Voyage of Discovery
Wanderlust Travel Magazine|May/June 2021
Sailing to the pristine White Continent is a privilege. So how about giving something back? We embark on a new trip that combines a mind-blowing Antarctic expedition with a bit of citizen science…
Mark Stratton
Voyage of Discovery

Like a rehabilitated Captain Ahab, Daniel Zitterbart led his scientists into the sort of supranatural stillness only Antarctica can deliver. I followed them in an inflatable Zodiac, cold snapping at my fingers, squinting at glossy icebergs fissured with stilton-blue veins, heading towards the spouts of vapour we could see suspended in Paradise Harbour’s frigid dawn. There she blows, as Captain Ahab would say.

Next to brash ice that glinted like rough-cut diamonds, two distant dark lines revealed themselves to be slumbering humpback whales, fat from gorging krill. Forty tonnes of rorqual, happily recovering since the 1986 ban on commercial whaling, before which they were slaughtered to near extinction by Ahab’s ilk.

There was no harpoon in Daniel’s hand, just a hi-tech $10,000 whale tag on a long carbon-fibre pole. His Zodiac manoeuvred alongside and he leaned out and slapped one of the humpbacks with the suction-cupped device (it would release after several hours). The whale started, arched and then dived, rocking the Zodiac as it went.

“It can be a little bit terrifying,” Daniel admitted later, “when these giant creatures are beneath your flimsy boat.”

Yet all went smoothly. Over the next few hours the scientists followed the tagged humpback around the ice-choked Southern Ocean bay on a quest to learn more about these secretive denizens of the deep.

ON A MISSION

Having previously visited Antarctica, I vowed I’d only return if I had a greater purpose. As demand grows (COVID-19 aside), the number of cruises heading to this pristine wilderness is projected to increase. Can Antarctica sustain higher levels of tourism? I wasn’t sure.

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