Our second day transiting the Scotia Sea drove home the absolute wilderness here in the Southern Ocean. For the last 48 hours we have seen no artificial light other than of our own making, nor evidence of other human activity upon the waves. We have driven through slightly lumpy seas this morning, which calmed to a placid, almost windless gray expanse this afternoon. What looks uniformly dull and barren to us above the water is a deception, however. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current swirls into eddies and streams, driven by the weather above and the ground below, stirring up nutrients and concentrating krill and plankton. Fish, seabirds, whales, and seals all are hunting the wild ocean for these swarms of abundant food.