Drake Passage
I have been to a place where ice composes the most important geological feature, the most vital force affecting life, where ice takes the role of rich topsoil, destructive hurricane and sudden wildfire. No, not gelid, not that cold. It is a constant place, a consistent place where the temperature always hovers around freezing, never too cold, never too hot. This would be the sea around Antarctica – the pack ice that covers it in the winter and the glacial ice that sails across it as berg, growler, bit and brash.
Beneath the pack ice, on the ice, there are fields of algae, the basis of an all-important ecosystem that includes the krill, almost everything’s favorite food. The pack itself contains nutrients and colonists – frozen algae and bacteria, most dead, but a few alive, albeit quiescent, until the pack melts. In the Austral spring, with the coming of the sun, it is the edge of the melting pack that blooms; it is the total area of pack that determines whether it will be a good krill year or a bad krill year. The glacial ice is different. It is a force, a storm, repeatedly grounding, then floating on the flooding tide, scouring and dredging, crushing and digging, but not necessarily destroying as much as providing opportunities – an unexpected meal, the loss of a competitor, a bit of chaos that is an advantage to some. The picture provides a rare sight for a human, the bottom of an iceberg at over 200 feet below the surface of the sea, for those beneath it could be beautiful or terrifying or most likely not noticed at all. But this is all at our backs now as we cruise towards summer with green forest and bright flowers, northward across the Drake Passage.
I have been to a place where ice composes the most important geological feature, the most vital force affecting life, where ice takes the role of rich topsoil, destructive hurricane and sudden wildfire. No, not gelid, not that cold. It is a constant place, a consistent place where the temperature always hovers around freezing, never too cold, never too hot. This would be the sea around Antarctica – the pack ice that covers it in the winter and the glacial ice that sails across it as berg, growler, bit and brash.
Beneath the pack ice, on the ice, there are fields of algae, the basis of an all-important ecosystem that includes the krill, almost everything’s favorite food. The pack itself contains nutrients and colonists – frozen algae and bacteria, most dead, but a few alive, albeit quiescent, until the pack melts. In the Austral spring, with the coming of the sun, it is the edge of the melting pack that blooms; it is the total area of pack that determines whether it will be a good krill year or a bad krill year. The glacial ice is different. It is a force, a storm, repeatedly grounding, then floating on the flooding tide, scouring and dredging, crushing and digging, but not necessarily destroying as much as providing opportunities – an unexpected meal, the loss of a competitor, a bit of chaos that is an advantage to some. The picture provides a rare sight for a human, the bottom of an iceberg at over 200 feet below the surface of the sea, for those beneath it could be beautiful or terrifying or most likely not noticed at all. But this is all at our backs now as we cruise towards summer with green forest and bright flowers, northward across the Drake Passage.
