definitely him."
The commemorative expedition set out on the 20 November, and will take his remains back to South Georgia, where his ashes will be buried today, on the 27 November, in a small intimate graveyard on Grytviken hill.....
Monday, November 7, 2011
Birth of a huge Antarctic iceberg (video)
There's a news story that's made many newspapers about this New York City-sized iceberg that is being formed by the Pine Island Glacier. Here's a link to what I think is the best article so far on the subject:
http://bit.ly/vxaJnv
Yet somehow, I think all the articles missed what is the most significant about this story, that it takes place on the face of the Pine Island Glacier, which is the focus point for one of this coming century's biggest question: how much will the sea rise with global warming? The flow of the Pine Island Glacier has been accelerating, and given that it is the central drainage point for a vast stretch of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the difference between it's flow rate remaining stable and it pouring out rapidly speak to a difference of something like 1 foot in global sea level rise vs 6 feet of global sea level rise over the coming 100 years.
Meanwhile, news from the north:
Summer 2011: Arctic sea ice near record lows
The summer sea ice melt season has ended in the Arctic. Arctic sea ice extent reached its low for the year, the second lowest in the satellite record, on September 9. The minimum extent was only slightly above 2007, the record low year, even though weather conditions this year were not as conducive to ice loss as in 2007. Both the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route were open for a period during September.
More information: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaice-news/
http://bit.ly/vxaJnv
Yet somehow, I think all the articles missed what is the most significant about this story, that it takes place on the face of the Pine Island Glacier, which is the focus point for one of this coming century's biggest question: how much will the sea rise with global warming? The flow of the Pine Island Glacier has been accelerating, and given that it is the central drainage point for a vast stretch of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the difference between it's flow rate remaining stable and it pouring out rapidly speak to a difference of something like 1 foot in global sea level rise vs 6 feet of global sea level rise over the coming 100 years.
Meanwhile, news from the north:
Summer 2011: Arctic sea ice near record lows
The summer sea ice melt season has ended in the Arctic. Arctic sea ice extent reached its low for the year, the second lowest in the satellite record, on September 9. The minimum extent was only slightly above 2007, the record low year, even though weather conditions this year were not as conducive to ice loss as in 2007. Both the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route were open for a period during September.
More information: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaice-news/
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Orcas migrate 10000 kilometers
Is anyone really surprised that whales go places we did not know? After a summer getting fat on toothfish around the ice in Antarctica, the waters off Brazil might be looking positively lovely to me as well. And consider, if you are the size of an Orca, swimming 50 miles in a day is virtually nothing, a casual stroll. The theory of shedding skin to lose a parasite load probably has merit; among Humpbacks we see a substantial parasite load on their summer feeding grounds, but when they travel to warmer waters in the winter they shed and lose the great majority of cridders that feed directly on them and/or hang around for the free ride.
Have a whale of a day,
Ted
Killer whales migrate, study finds, but why?
http://bit.ly/spwMBS
By Marlowe Hood (AFP) – 19 hours ago
PARIS — Some killer whales, a study published Wednesday shows for the first time, wander nearly 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) from Antarctica's Southern Ocean into tropical waters -- but not to feed or breed.
Rather, these fearsome predators at the apex of the marine food chain traverse the sea at top speed -- slowing as they reach warmer climes -- to exfoliate, the study speculates.
They are driven, in other words, by the urge or need to make their skin all shiny and new.
Despite our intense fascination with seal-chomping orcas, next to nothing was known about their long-haul movements, or whether they migrate at all.
To find out more, John Durban and Robert Pitman of the US National Marine Fisheries Service fitted a dozen so-called "type B" killer whales off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula with satellite transmitters.
In January 2009, the scientists used bolt-shooting crossbows to attached tags to the five-tonne mammals' dorsal fins from a distance of five to 15 metres (15 to 50 feet).
"Type B" orcas inhabit the inshore waters of Antarctica near pack ice, the better to feed on seals and penguins. Type A killer whales prefer open water and a diet of minke whales, and the smaller, fish-eating type C is most common in the eastern Antarctic.
Half the satellite tags stopped working after three weeks, but the remaining six revealed a remarkable and unexpected wanderlust over the following two years.
"Our tagged whales followed the most direct path to the nearest warm waters north of the subtropical convergence, with a gradual slowing of swim speed in progressively warmer water," the authors note.
The whales made a beeline, cruising at up to 10 km/hr (six mph), across the southwest Atlantic east of the Falkland Islands to the subtropical waters off the coasts of Uruguay and southern Brazil.
The study, published in the British Royal Society's journal Biology Letters, provides the first direct evidence of long-distance migration by killer whales.
But why they do it remains something of a mystery.
The speed and duration of the voyages, undertaken individually, did not leave enough time for prolonged foraging, and would have been too demanding for a new-born calf.
"Remarkably, one whale returned to Antarctica after completing a 9,400 kilometre (5,840 mile) trip in just 42 days," the study said.
The varied departure dates, between early February and late April, also suggested these expeditions were not annual migrations for feeding or breeding.
Which is where skin comes into the picture.
Durban and Pitman suspect that killer whales move into warmer waters in order to shed a layer -- along with an encrustation of single-celled algae called diatoms -- without freezing to death.
Orcas are the smallest cetaceans -- a group including whales and dolphins -- which live for extended periods in subzero Antarctic waters. Replacing and repairing outer skin in waters where the surface temperature is minus 1.9 degree Celsius (28.6 degree Fahrenheit) may be dangerous, even lethal.
Surface temperatures at the killer whales' tropical destinations, by contrast, were a balmy 20.9 to 24.2 C (69.6 to 75.6 F).
"We hypothesise that these migrations were thermally motivated," the authors conclude.
Killer whales (Orcinus orca) are the most widely distributed cetacean -- and perhaps mammal species -- in the world.
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved.
Have a whale of a day,
Ted
Killer whales migrate, study finds, but why?
http://bit.ly/spwMBS
By Marlowe Hood (AFP) – 19 hours ago
PARIS — Some killer whales, a study published Wednesday shows for the first time, wander nearly 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) from Antarctica's Southern Ocean into tropical waters -- but not to feed or breed.
Rather, these fearsome predators at the apex of the marine food chain traverse the sea at top speed -- slowing as they reach warmer climes -- to exfoliate, the study speculates.
They are driven, in other words, by the urge or need to make their skin all shiny and new.
Despite our intense fascination with seal-chomping orcas, next to nothing was known about their long-haul movements, or whether they migrate at all.
To find out more, John Durban and Robert Pitman of the US National Marine Fisheries Service fitted a dozen so-called "type B" killer whales off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula with satellite transmitters.
In January 2009, the scientists used bolt-shooting crossbows to attached tags to the five-tonne mammals' dorsal fins from a distance of five to 15 metres (15 to 50 feet).
"Type B" orcas inhabit the inshore waters of Antarctica near pack ice, the better to feed on seals and penguins. Type A killer whales prefer open water and a diet of minke whales, and the smaller, fish-eating type C is most common in the eastern Antarctic.
Half the satellite tags stopped working after three weeks, but the remaining six revealed a remarkable and unexpected wanderlust over the following two years.
"Our tagged whales followed the most direct path to the nearest warm waters north of the subtropical convergence, with a gradual slowing of swim speed in progressively warmer water," the authors note.
The whales made a beeline, cruising at up to 10 km/hr (six mph), across the southwest Atlantic east of the Falkland Islands to the subtropical waters off the coasts of Uruguay and southern Brazil.
The study, published in the British Royal Society's journal Biology Letters, provides the first direct evidence of long-distance migration by killer whales.
But why they do it remains something of a mystery.
The speed and duration of the voyages, undertaken individually, did not leave enough time for prolonged foraging, and would have been too demanding for a new-born calf.
"Remarkably, one whale returned to Antarctica after completing a 9,400 kilometre (5,840 mile) trip in just 42 days," the study said.
The varied departure dates, between early February and late April, also suggested these expeditions were not annual migrations for feeding or breeding.
Which is where skin comes into the picture.
Durban and Pitman suspect that killer whales move into warmer waters in order to shed a layer -- along with an encrustation of single-celled algae called diatoms -- without freezing to death.
Orcas are the smallest cetaceans -- a group including whales and dolphins -- which live for extended periods in subzero Antarctic waters. Replacing and repairing outer skin in waters where the surface temperature is minus 1.9 degree Celsius (28.6 degree Fahrenheit) may be dangerous, even lethal.
Surface temperatures at the killer whales' tropical destinations, by contrast, were a balmy 20.9 to 24.2 C (69.6 to 75.6 F).
"We hypothesise that these migrations were thermally motivated," the authors conclude.
Killer whales (Orcinus orca) are the most widely distributed cetacean -- and perhaps mammal species -- in the world.
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Antarctic ice flow mapped
There's a new map of Antarctic glaciers that has been around in the news lately, a map compiled from a vast trove of data that documents flow rates of all of Antarctica's glaciers. I hadn't posted about it because I found the coverage quite mundane. But here's a nice little video that tells the story with pretty pictures:
http://www.reuters.com/video/2011/08/25/antarctic-ice-flow-map-reveals-clues-to?videoId=218738420&videoChannel=6
http://www.reuters.com/video/2011/08/25/antarctic-ice-flow-map-reveals-clues-to?videoId=218738420&videoChannel=6
Monday, August 15, 2011
Survival in Limbo, and Frank Wild to be buried next to Shackleton at Grytviken
I've **always** wanted to hear this story and never knew that there was a documentary about it:
From the South Georgia Newsletter:
Explorer and broadcaster Duncan Carse made several expeditions and visits to South Georgia between the 1950s and 1980. His first three expeditions were to map the Island with small teams of men man-hauling equipment the length of the Island on sledges. His fourth expedition was very different indeed. It was to be an 18 month experiment in living alone in an extremely remote cove on the south coast of the Island at South Undine Harbour. He was landed there by a whaling vessel in 1961 with all his stores and equipment and materials to erect a hut to live in. He told the whalers not to return before the 18 months were up. Three months into the experiment, he and his hut were washed away by huge waves. Somehow he survived and had to salvage what he could to survive for months until a concerned whaling manger decided to ignore Carse's instructions and sent a vessel to check and see how he was faring. In 1976 Duncan Carse returned to make a documentary about the experience.
From the South Georgia Newsletter:
Explorer and broadcaster Duncan Carse made several expeditions and visits to South Georgia between the 1950s and 1980. His first three expeditions were to map the Island with small teams of men man-hauling equipment the length of the Island on sledges. His fourth expedition was very different indeed. It was to be an 18 month experiment in living alone in an extremely remote cove on the south coast of the Island at South Undine Harbour. He was landed there by a whaling vessel in 1961 with all his stores and equipment and materials to erect a hut to live in. He told the whalers not to return before the 18 months were up. Three months into the experiment, he and his hut were washed away by huge waves. Somehow he survived and had to salvage what he could to survive for months until a concerned whaling manger decided to ignore Carse's instructions and sent a vessel to check and see how he was faring. In 1976 Duncan Carse returned to make a documentary about the experience.
Here's a link to this documentary, in 7 short parts on YouTube:
http://bit.ly/ncoILS
AND in a most intensely interesting bit of Age of Exploration history, Frank Wild is to be buried next to Shackleton in the Grytviken cemetery. Full story: http://bit.ly/nm7Niz
AND in a most intensely interesting bit of Age of Exploration history, Frank Wild is to be buried next to Shackleton in the Grytviken cemetery. Full story: http://bit.ly/nm7Niz
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)