FOCUS ON ANTARCTICA
BY SUE HENDERSON
V O L U M E 2 0 2 3 • I S S U E N O . 1 A MONOGRAPH COLLECTION
BY SUE HENDERSON
CONTENTS
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NOTES-FROM-SUE
PAGE 5
PENGUINS RULE THE ROOST
PAGE 8
COLORS ABOUND
PAGE 13
THE DRAKE
PAGE 14
ICE EVERYWHERE
PAGE 20
THE ALBATROSS
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LANDSCAPES
PAGE 24
EPILOGUE
NOTESFROM-SUE
The ancient Greeks reasoned there must exist a great landmass on the far end of the globe. Antarctica was imagined before it was seen. And we had long dreamt of stepping on our seventh continent and appreciating the journey of the mind as much as navigating the physical terrain.
Like the great explorers I studied, success on such an expedition isn’t about brute strength or even endurance, but the ability to remind oneself of the joy of living.
We had underestimated the science we would encounter on the Hurtigruten expedition vessel named for the great Norwegian explorer, Fridtjof Nansen. We were honored to experience the onboard scientist’s lessons and expertise in a true understanding of the vastness of the continent.
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As photographers, there were challenges in light, equipment and conditions which were an adventure unto themselves. These images were all taken with an Iphone 14 Pro which was hung around my neck on a lanyard allowing maximum protection from elements and immediate accessibility.
We've chosen to concentrate on the continent and not the voyage in this monograph. Please reach out if you'd like details of the trip.
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PENGUINS RULE THE ROOST
The Romanian zoologist, Emil Racovita, on the Belgica expedition in 1898, couldn’t resist describing the two penguin species that dominated the area in vividly anthropomorphic terms.
The chinstrap, he wrote, could be identified by a ‘thin black line that curls up on its white cheek like a musketeer’s mustache. This gives the penguin a pugnacious air which corresponds well to its character.” Chinstraps are prone to bickering over small patches of territory.
More congenial and cooperative – and colorful – were the gentoo penguins. Racovitza described them as “slightly larger than the chinstrap and more sumptuously dressed,” with their scarlet beaks and feet, and their black heads adorned with a white diadem.
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Penguins were very busy in late November when we came across them building nests, mating, and engaging in humorous courtship rituals such as presenting their prospective lover with a snow rock. The paired lovers then would stand side by side, gawking loudly. They seemed to love walking in lines leaving their pink guano in penguin highways.
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COLORS ABOUND
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The sun never sets during the summers, so the evening hour is a long flirtation between the sun and the horizon. Wisps of cloud turned violet, and streaks of sapphire blue appeared behind the peaks of the white-capped mountains. It seems that the sky is not only above you, but also next to and in front of you.
Antarctica is a playground for light. The sun’s rays glance off the earth at a low angle, bend and twist through the stratosphere, and refract in the icy air.
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THE DRAKE
The Drake Passage, the most dreaded bit of ocean on the globe, is where nature has been given a proving ground on which to demonstrate what she can do if left alone. The results are impressive.
“The winds were such as if the bowels of the earth had set all at liberty,” wrote Francis Fletcher, a priest aboard Francis Drake’s Golden Hind, “or as if the clouds under heaven had been called together, to lay their force on that one place.” The five hundred miles that separate Cape Horn from the South Shetland Islands became known as the Drake Passage. Another sixty-five miles – the Bransfield Strait – lie between those islands and the Antarctic Peninsula, or Graham Land, the continent’s outstretched finger.
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ICE EVERYWHERE
Blue ice is essentially ancient ice. It starts as snowfall that compacts over time so that the air between the flakes is squeezed out. Eventually – in five hundred years or so – it becomes so dense that it absorbs different light waves and appears blue.
Icebergs, in their infinite variety. They all had the same origin: when a chunk of glacier broke off and crashed into the water but then took a different journey as the sea began to sculpt them.
On average, about 7/8 of an iceberg’s mass lies below the surface. A berg that reaches two hundred feet above sea level can have a fourteen-hundred-foot keel.
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"I started to think about how the ice around me was patient. It had been here for thousands of years, showing its age with brilliant shades of blue."
- Liv Arnesen
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THE ALBATROSS
Hour after hour the albatross circled overhead. There was an elegance of motion to the bird’s flight that was very nearly hypnotic. One could hardly avoid a feeling of envy.
It soared with an ease and grace that was poetic, riding the gale on wings that never moved, sometimes dropping to within 10 feet of the ship, then rising almost vertically on the wind, a hundred, two hundred feet, only to plunge downward again in a beautifully effortless sweep.
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LANDSCAPES
When conditions were perfect, two perpendicular lines of light, vertical and horizontal, connected four illusory orbs, intersecting in the center to form an enormous, talismanic cross known as a parhelic circle.
Captain Georges Lecointe (of the Belgica) described it with reverential awe. “You feel that there is something else besides the earth. The sort of religiosity makes you sense a God, a vastly superior being.”
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EPILOGUE
For millions of years, Antarctica’s glaciers have flowed into the sea, calving icebergs at a slow and sustainable rate. In the past few decades, that rate has rapidly increased as temperatures in the region have shot up to alarming levels. During a heat wave in February 2020, they reached a record 69 degrees at the tip of Graham Land.
Our brief visit and participation in citizen science projects solidified our concern for leaving the world a better place.
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Sometimes science is the excuse for exploration. I think it is rarely the reason. - George Leigh Mallory
Research Bibliography
Madhouse at the End of the Earth, Julian Sancton, The Belgica's Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night
The Stowaway, Laurie Gwen Shapiro, A Young Man's Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica
Endurance, Alfred Lansing, Shakleton's Incredible Voyage
No Horizon is So Far, Liv Arnesen & Ann Bancroft, Two women and their extraordinary Journey Across Antarctica
www.focusbyhenderson.com
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