Antarctica
By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK MCMURDO STATION
From atop a windswept hill, the panoramic landscape looks eerily beautiful -- and yet completely hostile to life. Even at the height of summer, the scene is one of frigid desolation. To the west lies a saltwater bay whose surface is frozen solid. Beyond the bay loom glittering glaciers and towering, rocky peaks. On the south and east rises a blinding white shelf of permanent ice, so thick that it grinds against the seabed far below. And to the north is a snow- covered volcano that continuously belches noxious fumes. This is the bottom of the world, where winds can reach 320 kph (200 m.p.h.) and temperatures can plunge below -85 degrees C (-121 degrees F). This is Antarctica, the white continent, the harshest, most forbidding land on earth.
But the view from the hilltop, overlooking McMurdo Sound on the eastern side of Antarctica, is deceiving. A closer look at the seemingly lifeless land- and seascape reveals an amazing abundance of life. Like most of the coastal waters around the continent, McMurdo Sound is filled with plankton and fish, and its thick ice is perforated by the breathing holes of Weddell seals. Nearby Cape Royds is home to thousands of Adelie penguins, which hatch their eggs in the world's southernmost rookery. Skuas -- seagull-like scavenger birds -- scout the breathing holes and the margins between sea ice and land, seeking seal carcasses and unguarded baby penguins to feast on. The ice itself is permeated with algae and bacteria.
There is another sort of life as well. All around Antarctica the coast is dotted with corrugated-metal buildings, oil-storage tanks and garbage dumps -- unmistakable signs of man. No fewer than 16 nations have established permanent bases on the only continent that belongs to the whole world. They were set up mainly to conduct scientific research, but they have become magnets for boatloads of tourists, who come to gawk at the peaks and the penguins. Environmentalists fear that miners and oil drillers may not be far behind. Already the human invaders of Antarctica have created an awful mess in what was only recently the world's cleanest spot. Over the years, they have spilled oil into the seas, dumped untreated sewage off the coasts, burned garbage in open pits, and let huge piles of discarded machinery slowly rust on the frozen turf.
News of the environmental assaults has unleashed a global wave of concern about Antarctica's future. "It is now clear that the continent's isolation no longer protects it from the impact of man," declares Bruce Manheim, a biologist with the Environmental Defense Fund. How best to protect Antarctica has been a topic of fierce debate in meetings from Washington to Wellington, New Zealand. Everyone agrees that the issue is of great importance and urgency. Despite the damage done so far, Antarctica is still largely pristine, the only wild continent left on earth. There scientists can study unique ecosystems and climatic disturbances that influence the weather patterns of the entire globe. The research being done on the frozen continent cannot be carried out anywhere else. "In Antarctica we still have the chance to protect nature in something close to its natural state and leave it as a legacy for future generations," says Jim Barnes, a founder of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, an alliance of more than 200 environmental groups.
The focus of contention at the moment is the Wellington Convention, an international agreement that would establish rules governing oil and mineral exploration and development in Antarctica. Proponents say the convention, painstakingly drafted during six years of negotiations, contains stringent environmental safeguards. But many environmentalists see the convention as the first step toward the dangerous exploitation of Antarctica's hidden store of minerals. They argue that the continent should be turned into a "world park" in which only scientific research and limited tourism would be permitted.
That position did not garner much support until last spring, when France and Australia, two countries with a major presence in Antarctica, suddenly announced that they backed the world-park idea and would not sign the Wellington Convention. In Washington, Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee is leading a drive to get the U.S. to withdraw its support of the accord. Until the debate is resolved, there will be no agreed-upon strategy for protecting Antarctica from mineral exploration.
Meanwhile, some of the harm already done will not easily be repaired and may have far-reaching impact. For many years, the industrial nations have been releasing chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere, not realizing that these chemicals were destroying the ozone layer, which shields the earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation. Because of the vagaries of air currents, ozone depletion has been most severe over Antarctica. It was the discovery in 1983 of an "ozone hole" over the continent that first alerted scientists to the immediacy of the CFC threat.
Since then, researchers have been monitoring the hole and looking for similar ozone destruction over populated areas. Scientists predict that thinning ozone, and the resulting increase in ultraviolet radiation, will cause damage to plants and animals, as well as skin cancers and cataracts in humans. To keep a bad situation from getting worse, nations are working on an international agreement designed to phase out production of CFCs by the year 2000.
In the meantime, researchers have been carefully studying the effects of ozone depletion on Antarctic life. Marine ecologist Sayed El-Sayed of Texas A& M University discovered two years ago at Palmer Station, a U.S. base on the Antarctic Peninsula, that high levels of ultraviolet damage the chlorophyll pigment vital for photosynthesis in phytoplankton, slowing the marine plants' growth rate by as much as 30%. That, in turn, could threaten krill, shrimplike creatures that feed on phytoplankton and are a key link in Antarctica's food chain. Says El-Sayed: "Fish, whales, penguins and winged birds all depend very heavily on krill. If anything happened to the krill population, the whole system would collapse."
The fragility of life in the Antarctic climate was dramatically underscored last January, when the Bahia Paraiso, an Argentine supply and tourist ship, ran aground off Palmer Station, spilling more than 643,450 liters (170,000 gal.) of jet and diesel fuel. The accident killed countless krill and hundreds of newly hatched skua and penguin chicks. Some 25 years of continuous animal population studies run by scientists at Palmer may have been ruined. Just weeks after the Bahia incident, the Peruvian research and supply ship Humboldt was blown by gale-force winds onto rocks near King George Island, producing an oil slick more than half a mile long.
Such disasters are shocking and unsettling to the hundreds of scientists in Antarctica, who had hoped the continent would remain their unspoiled natural laboratory. But they too bear much of the responsibility for the pollution that has soiled the area. Just three months ago, McMurdo Station, a U.S. base operated by the National Science Foundation, reported that 196,820 liters (52,000 gal.) of fuel had leaked from a rubber storage "bladder" onto the ice shelf. Over the past year or two, many bases have launched extensive cleanup campaigns, but scientists have yet to find the right balance between studying the Antarctic and preserving it.
No one disputes the importance of the research. The continent has a major -- though not completely understood -- influence on the world's weather. As Antarctica's white ice sheet reflects the sun's heat back into space, an overlying mass of air is kept frigid. This air rushes out to the sea, where the earth's rotation turns it into the roaring forties and the furious fifties -- old sailors' terms for the fierce winds that dominate the oceans between 40 degrees and 60 degrees south latitudes. If scientists can figure out just how these winds affect the global flow of air, then it will be easier to understand and predict the planet's weather.
Antarctica also provides the best-preserved fossil record of a fascinating chapter in the earth's history. Some 200 million years ago, during the Jurassic period, Antarctica formed the core of the ancient supercontinent now known as Gondwanaland. The name comes from Gondwana, a region in India where geological evidence of the supercontinent's existence was found. At the time of the supercontinent, Antarctica was nestled in the temperate latitudes and was almost tropical. It was covered by forests and filled with reptiles, primitive mammals and birds. But by 160 million years ago, the supercontinent had begun to break up. While most of the pieces, including South America, Africa, India and Australia, stayed in warm regions, Antarctica drifted to the South Pole.
Thus was created the world's largest stretch of inhospitable land. Precipitation is so sparse over Antarctica's 14 million sq. km (5.4 million sq. mi.) that it is classified as one of the world's dryest deserts. Because most of the small amount of snow never melts and has accumulated for centuries, 98% of Antarctica is permanently covered by a sheet of ice that has an average thickness of 2,155 meters (7,090 ft.). That accounts for 90% of the world's ice and 68% of its fresh water. Although the sun shines continuously in the summer months, the rays hit the land at too sharp an angle to melt the ice. At the South Pole, the average temperature is -49 degrees C (-56.2 degrees F) and the record high is -13.6 degrees C (7.5 degrees F). During the . perpetual darkness of winter, the temperature falls to almost inconceivable levels. The lowest ever recorded was in 1983 at the Soviet Union's Vostok Base: -89.2 degrees C (-128.6 degrees F).
Around the edges, though, Antarctica is more than just an icebox. On the Antarctic Peninsula, which reaches like a finger to within 965 km (600 miles) of South America, the temperature has risen as high as 15 degrees C (59 degrees F). The peninsula is home to the continent's only two species of flowering land plants, a grass and a pearlwort. Off the coast is one of the world's most productive marine ecosystems. Antarctica supports 35 species of penguins and other birds, six varieties of seals, twelve kinds of whale and nearly 200 types of fish.
It was the bountiful sea life that initially drew large numbers of men to the southern continent. When James Cook first circled Antarctica between 1772 and 1775, he saw hordes of seals on the surrounding islands, and during the next century the continent became a hunter's paradise. By the early 1900s, elephant and fur seals were nearly extinct. And after 1904, more than 1 million blue, minke and fin whales were harpooned in Antarctic waters.
Along with the exploiters came explorers, searching for nothing more than scientific knowledge and personal and national glory. In 1841 Britain's James Clark Ross became the first man to find his way through the sea ice and reach the mainland. The ultimate goal for the adventurers -- the South Pole -- was not reached until seven decades later, during the dramatic and ultimately tragic race between British explorer Scott and Norway's Roald Amundsen. Relying on dogsleds, which proved to be more dependable than the breakdown- prone mechanical sleds used by Scott, Amundsen's party arrived triumphantly at the pole on Dec. 14, 1911. When Scott got there a month later, he was devastated to find a Norwegian flag flying and notes from Amundsen. Things got even worse on the way back. Only 18 km (11 miles) from a supply depot, Scott and two companions were stopped by a blizzard, their fuel and food nearly gone. Scott's diary entries end this way: "We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more . . . For God's sake look out for our people."
Airplanes made Antarctic travel much less perilous. In 1929 Richard Byrd, an American, became the first person to fly to the South Pole, a 16-hour round . trip from Antarctica's west coast. And in the 1930s, German aviators claimed part of the continent for the Third Reich by dropping hundreds of stakes emblazoned with swastikas.
The postwar German government did not press the Nazis' claim, but seven other nations with histories of Antarctic exploration -- Argentina, Chile, France, New Zealand, Britain, Norway and Australia -- maintained that parts of the continent belonged to them. Some of the claims overlapped: Chile, Britain and Argentina, for example, all declared their ownership of the Antarctic Peninsula. The U.S., while making no claims, refused to recognize those of other nations and organized numerous expeditions, including the largest in Antarctic history. Mounted in 1946 and called Operation Highjump, it was a naval exercise involving 13 ships, 50 helicopters and nearly 5,000 service members. Its unstated purpose: to make sure the U.S. could legitimately stake its own claim should it ever want to do so.
There could easily have been major territorial conflict, but scientific cooperation intervened. It took the form of the International Geophysical Year, actually 18 months long, which was scheduled to take advantage of the peak of sunspot activity predicted for 1957 and 1958. Sixty-seven countries joined in this exhaustive study of the interactions between the sun and earth. Much of the research went on in Antarctica, where Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Britain, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the U.S. and the Soviet Union established bases.
The Antarctic component of the IGY worked so well that after the project ended, President Dwight Eisenhower invited the eleven other nations that had built bases to join the U.S. in an agreement that would govern all activities on and around the frozen continent. The resulting Antarctic Treaty, ratified in 1961, forbids military activity, bans nuclear explosions and radioactive- waste disposal, and mandates international cooperation and freedom of scientific inquiry. Moreover, those participating countries that claimed chunks of Antarctica as their own agreed not to press those claims while the treaty remained in force. Over the years, 13 other countries have become voting members of the treaty system, and the original document has been supplemented by agreements governing topics as diverse as waste management and the protection of native mammals and birds.
The treaty did not eliminate the jockeying for position. The U.S. and the Soviet Union have deliberately placed bases in areas claimed by others, and countries have tried to solidify their stakes by setting up post offices and sending children to school in Antarctica. Argentina flew a pregnant woman to its Marambio base so that she could give birth to the first native of Antarctica. But no nation has overtly asserted sovereignty since the 1950s. Even during the Falklands war, Britain and Argentina, together with other nations, sat down to discuss Antarctic Treaty issues.
Amid an atmosphere of international partnership, research has flourished. In the past few weeks alone, Antarctica's scientists have carried out dozens of unique experiments. In the McMurdo Sound area a group of geologists camped out in the bitter cold of the Royal Society mountains, looking for evidence of the ebbing and flowing of glaciers in Antarctica's past, and biologists drew 50-kg (110-lb.) fish from ice holes to study the unique organic antifreeze that keeps these sea dwellers alive. Volcanologists braved the knifelike winds and choking fumes atop Mount Erebus to learn what kinds of gases and particles Antarctica's largest volcano emits. At Williams Field, a runway on the Ross Ice Shelf, a multidisciplinary team prepared to launch a huge helium balloon. Its purpose: to follow circumpolar winds around the entire continent, gathering data on cosmic rays and solar flares and testing the behavior of high-density computer chips in the intense radiation of the upper atmosphere. And deep in the interior, glaciologists at the Soviets' Vostok Base dug out ice samples that carry clues to the planet's atmosphere in layers laid down in the polar ice cap tens of thousands of years ago.
At the South Pole, meanwhile, astrophysicists were taking advantage of a heat wave -- the temperature had soared to -23 degrees C (-10 degrees F) -- to set up detectors that would peer at the faint microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang explosion, which theoretically started the universe. In the high altitudes atop the pole's ice cap, the detectors are well above the densest, murkiest layers of atmosphere and can peer through some of the dryest, clearest air on earth to help determine whether the original Big Bang was unique or was followed by smaller ones. A few hundred yards away, close to the enormous geodesic dome that covers the thickly insulated buildings of the U.S.'s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, atmospheric scientists measured traces of pollutants released around the globe. The pole is so remote from civilization that there, better than anywhere else, scientists can accurately assess just how far-reaching are the effects of pollution.
The researchers who seek such knowledge are adventurous souls who know better than most the meaning of the term hardship post. Counting construction workers, maintenance crews and other support staff, Antarctica's population is only 4,000 or so, even in midsummer. The scientists and other residents tend to be in their 20s and 30s -- vigorous enough to endure the world's coldest workplace. A carpenter's helper recalls toiling one time at -40 degrees C (-40 degrees F) in an unheated building. She had on so many layers of clothing that it took most of her energy just to move, she says. As for the scientists, common sense sometimes gives way to a sense of mission. Researchers handling delicate experiments have been known to work without gloves in subfreezing temperatures until their hands were numb.
Just as daunting as the cold are the loneliness and isolation in a land where phone lines are rare, mail is erratic, and penguins vastly outnumber people. Thousands of miles from friends and families, the residents of Antarctica are often confined to small areas around their bases. At many stations, living quarters are built underground so that they are protected from the wind. When storms force workers to stay indoors for days at a time, it amounts to their being trapped in a bunker.
But the bases try to make Antarctic life as enjoyable as possible. At McMurdo Station, the continent's largest town, the 1,100 or more summer residents can hang out at the four Navy bars, use a two-lane bowling alley, take aerobics classes at the gym, and borrow videotapes from a library. Recent social events included a chili-cooking contest and an amateur comedy night. Even at the South Pole Station, home to no more than 90 hardy workers, there is an exercise room, a sauna, a poolroom and a library equipped with wide- screen TV and a VCR.
Along about February the annual exodus begins in earnest. Once the cold season takes hold, planes stop making regular flights to inland stations, and the ice layer spreads out to sea, making access by ship nearly impossible. Only a few hundred residents stay through the winter.
The number of people who have gone to Antarctica is smaller than the attendance at this year's Rose Bowl game, but those few have had a disproportionately large impact. Because plants and animals, along with human outposts, are largely confined to the 2% of Antarctica that is ice-free for part of the year, the world's most sparsely populated continent is, paradoxically, overcrowded. The Antarctic Peninsula is particularly in demand, with 13 stations; King George Island, one of the South Shetland Islands, is home to an additional eight. Planes, helicopters, snowmobiles, trucks and bulldozers are in constant operation throughout the summer. Nearly every base has its own helipad, landing strip, harbor and waste dump.
The inhabitants of these bases have been notoriously careless, often discarding trash in ways that would be illegal at home. But their actions went largely unnoticed until January 1987, when Greenpeace became the first nongovernment organization to establish a permanent Antarctic base, located at Cape Evans, some 24 km (15 miles) north of McMurdo Station. The group has mounted annual inspection tours of dozens of bases. It was Greenpeace that publicized McMurdo's continued dumping of untreated sewage into the sea and burning of trash in an open-air pit. The waters right off the station are reportedly more polluted with substances such as heavy metals and PCBs than any similar stretch of water in the U.S. Greenpeace has also documented reckless dumping and burning at Soviet, Uruguayan, Argentine, Chilean and Chinese bases. And an airstrip under construction at France's Dumont d'Urville base has already leveled part of an Adelie-penguin rookery.
The charges have some validity, says Erick Chiang, senior U.S. representative in Antarctica, but they are exaggerated. "Our behavior in the past was disgraceful -- by today's standards," he admits. "But we are doing much better. We're installing a primary waste-treatment facility at McMurdo this season. We've begun recycling. Yes, we lost 50,000 gal. of fuel recently, but we've recovered more than half of it." Last month McMurdo residents went patrolling for loose trash.
Chiang contends that despite past sins, the local ecology has not suffered very much. Some scientists agree. Says Cornelius Sullivan of the University of Southern California, who studies the algae that live in and under McMurdo Sound ice: "A few places are filthy. But most of the water is still absolutely pristine." Nonetheless, the National Science Foundation could do much better. One thing that will help: about $10 million was added to the agency's budget for 1990, bringing it to $152 million, and much of the new money will go toward protecting the environment.
While scientists try to clean up their act, tourists are posing an increasing threat to Antarctica's delicate ecosystems. Chilean planes began flying visitors to the peninsula in 1956, and luxury cruises started a decade later. Although commercial flights stopped after an Air New Zealand DC-10 crashed into Mount Erebus in 1979, killing all 257 aboard, ship travel has thrived. About 3,500 people, mostly Americans, paid $5,000 to $16,000 to sail over from South America last year. They generally stayed in Antarctica four or five days. Most boats carry naturalists or other experts, who give lectures, and groups often visit scientific stations. So many boats cruise along the peninsula between November and March that it has been dubbed the "Antarctic Riviera." Chile has opened a hotel near its base. Antarctic activities include hiking, mountain climbing, dogsledding, camping and skiing. A few show-offs have even water-skied on the cold waters.
The most intrusive visitors are those who tramp through penguin rookeries and other wildlife habitats. Going anywhere near certain kinds of seabirds can frighten them enough to disrupt feeding patterns and reproductive behavior. Though warned not to litter, some tourists leave behind film wrappers, water bottles and cigarette butts. And, yes, Antarctica has graffiti -- on the rocks of Elephant Island.
Responsible tour operators have come up with a code of conduct that forbids visitors to harass animals, enter research stations unless invited, and take souvenirs. Preservationists, like the Environmental Defense Fund's Manheim, argue in addition for strict limits on the size and frequency of tours and for civil and criminal penalties for operators who do not comply with the rules.
The Antarctic Treaty nations may discuss tourism when they meet later this year, but they are more likely to be preoccupied with the growing debate over the future of oil and mineral development. Concern first arose after the 1973 oil crisis, when it became clear that there might someday be pressure to drill for petroleum, even in the harsh Antarctic environment. Eventually, the treaty nations decided it was best to have rules in effect before that happened. The result was the Wellington Convention, agreed to by representatives of 20 treaty nations in New Zealand's capital in June 1988. The document essentially forbids any mineral exploration or development without agreement by all treaty participants. But most environmentalists are disturbed by any accord that recognizes even the possibility of oil drilling. Naturalist Jacques-Yves Cousteau has called the Wellington Convention "nothing more than a holdup on a planetary scale."
There is no certainty that commercially valuable deposits of minerals exist. Surface rocks contain traces of iron, titanium, low-grade gold, tin, molybdenum, coal, copper and zinc. Gaseous hydrocarbons, sometimes associated with oil, have been found in bottom samples taken from the Ross Sea. But in most cases, says geologist Robert Rutford, president of the University of Texas at Dallas, who did research in Antarctica for more than 20 years, "minerals are less than 1% of the total rock sample analyzed." Moreover, the vicious Antarctic climate would make exploration dangerous and expensive.
Still, say the Wellington Convention's opponents, some countries might be tempted anyway. Contends Barnes of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition: "Some nations are awash in cash and technology and have no domestic oil supply. I think Japan would be down there as soon as the continent was opened up." Opponents of drilling point out that the Antarctic Treaty has not always been scrupulously adhered to, especially when it comes to fishing limits and environmental protection. They argue that the Wellington Convention could also be skirted.
Such arguments are behind the surge in support for a world park. The proposal by Australia and France last October that the continent be declared a "wilderness reserve" under the eye of an Antarctic environmental- protection agency -- essentially the world-park scheme by a different name -- was hailed by environmentalists as a big victory. The U.S., still officially committed to the Wellington agreement, did not go along with the new initiative. But some Administration officials are said to be opposed to the minerals convention, and Senator Gore claims he has the votes to prevent its ratification in the Senate. Observes Gore: "The whole theory of protecting Antarctica with mining that is carefully circumscribed by safety procedures is the approach that failed in Alaska's Prince William Sound. We shouldn't make the same mistake again."
Nonratification by either France or Australia would automatically kill the Wellington Convention. But that does not guarantee that the world-park concept, as good as it would be for Antarctica's environment, would replace the defeated agreement. Some Antarctic Treaty nations oppose a permanent ban on mineral development -- notably Britain, which has the same veto power as France and Australia. That raises the possibility that the world will be left with no agreement at all on the minerals question, not even the informal moratorium on exploration and mining adopted in 1977 until a convention could be ratified. Antarctica might thus be opened to wholly unregulated mining.
That is a frightening prospect, so alarming that the nations subscribing to the Antarctic Treaty cannot afford to let it happen. The Wellington Convention may not be perfect, but it should be ratified. Far from a license to exploit, it would serve as a major roadblock to development and could be strengthened by further conventions specifying more stringent protection -- even by the creation of the same environmental watchdog agency suggested by world-park proponents. The real problem with the Antarctic Treaty system is that the rules are not always strictly enforced, and there is no reason to think that nations would pay any more attention to the provisions of a world-park system than they do to existing regulations.
In the end, the only way to save Antarctica is to convince the countries operating there -- and those that join them in the future -- that it is not worth fouling the only relatively untouched continent left on earth to gain a few extra barrels of oil. The environmental activists have done much to make that point, and governments seem to be listening. This may be the place where mankind finally learns to live in harmony with nature. If so, the forbidding vistas of Antarctica may be just as full of life a century from now as they were when humans first set foot on that continent less than 200 years ago.
With reporting by Andrea Dorfman/New York