All about Antarctica

Throughout this podcast, we have traced the history of Antarctica from its geologic origins, its earliest discovery and the first people to set foot there, to the first research stations and into the modern world. Even though Antarctica has been impacted throughout the past 120 years from research stations, tourism, and external anthropogenic factors such as climate change and pollution, it still remains the most remote and pristin...

Fisheries for fin fish and krill began to increase in Antarctica in the late 1960s and 1970s and by 1982 the krill catch rose to a peak of over 520,000 tons removed. This increased harvest caused concern among scientists in Antarctic Treaty nations that fish and krill stocks would be depleted beyond recovery unless steps were taken to manage these fisheries. Here I discuss measures taken to avoid the loss of critical and keystone m...

Although Antarctica is still the most remote and pristine place on earth, there have been many human-caused impacts to this continent and the marine environment around it. These impacts include pollution from research stations, tourism, and introduced species.  In this podcast, I discuss these impacts and how they led to the Environmental Protocol in the Antarctic Treaty in 1991. In addition, I give the history of tourism and ...

Research stations in Antarctica must overcome three obstacles: logistics for how to build and maintain them, climate control for comfortable temperatures, and comfort in general for the personnel including space to spread out, quality of food, health and safety, and some leisure time.  In this podcast I describe how the first stone and wood huts in the Antarctic used for science and exploration only partially solved these prob...

After the International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958, Antarctica became a focus of scientific research that continues to this day. In 1958, most of Antarctica was under territorial claims by seven nations, with overlapping claims between Britain, Chile, and Argentina leading to conflicts.  The U.S. President at the time, Dwight D. Eisenhower, called for claimant nations to hold a series of meetings and work out an agreement s...

Following Shackleton’s death in 1922 which marked the end of the Heroic Age in Antarctic history, no major expedition occurred to Antarctica until 1928 when a naval aviator, Richard Byrd, ventured south with ambitions to be the first person to fly over the south pole. In this podcast, I provide the history of Byrd's expedition and his research station Little America on the Ross Ice Shelf. In addition, I discuss the territorial clai...

As we enter the heart of the Heroic Age in Antarctica, three men become competitors to be the first person to reach the South Pole: Robert Falcon Scott, Ernest Shackleton, and Roald Amundsen.  Scott and Shackleton had a falling out after Scott's Discovery expedition when he blamed Shackleton's illness with scurvy as why they didn't reach the pole at that time.  Here I give the history of Shackleton's attempt to reach the ...

Antarctica is a huge continent, over 5 million square miles in size. Yet, it was not until the 1820s that humans first set foot upon it, and not until the first half of the 20th century before it was finally confirmed that it really was one large continent under the ice. Why did it take so long to learn this about Antarctica? In this episode I discuss the earliest explorers who went south in search of  a 'lost continent' and t...

When the topic of penguins is raised, most people tend to think only about Antarctica as their habitat. However, of the 19 living species only five actually occur in Antarctica and of those, only two are endemic there. In this episode I describe the breeding cycle and adaptations of these species to the cold Antarctic environment. The cold, dry conditions also preserve tissues in ancient deposits which is the subject of my own rese...

Marine mammals in Antarctica can be divided into two major groups: the pinnipeds and the cetaceans. Pinnipeds can be further divided into two groups, true seals in the family Phocidae and sea lions in the family Otariidae, while cetaceans are either toothed, or Odontocetes, or baleen whales, the Mysticetes. We have all four of these groups of marine mammals in Antarctica that are briefly described here. Four of the phocid seals are...

Although only about 2% of Antarctica is exposed as ice-free land, there are hundreds of lakes found there that vary from freshwater to saline.  There are even hundreds more that are below the ice sheets that have been hidden and isolated there for millions of years.  In this episode, I review the different types of lakes found in Antarctica and the life within them. These lakes include the most saline lake on earth, Don J...

Fully terrestrial life in Antarctica is extremely limited with only two flowering plants and no vertebrates (no polar bears!). Penguins and seals come ashore to breed or molt, but these are marine vertebrates. In this episode, I explore the plant and animal life in terrestrial environments in Antarctica. While limited to ice-free regions, there are hundreds of species of mosses and lichens. Invertebrates are limited to nematodes, s...

In Part IV of this podcast, I described how sea ice forms and traps marine algae that can grow in the ice before it’s released back into the ocean when the ice melts. This process drives marine productivity in Antarctica starting with krill, a small crustacean that is a keystone species there. In this episode, the life cycle of krill is described and why it is so important in the marine food web. The rich diversity of benthic inver...

Although the giant ice sheets that cover Antarctica formed by 14 million years ago, constant movement and replacement of this ice means that none of it today is older than about 1 million years. Air bubbles trapped in this ice when it formed provide a record of our atmosphere in the past. In this episode, I describe how ice cores can retrieve important paleoclimatic data on earth's history over the past 800,000 years. This record r...

Sea ice is a major feature of Antarctica and has considerable influence on ocean currents and marine ecology. In this episode I describe how sea ice forms and traps marine algae that stimulates the marine food web when the ice melts.  Thus, sea ice provides a direct link between the physical and biological worlds that is important for marine productivity all the way up the food chain to penguins, seals, and whales.  Sea i...

How did the Antarctic continent become covered with an ice sheet that is up to 4 km thick?  In this episode I explain how this ice sheet developed and its influence on modern climate there. I also describe the origin of the giant floating ice shelves in Antarctica and how katabatic winds help make this continent the coldest, windiest and most remote place on earth. The isolation of Antarctica with the development of the Antarc...