SHACKLETON AFTER
With the centenary of his ill-fated Antarctic expedition and the move of his boat the James Caird to its new home in the Laboratory, this has been a year in which Ernest Shackleton has loomed large in the life of the College. His influence has also been keenly felt by Zach Faja (OA), who embarked on his own expedition to Antarctica. Here he details his journey and reflects on how climate change is altering this beautiful and extraordinary continent W e live in a world that is seemingly forever shrinking. Never before have we been able to travel from one side of the world to another so easily. Yet one continent has remained in many ways untouched by the march of globalisation: Antarctica.
Before long I was sitting in ignorant bliss on a Boeing flying to the bottom of the world, not knowing what would lie ahead of me, just that I could count myself as one of the privileged people to set foot on Antarctic Ice. My first destination was Ushuaia, located at the most southerly tip of South America, just 70 miles from Cape Horn. Even here in this isolated city, it was obvious that the climate was undergoing major change. On our first day we ventured up one of the local mountains to observe a glacier, only to see that there was barely 300m of it left, despite the fact that seven years ago it was over 2km long. This was my first real experience of seeing something that could be defined as climate change and it was starting to dawn on me, too, that something must be done. It was after this encounter with the shrunken glacier that we departed for Antarctica, over the Drake Passage, the most dangerous stretch of ocean in the world. Bracing ourselves for 8m swells, ferocious winds and driving snow we left our little haven of Ushuaia and headed south. Mercifully, we were not battered by intense weather, although I would argue that the crossing was rough enough for me! With most of the expedition confined to their cabins due to sea sickness, there was little to do. The crew of the vessel (The Sea Spirit) were giving lectures throughout, though this was sometimes a hard thing to do with the ship continuously rolling in the swells. After two days on the Drake, we were all feeling positively ill, but fortunately we were at the end of our crossing and we finally had Antarctica in sight. Or at least we thought we had. Instead it was a colossal iceberg, over 30m high and 2km long. This colossus was part of the Larsen B iceshelf and was slowly drifting, lost across the vast expanse of Antarctic Ocean. What was shocking was the fact that this was the furthest north that any iceberg of this size had ever been sighted. Powering on past the giant iceberg we finally caught sight of the true Antarctica. Made up 98 per cent of ice and with no native population, it is no wonder that people don’t frequent its snowy beaches. Great mountains rose from the sea and with our vessel hidden in their shadows it truly felt as if I’d been thrown onto another planet. From here our exploration of the Antarctic Peninsula would begin.
Of course, this has been the case for thousands of years. Human beings only first set eyes on Antarctica in 1773 and since then it has been a mysterious land at the centre of debate and competition, the greatest of these being the heroic age of Antarctic exploration, a period in which men from the great nations of the early 20th century raced to be the first to chart a new land and claim it for their respective kingdoms. The jewel in the crown of this exploration was the South Pole, coveted by all explorers from all nations. Ultimately, it was the great Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen who first conquered the pole in 1911. This was after our own great OA, Sir Ernest Shackleton, had set the new southern record at 88°23’ south in 1909. It was his following expedition in 1915, however, that would be the one that would become the bedrock of his reputation as one of the greatest polar leaders to ever have lived. It was off the back of the 100th anniversary of Shackleton’s trans-Antarctic expedition that the polar explorer Robert Swan OBE came to Dulwich asking for someone to accompany him on his International Antarctic Expedition (IAE) for 2015. I was eventually selected to be the College’s representative to visit Antarctica. Robert was the first man to walk unassisted to both Poles, and while undertaking his exploration, was struck by how much the climate was changing around him. On his expedition to the South Pole, his eyes changed colour after being burned out by rays that had reflected off the ice due to the hole in the Ozone layer. While journeying northwards, the sea ice melted three months early, nearly drowning him. This prompted Robert to set up his foundation 2041, named after the year when the International Antarctic Treaty will expire. Its aim is to spread the word about what we as a species are doing to the climate and how in turn this is destroying Antarctica. IAE 2015 would be my chance to see what was really happening down there.
Pictured : Zach Faja in Antarctica.
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