Part III: Antarctica and Academe - Scott Polar Research Institute

Comprising about a tenth of the world's land surface and a tenth of the world's
oceans, the Antarctic is the reverse of the Arctic, which is a relatively small deep
ocean basin surrounded by the relatively low-lying northern continents, peopled by
nationals of developed countries. The Arctic is closer to centres of population and
subject to regional pollution from industrial complexes, whereas the remoteness of
the Antarctic means that it remains more pristine than any other region.
Nevertheless, the size and influence of the Antarctic, including the vast Southern
Ocean, means that it cannot be ignored in a world which now realizes that global
changes affect all peoples.
It is also a potential source of wealth and the marine resources have been exploited
in the past so it is no longer completely pristine. The seas contain sustainable living
resources (krill, fish and squid) possibly exceeding the total annual world fish catches
which have peaked at about 80 million tons, and are now almost all subject to
national jurisdiction. The history of earlier over-exploitation of Antarctic living
resources, first of seals in the nineteenth century and more recently of whales, is well
known. Over the years it led to the removal from the top of the food chains of some
2-3 million seals and about 1.3 million whales, equivalent to some 70 million tons.
This has had enormous consequences for the other components of the Antarctic
marine ecosystem. For example, it has been estimated that formerly the whale stocks
consumed some 200 million tons of krill annually, much of which is now presumably
available to feed other groups, like squid, fish, birds and seals. Although the full
picture is still unclear, some of these are known to have increased in abundance
following the decline of the whales.
Antarctica was the keystone of the vast southern supercontinent, Gondwana, which
began to break up by continental drift some 200 million years ago. Sightings in the
Antarctic of minerals that occur in the other southern continents, indicate that there is
potential mineral wealth, although the fact that 98% of the land is covered by a thick
blanket of ice greatly restricts the commercial prospects. Large sedimentary basins
are known to occur which may by analogy with other regions contain oil and gas, but
on land they lie under the ice-sheet (averaging 2.5 kilometres in thickness); those in
the continental shelf are covered by a depth of water roughly three times greater than
other continental shelves due to the weight of ice depressing the bedrock. These
problems are further compounded by a surrounding region of inhospitable pack ice
which fluctuates seasonally between 4 and 20 million square kilometres, and also
includes the largest icebergs known. As a final daunting obstacle, north of the pack
ice zone are the consistently stormiest seas on earth. Minerals or hydrocarbons would
have to be extracted and exported northwards in the face of these extreme
difficulties, at least an order of magnitude greater than those to be surmounted in the
Arctic - where, many years after exploration began, there are still few mining
operations and as yet no offshore hydrocarbon production. Exploration has not yet
begun in the Antarctic and there is general agreement that exploitation, if it ever
occurs, is probably 30 - 50 years away.
In fact the fundamental importance of the Antarctic to mankind is probably much
greater, more immediate and quite different from that suggested by commercial
314