Antarctic diary: 'Before I'd finished my tea, I'd seen three pods of whales'
Our environment correspondent Matthew Taylor travelled to an unforgettable region to witness the threat it faces
Matthew Taylor
Sat 3 Mar 2018 07.48 EST
5 February, Punta Arenas, Chile
I have arrived in Punta Arenas on the southern tip of Chile after a 24-hour whistlestop tour of South American airports. Pleased to see my bags have made it too. I was asked to avoid packing synthetic and down clothing wherever possible because it could contaminate the environment, so was pleased all those carefully selected natural fibres had made it with me across the Atlantic. Luke, my press contact at Greenpeace, meets me, which is just as well as I don’t really speak Spanish. We get a taxi to the dock and I have my first view of the Arctic Sunrise – the Greenpeace ship last in the news when it was stormed by the Russian FSB in the Arctic. It is bustling with people fixing things, loading things, working and chatting. Everyone is friendly. I wonder about the different stories that bring them all here. Are they the kind of people who want to jump off the edge of the map, as Werner Herzog found in his documentary about the Antarctic? The ship is smaller than I’d imagined and more “workmanlike”. If I had ever been in any doubt, I now realise that the next two weeks, crossing some of the roughest water in the world to a place that is mostly uninhabitable, isn’t going to be a cruise.
6 February, Punta Arenas
We were meant to set sail first thing this morning. But the ship is still a flurry of activity and the weather in the Drake Passage – the notorious stretch of water between South America and the Antarctic – is described as “not good”, so we have to wait. I decide to stretch my legs with a walk into the centre of Punta Arenas. It starts off well with a magical view out over forbidding seas towards the Southern Ocean, and I think I spot an albatross. But it ends more prosaically when I am attacked by a dog.
7 February, Punta Arenas
At breakfast I hear sobering tales of the passage ahead. Apparently the ship is notorious for its pitching and rolling, and known affectionately as the “washing machine.” The ship’s doctor, a lovely man, said it can be so severe the walls become the floor and if you hold on to the rail on the bridge your legs fly up behind you so you effectively do a handstand. In the afternoon, I work in my cabin – I want to make sure I make the most of the trip journalistically. Greenpeace is supporting an EU-backed proposal to create the world’s biggest ocean sanctuary in the waters around Antarctica – seas controlled by a disparate group of countries including the UK, US and Australia. While here I hope to report on the undiscovered ecosystems discovered by scientists on board the ship, the threats facing wildlife because of climate change and krill fishing, and the state of the Antarctic ice shelves. But at least as important for me is to soak up as much as I can of this place, and to absorb any wider lessons there may be here for the broader environment movement.
8 February, Punta Arenas
Did some exercise in the makeshift gym in the hold (a couple of yoga mats, some free weights, a rowing machine and exercise bike) before breakfast. At 8am it is cleaning duty – as I am not crew I don’t have to help out but was told that it aids morale if people pitch in. Surprisingly I have found I quite enjoy sweeping the corridors and cleaning the toilets – it makes me feel, in a very small way, part of the daily routine of life on board. We are due to set sail today and at lunch I overhear the captain and some of the engineers laughing as the “newbies” (journalists, photographers, Greenpeace campaign team) tumble into the mess, talking and laughing. They say something along the lines of “look at them all laughing and happy now ... they have no idea what is coming”.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/03/antarctica-diary-environment-matthew-taylor-threat-greenpeace
= new reply since forum marked as read
When something bad happens to someone crossing the Drake - the most frequent comment is...
"Someone forgot to rub The Toe"....