GOING SOUTH : A Southern Californian’s Six-Week Odyssey to Antarctica

IT WAS OUR EIGHTH DAY out of New Zealand aboard the expedition ship MV Greenpeace en route to a place described as barren, hostile and unforgiving--Antarctica. I had sighted my first iceberg only nine hours earlier, and now, at 4:30 in the morning, I left the bridge of the ship to make the customary rounds on my watch. I encountered Peter Malcolm, the assistant helicopter pilot, dancing on the helicopter deck. Exhausted and elated, he was celebrating his second journey to Antarctica. After a few moments, he stood still, and together we watched, awestruck by its immensity, an iceberg only 200 feet away, glowing an iridescent blue in the early light.

“Know what I love about icebergs?” Peter asked. “I love them because man cannot touch them; he cannot alter them in any way.” He added softly, “That’s why we have to make Antarctica a world park. Man needs one place on earth that is sacred, free of development.”

I served as ship’s doctor on the 1987-88 Greenpeace expedition that was the international environmental organization’s first resupply of the group’s Antarctic base, World Park Base. I had closed my family medical practice in Ventura four months earlier, in October, 1987, to join the expedition.

During my professional career, I had developed an interest in preventive medicine, the result of observing life-style abuses and environmental assaults on people. I mourned the destruction of the environment and the cavalier accumulation of waste. Greenpeace’s campaign to preserve the ecological health of Antarctica’s fragile, frozen environment appealed to me. Because I was committed to preserving health in people, it seemed natural to use my medical training to help preserve one of earth’s last great wilderness areas.

Greenpeace felt that its 1987-88 Antarctic season had been a success. The group’s first four-member team to spend the winter at World Park Base had survived the harsh climate (temperatures dip below -90 degrees Fahrenheit during the winters), and the effects of isolation. The overwinter team of volunteers--leader / mechanic, radio engineer, scientist and doctor--maintains the base, visits the research sites of various treaty nations, takes water and soil samples, conducts tests on waste-disposal practices and monitors potential environmentally unsound practices.

During our ambitious, six-week odyssey, which started during the midsummer month of January, we modified the modest three-building, 21x55-foot base, replaced the overwinter team with four new Greenpeace volunteers and visited other governmental bases in the surrounding area to assess their effect on the environment. The crew aboard the MV Greenpeace consisted of 32 volunteers from a mix of nationalities. Like one-third of those on board, I had neither worked for Greenpeace before this nor lived in a polar region. Although I agreed with the World Park concept in principle, I felt that I needed more than an abstraction to be genuinely committed to Antarctica’s protection. I needed to see the place for myself.

Compared to mighty U.S. Coast Guard icebreakers, which plow through sea ice as effortlessly as a champion skater cuts a figure eight, the 191-foot MV Greenpeace is a refitted oceangoing tug that must delicately maneuver around ice floes and iceberg pieces. For weeks before our departure on the morning of Jan. 23 from Lyttelton, New Zealand, Capt. Jim Cottier had been studying the satellite-generated ice charts. He was presented with a puzzle. If we left too early, we would have to wait at sea until the outer pack ice broke up enough to afford easy passage. If we delayed too long, however, we would reduce our effective time in Antarctica. Once the ice re-established its grip around the continent near the end of March, we could be stuck there for the winter, clasped in its icy-jawed grasp.

THE FIRST TEST of the crew’s capacity to combine planning, judgment and navigating ability comes with our arrival at the outer pack ice, 450 miles north of our destination, Ross Island.

At 4 a.m. Jan. 31, I report for watch duty. We are cruising “dead slow,” picking our way through the outer pack ice at 70 S latitude. The overcast skies, the relatively warm temperature of 30 degrees and gentle westerly breezes contrast with the tension on the bridge. Oblivious to the passage of time, I notice an impermeable band of white on the horizon. Despite numerous changes in course, we succeed only in skimming the border of the impassable ice. Finally, Robert (Black Bob) Graham, our second mate, orders the engines stopped, exhales deeply in frustration and asks me to summon Capt. Jim. I glance at the ship’s chronometer. It is 6:30. In 2 1/2 hours, we have progressed only six miles.

Jim arrives on the bridge with Garry Dukes, our helicopter pilot. They don disaster suits and fly the Hughes 500 toward the white band and out of sight. Black Bob, silent and grim, rolls a cigarette. Twenty minutes later, Jim and Garry return, elated.

“There’s a lead (a ribbon of clear water) to the west that should get us through. There’s not as much pack ice as we thought--only 10 miles or so. Then it’s easy sailing.” We breathe a sigh of relief as Bob orders the engines restarted. Three hours later, we clear our most formidable obstacle--Antarctica has opened its gates to us.

Early Feb. 2, under the overcast skies and snow flurries of a summer storm, we reach Cape Evans and the Greenpeace base. The members of the crew who dropped the wintering team off one year earlier anticipate the reunion. Two Zodiac inflatable boats are dispatched to carry the new wintering party and nine crew members to the old overwinter group--Kevin Conaglen (New Zealand), Gudrun Gaudian (West Germany), Cornelius Van Dorp (Netherlands / New Zealand) and Justin Farrelly (UK / New Zealand), who are waving, jumping and hugging each other in anticipation. Once ashore, the greeting party is pelted with snowballs. Cries of recognition and laughter pierce the eerie silence. Those of us watching from the ship feel a genuine rush of emotion ourselves as we watch the animated group huddle against the cold.

By the following afternoon, the tail end of the storm that greeted our arrival departs. Appearing through the gloom is the active volcano Mt. Erebus, its smooth white slopes ascending gracefully from a ridge behind the base, culminating in a feathery plume of white smoke from its 12,450-foot summit. Centuries of icy runoff formed the Barne Glacier, cradling the northern border of Cape Evans. Under a tireless sun that traces a counterclockwise orbit and never drops below the horizon, we work round the clock to complete the resupply and base modifications in the allotted 10 days.

We resurrect a prefabricated building left by another organization’s expedition two years before and link it via enclosed walkway to the main compound. A new, 10-meter-high base for the satellite radome is installed to improve communications. In accordance with Greenpeace’s aim to minimize human effect on the fragile environment, we erect a wind generator and solar panels to lessen dependence on the diesel generator.

All garbage, including human waste, is stored on the ship for removal, and a “bio-loo” (a toilet that turns all human waste into compost) is established. Occasionally, a lone Weddell seal or an Adelie penguin saunters up the beach, curious about the activity.

Having lived the past four years in Southern California, I am not prepared for the incredible clarity of the Antarctic air. The absence of dust and smog seems to compress distance. The Transantarctic Mountains, 60 miles across the Ross Sea, appear to be 10 miles away. Although the top of Mt. Erebus seems two miles off, it is actually 13.

For Sjoerd Jongens, a radio engineer and member of this year’s wintering team, this pristine place has proved irresistible. This is his eighth Antarctic expedition. Asked by a Dutch TV reporter what keeps drawing him back, he replies simply, “I love its purity.”

My impression of Antarctica’s unspoiled environment is shattered the day we visit the American scientific base at McMurdo station, 18 miles south of our base. Years of unchecked expansion have created a sprawling base the size of a small town. A chaotic array of buildings is flanked by a large garbage dump. Landfill adjacent to the ice wharf barely covers the remains of a lorry chassis, spare parts and car batteries. Outflow pipes are pouring sewage effluent into McMurdo Sound, and an oil pipe is leaking a steady drip of diesel onto the ice wharf.

Non-scientific support personnel who work at McMurdo and the New Zealand base visit the ship in droves to show their support for our goals. “I know Antarctica is beautiful and worth protecting as a world park,” a California woman tells me. “But, unless we are scientists who go on field trips, we are not allowed to leave McMurdo, so we never really see the full scope of its beauty.”

At McMurdo station, where about 1,000 scientists and support-team members live in the summer, research on a recently discovered hole in the ozone above Antarctica and the tip of South America will restart this month.

We spend our last full day at Cape Evans in a mass clean-up campaign, loading trash, wood scraps and the remainder of our waste containers into nets to be hoisted by helicopter on board the ship. Our visits to McMurdo and the nearby historic Scott’s Hut (built during the 1909 expedition of the South Pole explorer Robert Falcon Scott) remind us of the fate of all waste in this almost constant below-freezing environment: eternal preservation. I am struck by the same question that has inspired Greenpeace’s presence here: How can we justify letting rubbish and oil spills accumulate in these pristine surroundings?

Over the last few days, excitement has gradually developed, as Keith Swenson (United States), Sabine Schmidt (West Germany), Jongens (Australia / Netherlands) and Wojtek Moscal (Poland) take over the responsibilities on the tiny base they will be inhabiting over the next year. I am surprised by the outgoing wintering party’s reluctance to leave.

“If Greenpeace asked me to stay another year, I would,” the base doctor, Van Dorp, had confided to me earlier. Each evening as work slows down I watch Gaudian, last year’s marine biologist, wander toward Skua Lake, one of her favorite haunts. “I am really going to miss this place,” she laments. “I don’t want to leave. I could live here forever.” Antarctica has made her feel at peace with herself, she explains. Likewise, the crew has been touched by the continent’s purity and pristine majesty. I too will miss Antarctica. I want time to stand still.

At the farewell party on Valentine’s Day, sadness tempers the excitement. Many cry, others are silent, too emotional to share their feelings. Finally, the tiny Zodiac ferrying the overwintering team to the base fades from view as the ship slowly departs. A pod of orcas, killer whales, accompanies us into McMurdo Sound; swimming Adelie penguins and ice floes strewn with leopard seals remind us of the precious marine population that migrates here each summer.

Looking up from the teeming ocean, I notice that the base has disappeared beneath the vast expanse of Mt. Erebus. While I snap photographs, I try to commit the vision to memory. After two weeks on Ross Island, I feel as though part of my soul has been left behind. Antarctica’s austerity, inaccessibility and raw beauty have summoned a flood of tenderness and compassion. “I have often thought of the team we left on the base over the past year,” a veteran crew member reminisces. “Thinking about them in this beautiful, alien environment made me certain I had to come back this year. Once you experience Antarctica, it never leaves your heart.”