Hardwear Sessions

Our first day of kayaking begins from Enterprise Island and the site of a historic ship sinking. In 1915 the Gouvernor, a Norwegian whale processing ship - the most sophisticated of its time - burned at anchor, its 1,000 barrels of whale oil igniting a massive fire that claimed the ship but none of its crew. We kayak around the wreck, its rusted bow still jutting out of the calm bay, and circumnavigate Enterprise on a clear blue day. A highlight is crashing through brash ice to reach a hidden bay, the small floating bergs making a loud bashing sound on the bottom of our kayaks, their bark more serious than their bite.

The next morning we kayak through Paradise Bay, its tall snowy mountain peaks reflected in the calm sea, passing a sleeping leopard seal on a floating sheet of ice. We are headed towards the American science base called Palmer Station, where we are invited for dinner and an interview with a scientist studying Antarctic algae for its cancer-curing potential.

The base is a collection of brightly colored metal buildings connected by wooden walkways built above the snow and ice. An arched tent sits at the entry from the sea, home to the penguin researchers who are requested to change and shower outside the base's formal buildings so as not to track Gentoo guano into the base. Metal containers labeled Haz Mat, Bat Cave and Grantees sit near the sea; atop the hill is a geodesic dome housing the base's satellite antennas. A modern new building built higher on the hill houses sophisticated equipment that track everything from nuclear detonations to earthquake tremors to lightning strikes around the globe.

Hosted to dinner by its 35 residents - nine or ten scientists, the rest are support crew - afterwards the base manager Rebecca Shoop takes us to a balcony overlooking the sunlit bay and a line of tall glaciers paralleling it. (It was just off Palmer where, in 1989, the Bahia Pariaso - a tourist boat - sank, all of its passengers being safely shuttled to the base.) The line of glaciers, explains Rebecca, has retreated by thirty feet in the past decade. The snow bridge that was once is gone. In its place lies a new island of rock and rubble, which no one knew, existed, and unburied from beneath centuries of ice in just the past ten years.

During the next few days we would stop and visit with other scientists - on Peterman Island, where the environmental group Oceanites has been studying penguins the past five years, to the Ukrainian base called Verndasky where they measure the ozone and keep exact meteorological records - and everyone we meet talks about how a warming climate is changing things down here. On Peterman the trio of penguin counters tell us about a recent, two weeklong rainstorm, unheard of in Antarctica previously. At Vernadsky it is the fact that the channel between its island base and the Peninsula did not freeze completely this past winter.

We have experienced some beautiful, 40+ degree (F) days. While there may exist some debate over the cause of climate change there is no question that things are heating up dramatically down south.

Follow Jon's travels on www.jonbowermaster.com and view maps, photographs, and video footage from the Antarctica 2008 expedition