Lost Antarctica: Adventures in a Disappearing Land
Frozen. Remote. Hostile. Extreme. Barren. These are the usual adjectives usually applied the Antarctic.
Most of us view it through a lens of ignorance, or romance, but for scientists like James McClintock, a renowned marine biologist with 13 polar expeditions, both overland and underwater, under his belt, it is so much more.
In a book that mixes personal memoir with science lesson, McClintock brings to life a complex and thriving, but ultimately fragile, ecosystem. Who would have known that a cubic mile of Southern Arctic ocean is home to 27 trillion ‘butterflies’ – of the underwater variety, Limacina antarctica.
Like other zooplankton, and the phytoplankton they feed on, and like the larger shrimplike krill, the invertabrates such as giant marine worms and giant squid, the birds, fish, whales, seals and penguins, its habitat, and therefore its survival, is under pressure from the destructiveness of a human civilisation that is largely unaware of its existence.
Through McClintock’s eyes we get a glimpse of life on the brink. We see the kind of research taking place in Antarctica, some of it his own. And we are given the gift of thirty years of study brought to bear on understanding the intimate connections between things. Although he’s not a ‘deep ecologist’ – or indeed an ecologist of any kind – McClintock’s elucidation of how even a minute change in ocean temperature or acidity can throw a vast system into chaos and decline is fascinating.
Written with enthusiasm and an eye for detail, and in a way that largely avoids impenetrable jargon, this is an excellent, if ultimately distressing, accounting of the effects of rapid man-made climate change on a unique and irreplaceable wilderness.
Lost Antarctica: Adventures in a Disappearing Land
James McClintock
Palgrave MacMillan
Paperback
£16.99
- This review appeared in Geographical magazine circa December 2012.
