My ANTARCTIC Clockwise, from above: Damon and his wife Hannah; beautiful Antarctica; Damon emerges from an ice hole with a plankton sample; Damon (back row, second from right) with the British Antarctic Survey wintering team, Signy Base, 1993; Damon’s 1993 diary entry describing a (cold!) water polo match
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Dr. Damon Stanwell-Smith, Head of Science and Sustainability at Viking Expeditions, reflects on his emotional connection with this icy wilderness
was an Antarctic diver.” A simplified description of my early career, yet when mentioned in social settings nearly thirty years after I first successfully applied for work as a marine biologist with the British Antarctic Survey, I still feel a tingle of excitement and the sense of immense privilege to have had the opportunity to experience the greatest wilderness on the planet. In 1992, I graduated from a marine biology degree at university and was immediately plunged into the extensive preparations required
for a deployment to Signy Base in the South Orkney Islands. With some pleasing symmetry, it included spending the summer in the (Northern) Orkney Islands, training in commercial diving within the deep and swirling waters of Scapa Flow. I couldn’t quite believe I was being paid to explore this diving Mecca of scuttled warships and Celtic mystery. After the course, I spent a weekend with friends by the coast on the South of England. It was October, and we were jumping in and out of the seasonally frigid sea, and I was the one complaining the
most about feeling cold. I was teased about my impending choice of subaquatic career and was privately crushed by shivering doubt that I was making a monumental mistake. However, the Southern Ocean beckoned and I was swept along with the regimented excitement of the long flights south, then boarding an ice-strengthened ship across the fearsome Scotia Sea to eventually reach our island home for the next three years. Myriad adventures followed – of discovery and selfdiscovery – with thirteen colleagues and many thousands of penguins and seals. VIKING
