ANTARCTICA 64°49’05”S 63°29’00”W
RITA KLUGE
“Having hot tea with a shot of good whiskey afterwards is my secret”
the ship is almost invisible in the milky mist , and the air is wet and cold. Rita is sailing through a curtain of ice crystals, that is slowly becoming thicker before it turns into snow. The ship is covered in snow, and she must free it from the cold blanket of winter. Even though she can’t see ten meters in front of her, she is smiling because she is on her way to work. Her office is not in a 50-meter-tall office building with nonstop brewing coffee machines and hundreds of coworkers. Her office is 20.33 million km² in size, and as a human, she is almost alone here. She selected this office at one of the coldest places on our planet, because of her love for mother nature and her passion for sharing that love with you. While she works on deck, she sees icebergs the size of buildings pass her by, and her heart begins to pound as her sailing boat turns into the fjord. After 28 days of searching and wearing a neoprene suit, she eventually finds what she had been searching for. Just a few minutes later, her equipment weighs her down. The suit is still wet but feels like a second skin; her camera and the underwater housing weigh heavy in her hands. Her friend and skipper, who knows when it’s time to get into the water, gives her no time to get ready. It’s perfect, right here, right now, so she must go. As she enters the water, she becomes weightless, the force of gravity is weakened, and she feels like an astronaut in space. Initially, she doesn’t feel the cold rush of water, she is excited and too focused on her surroundings. She is fully aware of the territory she’s entering, while swimming into the feeding grounds of Hydrurga leptonyx – the leopard seal. She doesn’t have time to check her camera settings. All attention is on the predator in front of her. She never allows the leopard seal to get between her and the camera and doesn’t take her eyes off her. Every- thing happens so fast. She comes straight up to her, with incredible speed, then left, then right, then up, and then down. She follows her with her eyes and turns with her. “Don’t let her get between me and my camera,” she repeatedly thinks like it’s the only thing that matters. She hears the shutter-release button clicking, and it feels too loud in a world where everything is silent.
What happens next is a once-in-a-lifetime experience…
17
MOTHER VOLUME ONE
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