by Pirkko Lindberg, Schildts, 1993
So we turned north-westward towards the South Orkneys, towards the ice- trap, the place of doom for ships where miles of ice grind eternally and in silence.
F.O. Ommanney
"Mate por favor." "Gracias, muchas gracias, señor!" I grab the gourd with the finely worked silver pipe, suck, oh god it's thick and bitter, looks like spinach soup...We slurp, we share, because this is strong stuff and you can get dizzy! We are standing around the officer's mess at the Argentinian naval base "Orcadas" on the island of Laurie, once discovered and "owned" by the Scottish Bruce expedition that landed here in 1902. Laurie belongs to the South Orkney Islands and is the oldest of all existing bases in Antarctica. In 1905 the base, which was only a seven meter high and a few hundred meters long strip of land between two ice-clad land formations unfit for living, was offered by the Scots to the British who in turn gave it to the Argentinians.
The trip to this place, in a slant against the westerly waves, presented us with the worst seas we have ever experienced. Everything that was loose flew around in my cave-like cabin and above, in the radio operator's cabin, Laura's and my colleague Michael Cross slept with his pc under his pillow from where, long before dawn, he proceeded to dispatch a couple of articles to London as usual. And by the crack of dawn the faces in the mess were sickly green with yellow shadows under the eyes, the hatches were screwed onto the portholes and through the roaring and the crashing of enormous seas against the bow of the Gondwana you could hardly hear the faint scraping of the cereal spoons. But out on deck the air was sparkling and fresh, and when we arrived in Scotia Bay the wind had died down and we were easily able to lower the zodiaks into the water. The base offers the usual view of an orange-colored group of houses on iron stilts, strongly anchored to the ground by wires in order not to blow away. Orcadas is a military base and unusually well maintained. Some fifty men and no woman except for the pictures of virgens on the walls are manning the base. The only thing Greenpeace finds to object to is the sewage pipe which spews its untreated sewage straight into the sea. In addition, Dana and Janet suggest that the commander, Captain Kammerath, purchase a wind generated power plant.
Down by Scotia Bay the ruins of the old stone hut of the Scottish Bruce-expedition, "Omond House," still remain. The Scotia left Scotland Sunday, November 2nd 1902 to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. The pious local paper bitterly complained the next day that the people on the pier had desecrated the sabbath by singing worldly songs instead of psalms! The Bruce expedition consisted of scientists and sailors plus one bagpipe player who also worked as a lab technician. They were the first not only to eat penguins and use them as fuel but also to study them seriously.
We spread out over the isthmus to make observations. At the edge of the base I suddenly find myself in front of a small cemetery. The word PAX is scratched into a rotting piece of board. The graves don't number more than ten, the mounds made of cobble-stones are coffin-length and decorated with plastic flowers. On one of the graves a chin-strap penguin stands at strict attention at the foot of the cross. I lean forward to read the faded text: John Elieson, born 24.1.1883, died 20.8. 1910. Only 27 years old, this Swede (or Norweigan) had died here, and what on earth was he doing here with the Argentinians? Nobody knows, not even the officer who is in charge of the small museum.
But Hartwig Baghe lost his life during a--probably daring--skiing expedition, his one whole and his other broken ski are both nailed to the wall of the museum.
Werner waves enthusiastically from a gravel ridge. After I've climbed up there I understand why: on a strip of land stretching out toward a romantically blueish glacier backdrop lie an enormous heap of moulting elephant seals. All of them are males and they weigh in at a respectable 4000 kilos each. Their snores sound like thunderclaps, they wake up and glance around with sleepy red eyes, scratch themselves with their flippers on their stomachs and chins, and with great precision they throw black sand over their backs and sometimes raise their heads to trumpet. That sound produces a very unexpected association--to the call of the whooping swan.
There was a time when the blubber of the elephant seals was used, among other things, to light the streetlights that illuminated the cities of Europe and America. We are standing on a field of cobble-stones and on every flat piece of rock fur seals keep their eyes on us and utter warning growls if we get too close. I am seized by a feeling of déja vu; as if I've been here before, washed up onto this frozen string of gravel; a memory works itself up--oh yes, it was Kipling who swept me into the freezing polar seas where Kotick the white seal finally finds a resting place.
"where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow;
Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!"
Kotick found a tunnel under a rock which led to a lagoon out of reach for man. And all the seals that we see are descendants of Kotick, of small hidden groups that managed to sneak away from the hunters and thus escape the clubs. But elephant seals were not protected until 1972, they used to shoot them in the mouth with sporting rifles, and there were times when the hunters were in such a hurry to collect sealskins that they skinned seals that were still living. The hunters also had no compunction to rob the single egg from albatross nests which the birds only lay every other year. And since amusements were at a premium they also used to wring the neck of the adult birds, just for fun.
On my way down to Scotia Bay I pass the cemetery once more. And still he's sitting there, the patient chin-strap penguin, on the grave of young John Elieson, a small guardian in tails and a black hat with a band under his chin, taut around the round white cheeks.
On Maundy Thursday we arrive at the Chilean base O'Higgins at the very tip of the Antarctic peninsula. The Godwana drops anchor right next to a fabulously "weatherbitten" iceberg a couple of kilometers from the base. The iceberg, the size of a three-story house, is stranded here and offers a beauty of color and form that lures us all out on deck with our cameras. It shimmers in blue and rose, and a few meters above the water line the ice forms a many-layered festooned border that during the melting process has pushed down a curtain of gleaming icicles thick as arms. We circle the iceberg on our way to the base and each one of us breaks an icicle for a popsicle but we are disappointed. They are bitterly salty.
The Bernardo O'Higgins base is comparatively small, manned only by 4 officers and 15 soldiers. The Antarctic Treaty expects some sort of research to be conducted on these bases and for that reason three Bavarians have just arrived at O'Higgins in order to, among other things, look into the possible influence of the greenhouse effect on the continental ice mass. Four of us receive an invitation for dinner at the base the following day. In addition to Laura, the radio operator Sjoerd Jongens and our polyglott interpreter Dima Litvinov, I, too, am invited. On the eve of Good Friday a young velvet-eyed lieutenant, Diego Torres, welcomes us on the bridge. We pass the bust of Bernardo O'Higgins, the revolutionary leader and the father of Chile. Surrounded by molting gentoo penguin chicks and with blind eyes he surveys the Antarctica that he is said to have had a vision of on his deathbed as he raised a trembling arm and, pointing south, mumbled Magellanes Magellanes, which was sees as a vision of the land of Chile stretched out all the way to the distant Polo Sur--the South Pole. A point, however, which the year 1842 on the map was situated in an area labeled "Fog banks."
We enter the main building. Torres proudly shows us a hardwood chest filled with earth gathered from all the provinces of Chile, including this one. "Because this is a part of our country," he states seriously, and I recall that the dictator Pinochet on his first visit here is said to have fallen to his knees and kissed the permanently frozen ground. The problem of course is that exactly the same piece of the continental pie is being claimed by Argentina as well as by Great Britain.
Dressed in our thick mustang suits and rubber-clad superboots we stomp past the clinic where a bone white Jesus hangs on his crucifix above the dentist's chair and through the pool hall where thick baroque-legged tables wait for their players. Torres leads us all the way to a double door which is opened wide from the inside and we are welcomed with outstreched arms by Captain Angelo Palazzi, second in command on O'Higgins. We rub our eyes, because the room we have entered is so unreal on these latitudes that we have reason to suspect that a time machine has thrown us back to the fin de siecle Budapest! The spacious salon is an elegant combination of officer's mess, salon, and a bar, dominated by enormous silk-covered and somewhat sagging sofas and armchairs arranged around small polished tables. From the wall, the commander-in-chief of the army, A. Pinochet, looks at us with frozen superiority. Behind the bar stands a bartender in tails--señor Edmondo Gutierrez, an older gentleman with slicked-back hair and an Anastas Mikoyan-nose. This ghost from the Hapsburg empire now offers each of us a glass of pisco sauer, the chilean national drink par préférence. The schmaltzy melody in the background is described by Captain Palazzi as military folk music. We sit down to the table. Señor Gutierrez comes with the appetizers. Palazzi and Torres propose a toast to Greenpeace despite the fact that the day before the activists have discovered a huge open garbage dump not far from the base. The entrée--in honor of the crucified Saviour, a greyish fish--is presented and Dima raises her glass for the "world nature park of Antarctica" belonging to itself and to all mankind, and Palazzi and Torres nod politely even though one may assume that they are crossing their toes under the table. At that very moment señor Gutierrez mounts a tripod and flashes a whole series of pictures of us. "Our chef is also a photographer," Captain Palazzi explains, and as he is saying this, Gutierrez executes a series of light leaps across the floor and lands behind us. He skilfully balances a tray in his hand and his face has hardly had time to break into a bitter smile before the camera on the tripod fires off, thus recording everybody in the room which is already beginning to be filled by an almost inperceptible twilight. "Our garçon isn't just a photographer" Torres says. "He is also one of the country's best parachutists, with tens of thousands of jumps to his credit...""But here in Antarctica, we were only able to offer him the role of waiter," Palazzi fills in.
The pitch black coffee is taken in the woolly soft armchairs. Behind the row of windows the sky is turning overcast and a warning crackles out of Sjoerd's walkie-talkie urging us to return to the Gondwana before we might be surprised by one of those catabatic storms that are born within one second in Antarctica and that the next second already might develop into a raging fury that can last for many days. We wiggle into our thick suits and express our thanks. Captain Palazzi searches his pocket: do you want to see a picture of my wife? She's a captain too. The picture shows a svelte woman in uniform. One of her feet in a shiny boot is stretched forward as if she were practicing ballet. With a hispanic glow lieutenant Torres sticks a map in front of our noses one last time. "This belongs to us, this belongs to us," he insists, "even the Pope said so in 1494..." We again pass by the baroque pool table and the clinic with the bone white Christ and the sacred chest with earth from all the provinces of Chile including this one.
Once outside, we are met by mild breezes and in the wet snow the moulting penguin chicks are stomping around the huge white parabolic ear of the Germans which is listening intently to messages from its master, the ERS 1 satellite high up there in the ozoneless skies. Another flock of penguins has gathered by the red painted niche of a shrine containing a virgen in a stiff blue dress, and it looks exactly as if they were worshipping her with small nods and bows. One of them even glides on his stomach all the way to the feet of the virgin and lets out a sharp cry. Perhaps he is asking for her help to banish the foreign giant penguins from his territory?
"So it was right here, with this instrument..."Laura, Michael and I are standing in front of the telescope-like object with which two scientists here on the British Faraday base discovered the ozone-hole, and first didn't "believe their eyes" and later mistrusted the instrument's data. Through a large window a light of unearthly transluceny streams in--and this is supposed to be late fall down here! A lingering feeling of unease takes hold of me, a pale ghost wraps itself around the throat and gropes its way with a deathly pale round mouth against my ear, whispering: "It's because the hole is there, you stupid, and the sun that now shines is going to scorch the earth and all that lives and breathes there, in the large hour-glass you and your likes only have a few grains of sand left!" I look at Laura and Michael, and they return my look with the same seriousness, we watch wordlessly through the window. This has got to be the most beautiful view in the world, under the clear blue vault of the sky mountains and ridges are draped in a dazzling whiteness, nothing stains this purity, far away the water is open, a smoothly billowing silky expanse perforated by glittering spots of sun, and here of all places it was discovered, the wound that we have caused heaven itself, the wound we have caused all of nature, and I remember what I have learnt: pressed together, the ozone molecules form a shield of three millimeters against the deadly ultraviolet rays of the sun.
"The situation is very grave," says the female scientist Robin Ross on the American Palmer base where we visit the following day. "Our quintet of scientists--two men and three women--that studied the ozone hole last fall were chocked by the extent of it, and they are deeply worried about the accelerating thinning of the O3-layer, and they are going to underscore how alarming the results of their studies are..." Dr. Ross herself specializes in the biology of the ocean. "Have you noticed if the increased uv-radiation has decreased the amount of phytoplankton, the kind of plankton that is the food source of the krill?" Dr. Ross exhibits the carefulness of the scientist: "There are fluctuations, it's too early to say anything..."
A few months later there is nevertheless a notice in the paper that reports a decrease of more than 10% of the phytoplankton, which indicates that the fine veil of floating dots of the plant kingdom--in the microscope you can see thousands of small stars in one single drop, like microscopic thistledown in fragile chains; the basis of all life in Antarctica--that this veil is just as vulnerable as the ozone layer up in the skies. A few days later when I report this per telephone to Radio Sweden along with other news about the disappearing ozone layer, I get report in return: for the first time now, a hole in the ozone layer has been reported over Scandinavia as well.
Despite the fact that it's getting dark and cold I remain on the aft deck. It's been a beautifully sunny day, we have passed it on an abandoned Chilean station where the previous Greenpeace expedition noticed that barrels full of oil had started to rust and where we now brought ashore brand new barrels into which the oil was pumped and which were then rolled inside a shelter away from the elements. The Godwana moves through the bay in the Gerlach straits called Bahia Paraiso, glides on quarter speed between huge growlers--the type of iceberg that won't show up on a radar screen. I am now richly rewarded for my patience: We pass close by an ice floe where an enormous leopard seal lies stretched out. Because of his lack of experience with human evil or perhaps because he is lazy, he doesn't bother to slide into the water but remains, slowly wagging his reptile-like head, a sinister smile on his lips. His whole being is more lizard than seal, and he is the only animal that Werner warned us newcomers against in his preparatory lecture in Ross' Sea."He is as fast as an anaconda...he'll consider you prey and if he is hungry he'll grab you and pull you under the water, and he is three meters long and weighs around 400 kilos, so your chances of wrestling him down are rather slim...keep away from him, and scream if he attacks you!"
But here I can contemplate this speckled beast of prey in peace. His back is dark green and purple, the face is freckled like an Irishman's, his belly and flippers have a hard enamel-like luster. There is somethings bonelessly supple about the slim body and his eyes, turned toward the Gondwana, are scornful: You're bigger than I, but so what, I'm in my element and I won't budge an inch for you...
Lucky leopard seal! There he lies, warm and content in his blubber costume, and he doesn't need the logistics and arrangements without which we humans would instantly perish down here. He doesn't get restless without beer cans, chewing gum and potato chips, and he is very attractive without gel for his hair or toothpaste; he uses neither belt nor underwear--without carrying an ounce more than his superb body he's got all he needs in this world.
The Gondwana glides slowly forward, and soon I can hardly make out the leopard seal in the gathering darkness. I salute him with my hand: he is back there, still looking at us, that handsome beast of prey, while his aqua blue bed slowly rocks from side to side in the soft waves from our wake.
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