Latest news with #Antarctica
BBC News
10 hours ago
- General
- BBC News
Whaling Archive: 'I left Shetland to hunt whales in the Antarctic'
Gibbie Fraser was a teenager when he decided the best way to afford a motorbike like his friends on the west side of Shetland was to join the crew of a whaling later, at the age of 16, he was battling rough seas and violent storms in relentless pursuit of the largest animals on earth, 8,000 miles (13,000 km) from home in the South Atlantic is one of several former Scottish whalers contributing to a new digital time capsule exploring the country's forgotten history in modern Whalers' Memory Bank, launched in Dundee, aims to capture a snapshot of life onboard the whale-catching vessels around South Georgia and Antarctica between 1904 and 1965. "It was the highlight of my life," said Gibbie, who is chairman of the Shetland ex-Whalers Association."I knew boys who had gone before and they came home the following summer with really nice motorcycles and I thought 'that's the way to do it'."It was an adventure and when you are young, it is like a bit of a drug." Now 83, he was among hundreds of Scots who joined boats along with largely Norwegian crew in the post-war years, when work was like him, had grown up in small, coastal communities on Shetland, while others came from the Leith, in Edinburgh-based firm, Christian Salvesen, operated whale processing ports at the aptly named Leith Harbour at Stromness Bay in South Georgia, a British overseas territory about 870 miles (1,400 km) from the Falkland would fire harpoons aimed at killing and capturing blue, fin and humpback whales, which were brought aboard and processed at a centre in the island's main settlement, Grytviken. Gibbie began his career cooking and serving meals for the crew and cleaning the boat as a mess boy in the late the only non-smoker, he would also be sent above deck to steer at night while shipmates stayed below to play cards for remembered the conditions on board being hard, but said there was a sense of "camaraderie" among the crew."The catchers were wonderful boats and came through a lot of heavy weather, but you never walked along the aft end along the main deck, you had to go via the lifeboat deck because the main deck was awash most of the time," he said."When you were in bed, you were not far from where the gun platform was. You were about a foot-and-a-half from where the sea was. You could hear it rushing by."And it was daylight right round the clock. If you were among whales, then you kept going, you never stopped. It was right around the clock until the whales had disappeared." On one occasion, he recalled pursuing a fin whale in straight line for four hours before it was eventually said he "felt sorry" for the whales that were caught, adding he never wanted to see them suffer."I realise that it was a warm-blooded animal that could feel pain like I could, and probably fear too," he said."You always hoped that when the harpoon went in, that would kill it, it was never nice to see it struggle for a while." 'No longer viable' Gibbie completed four seasons aboard the boats and was only prevented from returning for a fifth when he suffered an arm injury in a crash involving his motorbike and a school bus at home in industry began to crumble in the early-1960s against the backdrop of more stringent government regulation and early environmental campaigns against the killing of the by that point, whale stocks had become so low that the practice was "no longer deemed economically viable".The Edinburgh-based firm, Christian Salvesen, wound down its whaling operations in is estimated about 176,000 whales were slaughtered and processed in South Georgia between 1904 and 1965. Historian Dan Snow helped launch the memory bank aboard the RRS Discovery in boat was built in the city as a research vessel which ferried explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton to the Antarctic in was centre of Scottish whaling throughout the 19th century when whale oil became an essential component for the softening of fabrics during jute says elements of the Discovery's construction were inspired by the whaling vessels arriving in the city during that period. He told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland: "Discovery was an Antarctic survey vessel built in Dundee because it had that whaling expertise, built with all sorts of features that they learned from whaling ships."It had things like rudders that lifted up into the hull and special strong hulls."Through the memory bank, we've been able to save these stories, these testimonies about what it was like to go down there for months on end through the eternal summer of the Antarctic and chase whales, using world war two ships and radar equipment, it was like they were waging war on these whales." The memory bank has been produced by the South Georgia Heritage Trust and the South Georgia worked with former whaling communities across Scotland to collect archive pictures and film, alongside several hundred items and oral histories and create a digital database, which can be viewed Balfour, assistant curator of the museum, whose great-grandfather and grandfather were both whalers in South Georgia, said: "To understand more about what they saw, what they experienced and how they, their colleagues and families back home must have felt, is incredibly special."It is amazing that over 60 years on from the whaling the camaraderie that exists between the whalers is just as strong."
BreakingNews.ie
17 hours ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Commuter traffic stops for whales on Australia's humpback highway
The ferry was late, but not because of the usual traffic. Sydney commuters watched from an idling boat this month as humpback whales the size of buses surfaced nearby, halting the vessel's passage across the harbour. Advertisement The curious mammals seemed to be watching them back. In June and July, it is not uncommon for whales to stop water traffic in Sydney. Winter heralds the opening of the so-called humpback highway, a migratory corridor along Australia's east coast used by about 40,000 of the massive creatures as they travel from feeding grounds in freezing Antarctica to tropical breeding areas off Queensland state. People watch a whale swim past at Boat Harbour north of Sydney (Mark Baker/AP) 'It's blubber to blubber,' said Vanessa Pirotta, a wildlife scientist at Macquarie University in Sydney and author of the book Humpback Highway. Advertisement During peak traffic periods the bustling coastal city of 5.5 million people becomes one of the world's few urban centres where you might see a breaching whale on your morning walk, while buying a coffee, or waiting at a bus stop – any place you can see the sea. The reason humpbacks on the highway are so visible is because of their size – adults can be 52ft to 56ft long and weigh 40 tonnes – and their proximity to people. On their 6,000 mile journey from icy to balmy waters, one of the world's longest mammal migrations, the creatures stay close to shore. 'They are incredibly curious,' said Ms Pirotta. 'There's been times where there's been whales in the harbour this year where they've literally halted traffic.' Advertisement The migratory route is known as the humpback highway (Mark Baker/AP) Australians get so close to the creatures that some have attracted fans. Among them are Migaloo, an all-white humpback whose sightings spanned 1991 to 2020, and Blade Runner, named for her tussle with a boat propeller that created her long, distinctive scars. Some keen whale watchers seek a closer look. On a recent morning, Ben Armstrong, a veteran skipper of a whale-watching boat in Port Stephens, a scenic harbour north of Sydney, slowed the engine as two humpbacks breached nearby. He encouraged passengers to put down their phones and enjoy the spectacle. Advertisement Mr Armstrong keeps his tourist boat at distances mandated by Australia's state laws, but inquisitive whales often go off-script. Once, the skipper let his boat drift for an hour while four or five humpbacks treated the vessel 'like a bath toy', playfully preventing it from moving forward or back. Two humpback whales breach off the coast of Port Stephens (Mark Baker/AP) Vincent Kelly, who travelled from Geelong, Victoria, to witness the migration was a recent passenger. Over two hours, he watched half a dozen humpbacks perform breath-taking aerial manoeuvres. 'It was unbelievable to me,' Mr Kelly said. 'I didn't expect to actually see a whale. But they were everywhere.' Advertisement The humpback gridlock marks a sharp reversal of fortune for the whales. They were once hunted for meat and oil, and numbers dwindled to a few hundred before humpbacks became a protected species in the southern hemisphere in 1963. The humpback boom to about 40,000 since has brought the creatures into more frequent contact with people than before. The population is still growing steadily, amplifying concerns about how humans and giants of the sea can safely share the coastline. But it also puts millions of Australians a short walk and a little luck away from encountering one of the largest mammals on the planet.
The Guardian
21 hours ago
- Science
- The Guardian
‘It looks more likely with each day we burn fossil fuels': polar scientist on Antarctic tipping points
For more than 20 years, Louise Sime has worked at the British Antarctic Survey specialising in polar climate dynamics. She uses ice cores to reconstruct past conditions and predict future changes. She now leads several international Earth modelling projects. Why are the Arctic and Antarctic regions important for the rest of the world?They are one of the pillars of global climate stability, a giant store of frozen water, an essential 'biotic pump' that helps to store carbon, and an albedo shield that reflects much of the sun's light and heat back out to space. When and why did scientists become concerned about tipping points in Antarctica?It has become a major talking point in the past five to 10 years, though the possibility has been known for much longer. Up until 2016, the sea ice in Antarctica seemed relatively stable. Then everything started to change. At first, the decline was mostly in line with climate models. But suddenly, in 2023, there was an enormous drop. About 2.5 million sq km of Antarctic sea ice went missing relative to the average before 2023. The anomaly was of such a magnitude that it's quite hard for scientists to know what to make of it. It has been described as a five sigma event. What is a five sigma event?Something that may only happen once in 10,000 years, or higher, possibly once in several million years. It was so far outside of expectations that the statistics became really hard to handle. It was very startling. What was the cause? It's still not absolutely clear but it is probably associated with global warming and circulation changes in the oceans. In that year, there was an enormous atmospheric river event over East Antarctica, which was also a five sigma event. This coincided with the biggest heatwave on record, where we had a temperature anomaly in excess of 40C. What effect did this have on the region?When that much sea ice is lost, there are substantial knock-on impacts. While the ocean is covered by ice, the temperature above the surface can easily be -20C, -30C. But as soon as the water is exposed, then the surface temperature cannot go below -2C. And once the surface is opened to the atmosphere, then you start to get evaporation of water vapour. That means a sudden and substantial change of weather around Antarctica. What are the potential tipping points in the polar regions?Tipping points are broadly defined as abrupt changes that are irreversible, at least on human timescales. We know they are possible in polar ecosystems based on ice-core records going back 800,000 years. We are less sure where those tipping points are. That is because these regions are shaped by complex interactions. It also depends what scale we are talking about. Small, local tipping points may have already been passed on particular ice sheets or coastal ice shelves or possibly even sea ice. But it is less certain that the entire region is near a tipping point. What are ice sheets and why do they matter?Ice must cover at least 50,000 sq km of land to qualify as an ice sheet, also known as a continental glacier. They grow when there is more snow than melt-off, and shrink when there is more melt-off than snow or if they slide into the sea. We know this is a risk in Antarctica, because it's got a backward sloping bedrock. If the ice there is thinned, then at some point it starts floating in deep basins and begins melting from below. Then you would have a sort of catastrophic collapse. How do they differ from ice shelves?Ice shelves are floating tongues of ice that flow out from land glaciers over a cold coastal ocean. They range in thickness from 50 to 600 metres, and help to buttress land ice. We've seen examples where they catastrophically collapse because melt water accumulates over the surface and forces cracks into the shelves. An ice shelf that may have been there for hundreds or thousands of years can collapse within months, possibly even weeks. By themselves, the collapse of ice shelves doesn't add much to global sea-level rise, but it can remove the buttress on much bigger ice sheets, which can then slide faster into the ocean. West Antarctica appears to be the area of greatest concern. Why?This is the location of two huge and vulnerable glaciers: Pine Island and Thwaites. We know that their buttressing gate glaciers on the shore are thinning and retreating. That allows more of the ice sheet to flow into the ocean. Satellite images show this has been going on for some time and has accelerated at least since the year 2000. All of those glaciers are connected together so if they slipped into the ocean that would add about four metres to global ocean levels. But the key question is how long this will take. Looking at past records of change in Antarctica, it's likely to take hundreds of years. But a very large acceleration would be felt almost immediately and it would result in the global sea level going up much, much faster in the near future. How does this compare with the situation in the Arctic?The potential for Antarctica to increase global sea levels is scarier than for Greenland. Right now, they're both contributing similar amounts to sea-level rise, but in future, it could be Greenland goes up a bit and then Antarctica goes up catastrophically. Greenland has the potential to raise sea levels by five or six metres, but we don't expect this will come in the form of an absolutely catastrophic, abrupt loss. Most of the ice in Greenland is not below sea level so we can see what is happening and we expect it will melt in a linear fashion. By contrast, Antarctica has 80 metres of potential sea-level rise. We don't expect all of that, but it is harder to know exactly what is happening. Much of Antarctica is below sea level and affected by the ocean, which means it is less stable and harder to observe. We also know there are parts of Antarctica where warm water is encroaching on to unstable shelves and we know that ice could retreat in some of the sloping basins – for example in East Antarctica and Wilkes Land. We don't know where that tipping point is, but if we hit it, there will be an irreversible retreat of the West Antarctic sheet. How long may that take?It's safer to assume that parts of it could happen rapidly. We know that ice shelves can collapse in a matter of weeks or months. On a bigger scale, evidence from the past suggests West Antarctica is unlikely to catastrophically lose all its ice in tens of years. It could unfold over hundreds or even thousands of years, but once you cross the tipping point and initiate that process, it is possible that we'd immediately see a substantial acceleration and jumps in sea level. We need more study. Is it possible that this is already under way?Yes. Some studies have suggested we may have passed tipping points, so the loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet may now be inevitable because of the warming of the oceans. However, this is far from clear. Tipping points definitely exist and we may already have passed some of the minor ones, but there's also a good chance, in my view, that we haven't yet crossed the major ones in Antarctica. What would happen elsewhere if the Antarctic breaches these tipping points?A huge proportion of the global population lives very close to the sea level so if the oceans rise by several metres, I find it personally quite hard to think about the consequences. They would be devastating. How would it affect the climate?A huge amount of the carbon dioxide that is emitted today is being sequestered in the Southern Ocean. But that only happens if ecosystems work effectively as a biological pump that draws carbon dioxide into the depths via plankton, krill and other species. If we cross tipping points in Antarctica, it would undermine that ecosystem. That would change the trajectory of how much carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere in the coming years, and likely increase global temperature, which will be felt by everyone. What is your gut feeling about whether we have crossed a tipping point in the Antarctic? It's unthinkable, but it's not impossible, and it looks more likely with each day that we continue burning fossil fuels. It's beyond worrying. What difference would it make if we stopped burning oil, gas, coal and trees? If we stop emitting carbon tomorrow, then it's quite likely that we would see no further decreases in Arctic sea ice. And it's quite likely that other parts of the global climate system would immediately stabilise and temperatures would stop going up. So even if we had passed some tipping points, it's very likely that we would not pass any others. Is there any way to reverse what's going on with a technological fix?Studies suggest geoengineering is speculative and could make things worse. I'm personally not against what-if modelling experiments: if we did have giant space mirrors, what would the climate of Earth look like at that point? But it's unlikely in my personal view that any of them actually would be usable. They shouldn't distract us from our primary goal which is to stop the burning of any fossil fuel as quickly as possible. How do you feel about the risk of a tipping point in the Antarctic?As a human being, I have so much trouble trying to think about the magnitude of the sea-level rise, that I'm not sure I have the capacity to really think it through. I really enjoy working on polar science generally. It's a privilege, but I don't really have a good answer for you. We scientists just do our best to encourage everyone to decarbonise, please, for my kids' future, as well as for everyone else's kids. Tipping points – in the Amazon, Antarctic, coral reefs and more – could cause fundamental parts of the Earth system to change dramatically, irreversibly and with devastating effects. In this series, we ask the experts about the latest science – and how it makes them feel. Tomorrow, Tim Lenton talks about positive social tipping points Read more
CBS News
a day ago
- Science
- CBS News
New report indicates emperor penguins are living on thin ice
Emperor penguins live in some of the most remote and environmentally pristine regions in the world. But that doesn't mean they're safe from the impacts of a warming planet. Just ask Dr. Birgitte McDonald, a researcher at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. For 15 years, she's studied emperor penguins and how they dive, swim, and forage for food. A new report published in the journal Nature has deepened her concern about the penguins' survival. "This report wasn't too surprising but a little depressing at how fast it seems to be happening in one region," remarked McDonald. The report involved scientists from the British Antarctic Survey. For 15 years, they've monitored 16 colonies of emperor penguins via satellite imagery. These colonies represent roughly a third of all the emperor penguins on earth. Emperor penguin with chicks, Aptenodytes forsteri, Snow Hill Island, Antartic Peninsula, Antarctica Getty Images A new analysis of the satellite data has detected a higher and more dramatic decline in the birds' populations. Five years ago, the scientists found a 9.5% drop. The updated data shows a startling 22% drop. "Overall, the picture is quite poor. It's quite dire for the penguins," remarked Dr. Peter Fretwell, lead author of the new analysis. The warming of the planet is thinning and destabilizing the sea ice that is critical for the breeding and molting of the penguins. There is more competition for available food among all the creatures in the area. In addition, scientists are detecting more extreme weather in the form of more rainfall and storms. An increase in extreme weather is a hallmark of climate change. "The chicks are well insulated with their down, but the down only really works if they stay dry. And so, if there is a lot more rain, the chicks will have to spend more energy trying to stay warm," explained McDonald. "So, going out to sea for the first time at a lighter weight, and that could decrease their chance of survival." As to what we can do to slow the warming, McDonald offered some advice: fly less, try more carpooling and driving less, and eat less meat. These are all small steps, but if large enough people practice them, McDonald noted, there could be a difference. Here are more ideas on how you can reduce your carbon footprint. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The Independent
2 days ago
- The Independent
Thousands of whales join the ‘humpback highway' along Australia's coast
Humpback whales undertake one of the world's longest mammal migrations, travelling from Antarctic feeding grounds to breeding areas off Australia 's coast during winter. This annual migration, involving approximately 40,000 whales, creates the "humpback highway" along Australia 's east coast, leading to frequent sightings near urban centres like Sydney. The whales' large size and tendency to stay close to shore make them highly visible, sometimes causing extraordinary events like halting ferry traffic in Sydney Harbour due to their curious nature. The humpback population has significantly recovered since becoming a protected species in 1963, leading to increased interactions with humans. While offering unique viewing opportunities, the growing whale population and human proximity raise concerns about entanglements, collisions, and potential changes to migratory patterns due to climate change and krill harvesting.
