At The Bottom Of The World

A growing number of travellers are sailing to Antarctica, lured by its majestic, surreal beauty, and spectacular wildlife. But as a bellwether of our planet’s health, the continent is also a focus for naturalists and climate scientists.

- James Draven

A smooth, serpentine form silently broke the surface. Right next to me. The creature’s foot-long head, glossed with a veneer of water, emerged wraithlike from the deep, the turned-up corners of its mouth set in a rictus grin. More unnerving still were its eyes, which appeared to scrutinise me. I got the impression I could easily have been its prey. Then it was gone.

It was the third day at sea on a two-week Antarctic excursion with Lindblad Expeditions, and several fellow passengers and I were in a Zodiac, accompanied by an underwater photog rapher and one of the naturalists from our ship’s 15-strong team of scientific specialists. As we crossed the stygian bay, enshrouded by mist, there was no sun, no moon—our primary reference point the watery mirror below. With little sense of time or space, we skimmed past sapphire-blue icebergs, the surroundings taking on the quality of a dreamscape, one populated by ink-outlined Adélie penguins that seemed to gaze at us with an almost spiritual serenity. Despite these impressions, this strange, icy land is a place of harsh realities.

Suddenly, a huge leopard seal lunged out of the water, its awesome fangs snapping closed on a penguin. The fierce predator played with its prey like a cat with a mouse, tossing the penguin around by its foot, repeatedly slamming the bird down against the water’s surface and hammering home its place in the food chain.

There’s an old mariners’ expression pertaining to the ferocious winds of the southern latitudes that goes: “Below 40 degrees south, there is no law; below 50 degrees south, there is no God.” To be sure, Antarctica, an immaculate wilderness without religion or nationality, is like nowhere else on earth. And thanks to the Antarctic Treaty System—signed by 53 nations—it is also a place for global cooperation for science.