At Sea
Today we are crossing the Scotia Sea, a small piece of the great Southern Ocean bounded by a ring of island chains. These wild and icy bits of rock, the South Shetlands, the South Orkneys, the South Sandwich Islands and South Georgia, define the Scotia Sea by delineating its borders, but more than anything else, it is this remote and little known sea that has created and defined Antarctica as we know it today.
30 million years ago the Scotia Sea did not exist, and the Drake Passage was closed by a continuous range of mountains that connected the southern Andes with the peaks of the Antarctic Peninsula. This narrow strip of dry land linking South America and Antarctica had a tremendous effect on the climate of the region. Cold waters, moving east on circumpolar currents, were deflected north along the west side of the mountains, and warmer waters flowed south on the eastern side of the chain to replace them. This constant influx of heat, brought south from near the equator by the currents, was enough to prevent continental ice sheets from forming, even over the South Pole. Antarctica was then, and had been for many millions of years, a much more temperate place than the white continent we know today.
The opening of the Drake and the creation of the Scotia Sea changed all that. As South America and Antarctica drew further apart, a narrow tongue of crust forced its way between the two continents, bulldozing some of the islands of the Scotia Arc into their modern positions (South Georgia) and creating others (the South Sandwich Islands). Most important for the climate of the entire south polar continent, this opened the way for the endless circling of the West Wind Drift, the uninterrupted circumpolar current that has kept Antarctica locked the deep freeze for the past 25 million years.
This long isolation is strongly reflected in the unique marine life of Antarctica’s seas. 95% of Antarctic fish, 90% of sea spiders and over 50% of all other groups measured here are endemic, found only in these freezing waters of the far south. Antarctica is like a continental Galápagos, cut off from the rest of the planet by barriers of temperature and distance and left in splendid isolation. Today we travel across the sea that created the place we have come to visit; this is the sea that brought the ice, the sea that slammed the door shut, the sea that made the white continent and allowed all of her wonders to be born.
Today we are crossing the Scotia Sea, a small piece of the great Southern Ocean bounded by a ring of island chains. These wild and icy bits of rock, the South Shetlands, the South Orkneys, the South Sandwich Islands and South Georgia, define the Scotia Sea by delineating its borders, but more than anything else, it is this remote and little known sea that has created and defined Antarctica as we know it today.
30 million years ago the Scotia Sea did not exist, and the Drake Passage was closed by a continuous range of mountains that connected the southern Andes with the peaks of the Antarctic Peninsula. This narrow strip of dry land linking South America and Antarctica had a tremendous effect on the climate of the region. Cold waters, moving east on circumpolar currents, were deflected north along the west side of the mountains, and warmer waters flowed south on the eastern side of the chain to replace them. This constant influx of heat, brought south from near the equator by the currents, was enough to prevent continental ice sheets from forming, even over the South Pole. Antarctica was then, and had been for many millions of years, a much more temperate place than the white continent we know today.
The opening of the Drake and the creation of the Scotia Sea changed all that. As South America and Antarctica drew further apart, a narrow tongue of crust forced its way between the two continents, bulldozing some of the islands of the Scotia Arc into their modern positions (South Georgia) and creating others (the South Sandwich Islands). Most important for the climate of the entire south polar continent, this opened the way for the endless circling of the West Wind Drift, the uninterrupted circumpolar current that has kept Antarctica locked the deep freeze for the past 25 million years.
This long isolation is strongly reflected in the unique marine life of Antarctica’s seas. 95% of Antarctic fish, 90% of sea spiders and over 50% of all other groups measured here are endemic, found only in these freezing waters of the far south. Antarctica is like a continental Galápagos, cut off from the rest of the planet by barriers of temperature and distance and left in splendid isolation. Today we travel across the sea that created the place we have come to visit; this is the sea that brought the ice, the sea that slammed the door shut, the sea that made the white continent and allowed all of her wonders to be born.
